Yeah, well, you know, the thing about the thing about Ozzy is that there's there's been so many interviews over the years that it's difficult to find anything to say. They weren't very long sessions. This is the thing. Well, I'm just start things off right here. Yes, we're just one live. We just want to live just to have a good intro. You know, Alan, this is this is probably the soundtrack to our childhood right here. Yeah, the man who is responsible for the soundtrack for our childhood. Yeah, adolescents, adolescents, they should say we won't we won't date ourselves. Well, at least I at least I press record. That's a good thing. Oh, yeah. There have been many times when I forgot to press record like right now, hold on, let me. Yeah, well, that's the important thing is just, you know, make sure you press record.  And they had come from, I don't know if you remember 10 C.C. of course, they have Strawberry Studios was not very far away and they were over there and I guess the the engineer let allowed the tape to run out when they're in the middle of a take.   So Max, let's just start right from the beginning. Okay. Like we'll talk about the Oz era and the albums that you've done and sort of the experience and all, but just tell us a little bit about you for the people out there who don't know, you know, how did you get into engineering and how did you sort of move into that role of production? Yeah. Well, a brief story, I was, I played guitar, so I was in a bunch of bands and it was very difficult to get, you know, going with a band and it was expensive to have the equipment and all that kind of stuff. So I answered an advert in the New Musical Express for a sound guy for a German, a German band called Wind and I actually went out to Germany and worked with them for three or four months and then I came back to England and I worked, I was basically worked on the road for about seven years. So I did, I was a spotlight operator for Manfred Mann's Earth Band. I was a keyboard roadie for Baker Gerwitz Army, which was the Gerwitz Brothers and Ginger Baker. I was a regga for, and after a while I joined, I was a front of house guy for a cabaret band for a couple of years that did all the clubs in England and they were quite a big band called Sparrow. They were on TV about seven times and they won New Faces and I think it was called over there. It was one of those talent shows. Anyway, so I did all of that. Then I got approached. I was working with Manfred and Maus, the head of the crew for Manfred Mann, said, oh, you know, you're too good to be doing this. You need to be doing other stuff. So he called somebody over at Electro Sound at that time, which was a British sound company, quite a big, one of the big British sound companies and he said, oh, you got to go talk to this guy, Mick Whelan, and so I went over there and Mick, I understood what he was talking about and he understood that I had some ears at least and I could hear what was going on. So he kind of took me under my wing and he mentored me and after about six weeks with them, I came to the US in 76 to do the Robin Trower and Jethro Toe, co-built big tour. It's a huge tour. We had 90-foot cranes dropping railroad cars over the side of the, into the arenas. It was a massive tour. The second show I did in America was Shea Stadium, 62,000 people.  You got quite the resume, I guess that's what it comes down to. Yeah, I did Todd Rungren, Utopia, I did Little Feet with Tower of Power, Horned Section, I did a lot of these different bands, live, you know, live stuff. So I was the crew chief on most of those things. I did the Abba World Tour and stuff like that. And then I got fed up with loading trucks and getting hurt. So I decided I really need to be in the studio. And I started to talk to Frank Andrews, who owned Ridge Farm. And his brother, Frank, was actually a lighting guy. And he had electrosound. And he said, well, we, you know, I've got a studio at my place. And his brother was the guy that designed turbo sound. And so anyway, there was a whole bunch of stuff. We were all hanging around. We all knew each other and everything. And I said, well, I'll come down there. And Frank had a guy in the studio at Ridge Farm that had his own equipment. And he was basically taking half the money and Frank's couldn't. He said, this is not economical for me.  Put his own stuff in there. And basically I went down there to talk to him and he hired me to to install all that stuff. And that's how the Ridge Farm thing happened. So that was after about seven years on the road. So for those people who don't know Ridge Farm, it's what town is it in again? I forgot. Well, it's in it's in a place called Rice Lip. It's in Surrey. It's about it's probably about 30 miles from the airport. There were a Gatwick airport. Oh, it's near Dawking in Surrey. So so I went down there and I didn't really know what I was doing. But we we bought the second SSL 4,000 series in England. The first one went to the Manor, which was what's his name? Richard Branson's place at the time. And I like that. Rising up. And so we got the second one. And we put that in. And that was very auspicious. And that that that decision was really probably more Frank Andrews decision than mine. But I looked it all up and I said, damn, this is a great console, you know. So we put that in there. And that was the rise of the SSL consoles. That was when they first came out. And they just basically took over an enormous amount up until then. There had been a lot of new consoles and older consoles like that. And of course, you you see all the new story in the Sound City great movie, which I haven't seen. And they never asked me to be in. And I made a bunch of stuff at Sound City.  