In a recent interview on The Eddie Trunk Podcast, producer Max Norman talked about working on Ozzy Osbourne’s first three full-length solo albums.
During these albums Jake E Lee took over guitar duties as he had replaced Randy Rhoads.
Here’s what Max revealed about Jake’s involvement & challenges:
“Yeah, it was a tough time, obviously. When they were coming back in for [the second Ozzy album] ‘Diary of a Madman,’ the whole feeling about it was just a very, very, 100,000% positive feeling.
“And coming in to ‘Bark at the Moon’ had a whole different feel about it – and different band. Yeah, it was very tough for Jake, but Jake was very capable at that time, played very good, did the job really well, and did a lot of great writing.
“And obviously, there were some later problems with all that stuff with Jake, and having just written with Jake on some stuff in the last couple of years, he’s still very bitter about that whole time.
“It came out pretty good. At the end of ‘Bark at the Moon,’ we ran out of studio time, and we had to fly over to New York to mix, and it was very rushed. We mixed, I think, in four days, myself and [bassist] Bob Daisley, and nobody liked the mix.
“I didn’t like the mix that much either, but we did the best we could in the time allowed. It was a lot of hard work – there’s a lot more work actually doing that record than ‘Diary,’ I’m not really sure why.
“I mean, I like the record, it’s a good record, and I love Jake, he played really great, but it was a bit of a struggle, that record.
“It was tough, it was very tough. Of course, there was always Randy’s specter kind of hovering there, and as much as he doesn’t want to think about it, it’s still kind of the elephant in the room.”