Jake E. Lee was in a unique position when he joined Ozzy Osbourne’s band in 1983. He wasn’t just filling Randy Rhoads’ shoes; he also was covering some of Tony Iommi’s most iconic riffs and solos.
“It just sounds evil,” Lee says of Iommi’s playing. “He bends so [that] it’s not quite in pitch. It just made it sound so much better. There are things like that that I found challenging. Where did he come up with all those riffs? It’s not human. It’s unfathomable how he just kept coming up with riffs!”
At the time of this conversation, conducted several months before July 5’s Back to the Beginning extravaganza, Lee has been recovering from a shooting that took place near his Las Vegas home last October.
His left arm was injured in the incident – but he also suffers from arthritis in his right hand, leaving him with little cartilage. It goes without saying he needed time to get up to speed. But none of that matters to him as much as simply bearing witness.
“It’s a thrill to be a part of it,” he says. “And even more so for me to watch it. I hope Ozzy can get through it. I haven’t spoken with him or seen him in decades.
“I really don’t know what condition he’s in, but he deserves a final farewell performance. No matter how he is, or how well his singing is, he deserves to have that final farewell. I’m happy to be a part of it.”
What led to your involvement with Back to the Beginning?
“Tom Morello called me. He said, ‘There’s going to be a thing, an original Sabbath performance and Ozzy Osbourne’s final performance. I can’t see this going on without Jake E. Lee in there somewhere.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’d love to do it.’”
Do you remember the first time you heard Black Sabbath’s music?
“I was 13 and had just gotten into the whole rock ’n’ roll thing. I’d grown up playing classical piano and was a bit of a snob. [Laughs] I thought rock ’n’ roll was stupid! Then I heard Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze and said, ‘This changes everything!’ It opened a whole new world, and there was a new band called Black Sabbath.”
How did their music affect you?
“I said, ‘Wow! Cool, man.’ I love horror films, and that [debut album] opening track [Black Sabbath] was like listening to a horror movie. I don’t know if I’d say I was scared – but it overwhelmed me. I’d never heard anything like it. I don’t want to say [it was] evil… but that menacing sound, I just loved it right away. Black Sabbath was one of my three favorite bands as a teenager, along with Led Zeppelin and Grand Funk Railroad.”
Can you measure the impact of Tony Iommi on you as a young guitarist?
“It was huge. I saved up my money to where I could finally buy an [Gibson] SG, and that was because of him. I wanted to sound like him. I thought he had the greatest tone. Tone-wise, to this day, Tony Iommi is my greatest inspiration. Every time I’m trying to set my stuff up to get the sound right, I play War Pigs. If I can sound anything close to what he sounded like on that, I’m going with it.”
When you joined Ozzy’s band, you were in a unique position, following Randy Rhoads while also playing on a tour featuring many of Tony’s riffs and solos.
“I joined in the middle of the Speak of the Devil tour. Half of the set was Black Sabbath, and half was the stuff with Randy, so I just tried to get as close as I could.
“With the Sabbath stuff, I will say I tried to modernize it or put a little bit more of me into it. It was classic rock that you could kind of fuck with because everybody knows the originals, so I played around a little bit more when we did the Sabbath stuff. With Randy’s, I tried to keep it pretty close because that was fairly recent.”
Was Ozzy as wild as he was made out to be back then?
“One of my favorite Ozzy stories was from that tour. We were doing War Pigs, and it’s the first verse, and Ozzy looks at me and mouths, ‘What are the words?’ I knew the words, but he stumped me. I wasn’t expecting that. I didn’t want to say the wrong words, so I just said, ‘I don’t know…’ So he started singing ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm.’ [Laughs]”
How did that work out?
“It worked perfectly! [Laughs] It was genius. It was like, ‘Old MacDonald haaaad a faaarm, he had some pigs with an oink oink here, and an oink oink therrrrrre.’ I remember it clearly, and it just worked so great. It was onstage, and I remembering looking at the punters in the front row, and they were just like, ‘What the fuck is going on?’ [Laughs]”
Whose style was more difficult to duplicate – Tony’s or Randy’s?
“To be honest, probably Tony’s. It’s not difficult; nothing he plays is really that different except for those trills. I don’t know how he plays those trills so fast – but there’s a nuance.
“A lot of times, when he bends a note, especially the lower notes, he doesn’t go all the way to pitch-perfect. He makes it a little bit flat, which makes it sound more menacing and kind of evil. That’s part of the genius of his playing.”
Is there anything specific you’d like to play on July 5?
Dio did a good job, but it just wasn’t Sabbath to me
“I know people are expecting Bark at the Moon, but I don’t know. Right now, with my wrist, the arthritis and everything, that would be very challenging. I have a couple of months to get up to it, so I’ll practice it just in case that’s the one. But that’s going to be pretty challenging for me physically.
“I’m shooting for The Ultimate Sin. It’s heavy, and I like the solo in it.” [Editor’s note: Lee would end up tackling this song along with Shot in the Dark, while Nuno Bettencourt and Vernon Reid ultimately took on Bark at the Moon.]
What does this final send-off mean to you?
“It’s thrilling. Like I said, Sabbath was one of my three favorite bands. It was just chemistry between the players that you can’t plan on or make happen. If any one of those guys aren’t in Sabbath, it’s just not as good.
“Dio did a good job, but it just wasn’t Sabbath to me. And Bill Ward just had that swing that made them sound so different from every other band that was trying to play metal.”
- This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.