Oh, loudness, you know, under in the East. I made it Sound City, a dangerous toys. I made it Sound City, made a bunch of albums there. And they never asked me about it. OK, so. So but but another black eye for heavy metal. Yeah, I know. I wanted to focus on the other.  It took me about three months to do all the wiring. And we put everything in there. And so obviously trying to make it as successful as possible. And as I was saying before, we've got on the air and saying that we we actually had bad company in there to do some demos. And that was kind of very fraught with the, you know, anxiety, of course, because it's a new studio. And then right after that. A bunch of different people in there, Judy Zook. I don't know if you remember her from a British artist. Not a lot of people in there. Matumby, which is a black kind of before rap happened, there was a toasting, what they call toasting. Is that what they called it? Which is actually rap. But it's it was like toasting. So, you know, you go, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad. It's like the talking over the thing. And I think that's actually where rap came from. Although I've never heard anybody mention that. But now it has been. Yeah, I mean, it was a very big reggae band. And Dennis, what's his name was producing. And they were they were absolutely nuts because they would work 24 hours. They'd have like 10 guys there for 12 or 14 hours. Then they have another 10 guys come in. I think I just I just I just lost Dallin. But it go on, go on. Oh, anyway. So I got I got really pounded in the studio. And I learned, you know, more stuff. But I was but I was only kind of understood how to do it all. And understood how to work with the inflated egos, if you like, or, you know, people that are used to working with stuff.  And so that was a good training for me the seven or eight years before I went into Ridge Farm. So I really understood it. So it was wasn't that hard. It was really just a technical change from doing one in one, one in and stereo out to one in to the multi track and then back to stereo out. So it was just an extra kind of stage in there. All right. So so you were the in-house engineer. And I guess at some point, I guess Chris Tangeritas, right. Was identified as the producer of Blizzard and Ozzy comes, right? I mean, OK, so.  And yeah, we interviewed Chris and he was, you know, twice. And what a great guy, great guy, great legacy guy and nothing to knock him at all. Yeah, you know, very nice guy. And I was thinking about this because I knew that this was going to come up and one of the one of the mistakes that Chris made was underneath the control room, this is an old 16th century barn.  And underneath the control room, basically it was a stone room or concrete room. There's only seven feet high. And Chris made a mistake of putting the drums in there. And I tried to explain to him that, you know, this this room is too small. So it's just, you know, it's going to like just everything's just going to go. And that's exactly what happened. And I tried to explain to Chris, but he was he wanted to do his own thing. So I left it alone. But I felt I felt that it sounded really quite bad. And so I would say I would say to Chris, yeah, dude, you should go down on the studio floor and talk to the guys, you know, man to man and all that stuff. So yeah, good idea. You know, so he went down there and I closed the door and then I'd like turn off all the headphones and I'd rebalance it and try and make it sound as good as possible. And then the band would come up to the control room and listen. And so we did this for about four or five days. Then I just like he's not getting, you know, because normally I would set up a balance and I wouldn't move stuff around that much. I would try to improve on the balance and tweak it. But Chris was from a different school. He would pull down all the faders, zero everything and then just build it from scratch real quick. And to me, that's like, OK, look, you you learn what to do. And then you just throw that away. And now you're trying to recreate it again. And that's not the way I would work. And you know, people can do that. And it's just a different way of working. But after about five days, I said, you know, I said to myself, I'm not going to do this anymore because he's not getting it. You know, he's not he's not seeing. The way forward with it. Yeah. And so. Eventually, I stopped rebalancing it and the band would come in and they all kind of looked at each other and there was like some raised eyebrows. And so. Yeah, so eventually they said, look, Chris, you know, this isn't working out, blah, blah, blah. And then I see called me. He was sitting up in Tony Andrews, the Frank Andrews brother, had a house just a bit north of the studio right up there. We could walk to him.  