Andrew Watt has reflected on what it was like to work with Ozzy Osbourne, revealing the one ingredient that the Prince of Darkness believed to be crucial to a great rock song.
Watt was behind the desk for Ozzy's last two studio albums, co-producing 2020's Ordinary Man with Louis Bell, before returning for Patient Number 9 on his own two years later. Alongside production duties, he also played guitar, bass, and keyboards, and co-wrote tracks across the two records. He was hands-on.
As such, he developed a close relationship with the Prince of Darkness, and was suitably impressed when the late singer showcased a sharp production knowledge.
“You have to understand. This man was making Paranoid when he was 21, so he had a 55-year career where everything was grandiose and at the highest level,” Watt tells Rolling Stone. “You could think he wasn’t listening, [but] he heard every single thing. There’d be times we’d be in the studio and he’d just give me this one line that cuts so deep, in a positive way.”
Understandably, Ozzy absorbed a lot of learning from his decades in the industry. One instrument, he felt, was crucial to a song’s success.
“He would always say to me, ‘Listen to Led Zeppelin and tell me what the loudest thing is,’” Watt details. “And having confidence, I’d be like, ‘It’s the drums. John Bonham.’ He said, ‘Nope, not the drums. It’s the bass.’
“He pointed out that the bass is the most important thing in a rock song. You have to make sure the bass is there and pumping and cutting through and providing that sense of rhythm, because it’s the bridge between the drums and the guitars.
“It makes the song heavy, because the guitars can poke through if you have them mixed in the right way,” Watt expands. “The bass is a hard thing to really get cutting, but also represents the bottom.
"If you listen to the records that we made together, there’s a lot of bass on those records. Under the Graveyard has so much low-end. He was involved in every detail of every single mix-down, too. That’s how much he cared.”
When now-Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo spent some time in Ozzy's band during the '90s, he discovered his love of low-end first-hand.
“Ozzy used to tell me, 'Rob, I'm your best friend because I love the bass. I don't want you to turn it down. I want you to turn it up,'” Trujillo told Revolver in 2022. “The only other singer that's ever said that to me was Lady Gaga when we jammed with her with Metallica – and James [Hetfield] kinda looked over and was like, ‘What?’”
Watt recently credited a pop star for kickstarting his production career, which has since seen him work with the Rolling Stones and Pearl Jam.
Ozzy Osbourne passed away in July, just weeks after Back to the Beginning, and despite having a world-class ear for guitar players, he once named the one that takes the crown as the best he's ever played with.