I want to talk to you.   Can you do it? So I go, yeah, sure. I was he goes, all right, you're doing it. And that was it. You know, so I was like, yeah. And you know what? And Chris, Chris again, has created masterpieces as well. We're not knocking Chris here. No, no. Oh, absolutely.  Yeah, sure.  It's an honor to be fired by Ozzy because everybody gets fired by us. Well, I think it's all fired up by Ozzy a few times. And sued a few times, too. But yeah, you know, so it's a bit of a shame.   And if it's if it's if people aren't seeing I2Y, then, you know, it gets moved on. So I felt kind of bad at the time and, you know, but. It wasn't clicking with Chris, basically. And sometimes it doesn't click.  So that's basically what happened there. So actually, we ended up with about three weeks left to do the record. I'm sleepy. I got it right here. And it literally says March 22nd, April 19th. You were joking when you said it was done quickly. Twenty second to the 19th. Yeah, actually, in the first year, the first week we lost the first week. Because we didn't use anything. So as soon as Chris left, I pulled all the drums out of there. We put them in the main in the main body of the of the studio, which was somewhat drier, had a lot more wood and more absorption and was just sounded a lot better, more natural. But Lee Kerslik wasn't in the band yet, right? They started off rehearsing with. Oh, I don't know what happened with the rehearsals. But as soon as everybody was at Rich Farm, Lee was there. OK, Lee was there. Yeah. Yeah, and I know I'd known Lee for many years. I was with him. He was in your I.H.  You know, he's like, hey, what's going on? One familiar face. So we set them up. We set him up in the middle in the middle of the room. And basically, everybody was around them. And Randy's stuff went down into the stonework to fire up the stone steps. And that's how we did a lot of Randy's stuff was done. Firing out of that room up the stone steps. And that made that made a lot more sense sonically to work like that. So Max, you get the feeling at that point, were they a band or they were Sidemen to Ozzy Ozma? How what was your impression of? Oh, as far as I knew, as far as I could see, it was like a band.  I mean, and I don't know the motives. I don't know if if if, you know, Sharon's story is that they were never going to be in the band and all this kind of stuff. And I don't know if that's true or not. I have no idea. As far as I concerned, when they showed up, it was Blizzard who asked a band and that that's the way it was all laid out to me. I don't know what was going on in the background. I know it was with Jet Records and I knew, of course, there was a little bit shady business going on. You know, indeed, Don sued me later on for numerous reasons. When he wasn't getting sued. Well, you know, you're not. It's like a rite of passage, really. If you're not getting sued, you're not trying. Yeah, yeah. If you're not sued, you're not there yet. So so this so you have leakers like who, you know, Bob Desley was better on the block. He's a professional, right? And just so you know, I've talked to Lee many, many times. You probably know that Bob we talked to a few times. Yeah, yeah, I think we pretty much covered the whole Randy Rhodes. I've I've spoken to the brother, the sister. I've, you know, Kelly, Kelly Garni. I I'm a Randy Rhodes fanatic here. OK, like I'll talk to anybody who's had a history of the Randy Ron Sobel was best friends with Kevin Dubrow was friends with Randy Rhodes. Yeah, I'm just like, what was your impression? Here's this young guy out of nowhere, right? He doesn't have a name for himself yet. What did you think? And you're a professional too, right? Yeah, I mean, just a very earnest, honest, straightforward guy. You know, I got to say the whole band were very straightforward guys. Ozzie's very straightforward. He's a funny guy. The band is funny. They're in there having fun. They're all great players. You know, I mean, it's just a great situation. And basically, everybody's on the same side. We're all looking to try and make the best possible record. And it was just a lovely time, really. And Randy was constantly pushing himself to get better, constantly practicing, playing. He'd sit there at dinner with a guitar and be just playing the guitar. You know, when waiting for the pudding to come out, you know, stuff like that, you know, the guy was the guy was playing the guitar morning, noon and night.  Did he seem homesick? Like he was missing his family. I mean, there's a lot of that because he was he never is from my understanding. That might be just a family like hoping that he was homesick. He didn't seem that you know, he was hanging out having a great time. He was he was doing what he wanted to do. And his I guess it was Jody, his girlfriend at the time he came down. I think that was more towards the second record. But, you know, you know, I don't think he was really that homesick. I mean, maybe he was, you know, he never mentioned it to me. But, you know, basically, he was working all the time. And he was doing what he loved. So, you know, it wasn't really work to him. But, you know, I remember that we set up he wanted to rehearse the solo. So I would make this is it's an old story. But I would make him a half a quarter inch two track mix of 15 seconds before the solo, all the way through the backing track and then 15 seconds after the solo and I would make about 15 or 20 of these copies onto one big long rail so that he would be able to play it. But we didn't have a remote down in the studio. So he would go up to the control room and and hit play. And this thing would go for about seven and a half. I'd be asked to go for probably about 45 minutes. And there would be maybe 10 or 12 or 14 runs of the solo.  Then he played again and he would just practice and practice and practice. And while he was doing this, we would go this usually be after 10 about five thirty six o'clock and then he would go back into the control room and put on his tape and we would go up to the pub for a couple of hours and have a few beers and then we would come back and say, you know, are you ready? And he'd be like. No, so we wait around for a little longer.  You know, and then when we started to put down the solos, we would get one really good. Did he map it? Did he map it like a lot of guitarists? I mean, the actual solos were written out. Yeah, the end solos, of course, were mostly ad-lib, but the actual solos were worked out and written out. Not so much written out, but he knew what was going down. They were mapped out. And so we would get a really good one. And he didn't want to punch anything in. I think we did a few punches, but for the most part, he would try and do a beginning to end. And once we got a good one, you go, OK, let's double it. And I'd be like, OK, so now it goes, you know. And but he would do a really good job of doubling it. And then he said, oh, let's triple it. And I was like, because you've only got 24 tracks, which is only 23 tracks because you've got time code on one of the tracks. And then and then you've got where you've got kicks near higher, stereo tom, stereo over it. So you've got seven tracks at ground, then you got bass to two bass tracks. So you're not looking at a lot of tracks here. So and then you've got a couple of rhythm tracks. And then, you know, by the time you get to the lead, you're looking at about three or four tracks that he'd got. Oh, yeah. And so.  And it was what the fuck? And I said, oh, it's triple track, Ozzie.   You could say Ozzie, Ozzie had a lot. Like a lot of people think Ozzie just, you know, wasted somewhere in a corner. But I mean, he was there. I mean, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, everything had to. Everything went by Ozzie. You know, if Ozzie liked it, it was cool. If you didn't like it, then we'd fix it.  Well, not always, not always. I mean, we do the vocals and it might take and Ozzie does one line at a time and then he doubles it.  Then when they did the remix, they somehow they echoed it.  But when he originally did it, we were working with just two tracks. So he would do the he'd go, OK. OK, roll it. He'd sing the first one. And then he'd hold his hand up when I stopped the tape and he go, how was it? And I go, yeah, not bad. I was going to do it again. So we punched the first line again and maybe after two or three takes, I go, yeah, pretty good. That one, I said, go, double it. I put him on the other track and he doubled the first line. Oh, OK. And he go, how was it? And I go, not bad. I was like, go, do it again. And then you do it again. And you get that tight, that Aussie sound of his vocal, which he had, which he's been doing for many, many years, that tight double. And that's his sound, even from even from Black Sabbath. So you get one and then you hear the sound, you hear it phasing, flangy with itself. And he go, yeah, that's a good one. I said, go, what, next, next line. So you do it, you do the vocal like this. It takes about six or seven hours to do the vocal. And in between, he's having a slug of scotch or doing something else, mostly having a slug of scotch. Sure, sure. And I remember I would punch in and he wouldn't be singing. And I'd like soloing up real quick and cranking up. And I could hear this hissing sound.  Do it again.  And then one of the times I punched in, he was throwing up. But most of the time, he was very good. And actually, we did have the chance to listen to those moldy tracks some years, many years later, actually. And they are actually exemplary. They're really, really good. I mean, his singing is really good. There's no tuning on any of that stuff. That stuff is as it is, you know. Yeah, that's what it was back in the day, yeah. Yeah. What about Mr. Crowley, the intro? So Bob, Bob Daisley told me that it was written, kind of mapped out by another keyboardist. And then Don Airey took it to the next level and recorded it. Is there any truth to that? I don't know, actually. It's quite possible. I know that Don came in, and we were very excited because he had a CSAT, which was a multi-timp, multi-note synthesizer, which was very new at that time. And it also had the strip where you could do the glissando thing. You could do the sliding thing. It had that weird, sort of like velcro strip on the top. Yeah, no, no. It's a great intro. It's a great sound. So that was very cool. And it was a, I forget what they called it, but it had eight voices. So you could play eight notes at once, whereas normally it was like a mini-mode, one note at once. So that was very awe-inspiring. And so I don't know who wrote that, actually, in the first place. So I can't comment. I don't know if they necessarily wrote, but it kind of mapped it out. And then he took it, and he just embellished on it. I think that's what Bob was saying. I just don't want to mislead anybody either, right? But what I think, I mean, the first time I heard this album, it was, you know, from the opening chords of I Don't Know, it's the sound is just so clear and so powerful. That's what struck me the most about that album is it's a, the sound is great. Yeah. Well, it was a good studio. We had good mics. It was a new SSL-4000. And a lot of people are saying, oh, you must have used all these great mic preamps and all this kind of stuff. And I said, no, I didn't use any mic preamps. Like it just went into the console and that's the way it was. You know, 90% of this stuff comes from the player, drummer, bass player, guitar player. You know, if you've got a great drummer, bass player and guitar player, you don't need to be a great engineer to make a step. This sounds good. That was the case. That was definitely the case.  And that's really what it is. I was just, you know, I'd just get a clear, clean signal, no distortion, make sure it was good. You know, that's, and you've done 90% of the work right there. You know, maybe a little... But I mean, what's the fine line between engineer and producer? Like a producer can also be a project manager in a sense that he's got a budget and he's got to deliver a record. But a producer could be like a mutt lang where he's doing the engineering, teaching everybody how to sing the melody lines, getting the best performance. What's the fine line there? Well, that's a good question. And that line can move around. Basically, if there's no producer or if the band are producing themselves, then the engineer has more responsibility to understand what's going on and to mirror what the band wants. If you're there with a producer, which I've been in both cases, obviously, then you basically do what the producer says and you try not to step on anybody's toes. And you know, so the engineer is basically just responsible for making sure that the nuts and bolts of the recording are correct. There's nothing distorted. Press record, press record, right? Like you said, don't forget to press record. You press record at the right time.  But the engineer's job is as an engineer.  I'm running out of dilithium crystals, you know. That kind of deal, you know. You just ask for the nuts and bolts of stuff and you're not gonna make a comment on, well, I think there's too many choruses or the verse is too long or that, you know, or the vocal could be better. You know, something like that. But having said that, there's a synergy that exists between the producer and the engineer if you're working as two separate people. There's always a synergy that exists and often the producer will look at the engineer and there's an unspoken kind of rapport that, you know, a lot of people will look at the engineer and most of the time you try to stay deadpan but if something really sucks, you know, you look at the engineer going, yeah, that sucks. And you can tell by the engineer's face that it sucked, you know. So it's an encroaching thing sometimes but, you know, there's also an etiquette involved and you try to make sure that you don't step on people's toes and I did, for instance, I did Enola Gay with Mike Howlett with the orchestral manoeuvres in the dark. I did that. That record many, many years. And Mike Howlett actually was really busy planning his vacation at the console. He was looking at both those and stuff like this and he seemed somewhat disinterested. So at that point as an engineer, you step up a bit and you make sure the stuff gets done correctly. And, you know, so basically your job is to be the glue and to fill in where you see that there are deficiencies and to try and make up those deficiencies. And that's a reasonable expectation of an engineer is that he should be able to fill in the gaps and obviously you don't wanna try and get the engineer to produce it if you're not paying him to produce it. Because at a certain point. Because that's another credit, right? Well, like the engineer gets a royalty, I would assume, or a credit. And then the producer gets a credit, isn't it? Like the more sort of... Well, if the engineer usually does it, in those days, it didn't work like the engineer did not get a royalty. The engineer would get a fee. Ah, okay. And the producer would get the royalty. And the producer's fee... But if they dump the producing on the engineer, then they don't have to pay the producer fee. That's what I mean. Well, one of the things that was taught to me by my erstwhile manager back then, Andy Gould, who managed Pantera and a bunch of other bands, that's a whole other story, Pantera, I have to tell you that one at some point. That's gonna be in part two. Ha, ha, ha. But one of the things that I started to do was I would charge an engineering fee, which was non-recoupable. So I would charge $10,000 in engineering fee for the album, which I would get. And they could not take that back. And then you would charge a producer's fee, which might be $50,000, let's say, and three points. And the $50,000 was recoupable against the three points. So if the record didn't make you $50,000 on the three points, you didn't get any more money. And so you had to recoup that before you got any more money. So one is a royalty split, and one is an engineering fee. So... I'm gonna ask everybody... It doesn't work like that. Lizard of Oz questions, everybody. And there's people texting. Oh, good, good. There's a lot of people texting. I'm just not keeping up because there's just... I got like 1,000 questions, but Alan, go. I don't wanna... I thought you were gonna read one. Well, I'm gonna read mine then. All right, you looking at me, you looking at me looking at you, and you have you said it all. I mean, the old stories of where the origins of these songs were, why they weren't included on the album, and they were released on the EP almost a year later or less than a year. Oh, yeah. I think they were both me size as far as I recall. Okay, were they recorded in the same sessions as the Blizzard of Oz sessions? That's what I'm getting. Well, I know that one of them we did down at Southampton when we were doing a live show, I went down there with a truck and we recorded a live show down there. And we had one track, and then Randy came into the truck and plugged into a pedal and did the solos on it. And that was one B-side, and I don't know which one of those it was. There are many historians that remember all this stuff, but much better. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they were out on tour and they came back into the studio to do a couple of B-sides because they had singles and they didn't wanna bust out all the tracks on the singles. So we needed some B-sides. And I remember that they came in, it was like a three day thing. And I remember Ozzy came in and they were all kind of beaten, they were road beaten. And Ozzy went up into the control room and I was setting up the drums and setting up mics.  So I guess he'd like weed himself. And he went out the door and I was like, all right, I'll see you later. I said, so I went up into the control room and sat down to like listen to the drum stuff. And I thought, oh, it's nice to warm the seat. And then the seat went red. Oh, man. And I realized that he'd actually wet the whole seat as well. So that was, I was like, oh, that's not a fucker. Yeah, yeah, he just left. So he just walked out left. Oh, man. I was like, well, it could have told me, you know. I guess so. It's not part of the fun for him, right? There's lots of stories like that. And actually, I think that was one of the times that it might have been during the second album that I forget what we were doing, but Ozzy and I went out in my little BMW to some pub out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the afternoon. And I don't know why. I can't remember the circumstances. We went out there in the middle of just Ozzy and I and went into this pub and there's nobody in there. Just Ozzy and I and the bartender.  And this is like the most, it's craziest thing I ever saw. And Oliver Reed walks in and I look around and I go, Oliver Reed and he goes, hey. And he looks at, he goes, Ozzy. And Ozzy goes, Ollie. So we were sat there and so we started drinking and we were there for two or three hours and getting more and more and more drunk. And I remember at one point, Oliver Reed, a very, very nice chap. He said to me, he said, you're a bit cross-eyed.  I said, so are you. He goes, yeah. So we were all laughing about that. And then he goes, I'll tell you something else. So he stood up, took his pants down and he had a tattoo of a vine going down his stomach all the way down to the end of his, watch him accord it.  So Ozzy goes, ah, so he stands up and pulls his pants and he's got the same thing. He's got this tattoo going down. I'm standing there in this pub in the middle of like, in the middle of English countryside with these two guys with their pants down.  You know, of course we're all like in stitches. We're all laughing like, the most amazing thing. And Oliver Reed was very nice and very nice guy. And he told us lots of stories about Sheperton and all the films that he'd done and all that kind of stuff. Of course he's gone now, but a lovely guy. And it was such a serendipitous moment. I was just amazed by the whole thing. Yeah, great, just great thing. So everybody knows a sequence here. Blizzard of Oz was recorded. The band went on tour in England or actually UK, we'll say, and then they went back into the studio to do Blizzard of Oz. I'm sorry about my man, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. So Blizzard with Lee, Bob and Randy, then they go do this UK tour with Lee, Bob and Randy. I think they recorded a few shows there too. And then they went back to do Diary of a Mad Man. Yes. Right, that's the sequence, right? The success of the first album, because it came out as an import, I believe in Canada at the time. And then later on it was released. So you're building off the success of the first album. What's the sort of the mood like going into the second? What's the camaraderie like? Yeah, well, we're all very good friends, and nobody had any particular gripes. Everybody was having a good time. And actually looking back, it might look that there was this big, it was a, all of a sudden they were huge, but actually they weren't. Yeah. It was just sort of, they were still sort of getting out on the road and doing some touring. And nobody knew if it was going to work or not. They had a lot of problems getting that record sold. Everybody turned it down. Eventually, of course, Jet picked it up, Don Arden picked it up, but there were kind of a few people in the music business, even now that we can show you the rejection slip from Blizzard of Oz.  You know what I mean? It wasn't like an appetite for destruction kind of deal. It was very much a sort of a, well, the first records out there, we did some touring, let's make another good record, let's see how it goes. It really wasn't, it wasn't a huge thing. A one hit wonder sort of like. Yeah, exactly. It wasn't a big, huge success. It seemed to be getting some good reviews from America, but as far as I was concerned, this was kind of somewhat dated material. At this point, I was listening more to Return to Forever and Weather Report, Yes, and more advanced and more progressive bands. And so to me, this was more seven days kind of rock music. And so to me, it wasn't anything particularly new. It was done very well and the songs were very singable and the songs were kind of due to the whole band really, that the songs were very accessible and they worked really well and everything just fell together. But I don't think anybody at that point, when we started to make the second record, nobody was really saying, oh, you know, we're the fucking, we're the biggest in the world and this is gonna be another appetite to just structure more or anything like that. So it was very much sort of getting there and trying to do what we did before, but better. And it worked better. There was more production in it. I got better over the year in between. We did Rough Diamond with Bad Company. Right in between that. And a lot of people, there's this myth that these albums were created right beside each other, sort of like one album and then three months later, the second album. There was actually a year, right? In between. Yeah, it was almost a year, probably about 10 months, I think, something like that. Yeah, it was like, it was the next year. It was 81 when we did Diaries. Diaries, yeah. The Diaries was better. We had, at that point, we had a Lexicon 224, which is a better reverberation unit. I had a little more time on the AMS, so I had a longer digital delay. We had a couple of extra boxes in there, so we had more toys to play with a little bit. Randy had progressed and evolved with his chip pan pedal.  And so there was a few things like that. And also, as you say, there was a bit of camaraderie and we all knew what to do, and we all got in there and just set it up and we started working.  But he says in it, like you said earlier, he thinks it was all done within three weeks. Is that what he meant? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's because he was fixing it over the phone. He was calling you as it turned up the bass and it was kind of mixed over the phone. It was so pressed for time before it got heading back out on tour. It was according to his book. Yeah. Is that Darri Allen? Was that Darri or was that the wizard? They were down by the pool and I would mix it. I would run a mix and put it on like a second and they would take it down by the pool and listen on a ghetto blaster. Bob Dasey's ghetto blaster. And then they would come back with a few notes and stuff like that. And then the second one, they weren't there at all. Oh, wow. So I was mixing on my own. And actually even on the second one, I think there's a couple of tracks on there that I couldn't get any better from the rough mix. And I just told Ozzy, I said, look, the rough mix is better than I can do now. So that's just that. Rudy Sarzo told us that when now they're touring America and you're rough mixing it, I guess wherever you're rough mixing it. And as you are sending them to America, the tapes or wherever they were touring, Ozzy didn't like that sort of 80s bigger sound at first. Didn't Randy Rudy say that, Alan? He goes, Ozzy was shocked that, because it was a new sound, right? There was this new sort of more brighter, bigger, more reverberant. Yeah, well it was more produce sound. Had more depth. Had more depth. We did stuff like Randy would do a clean guitar in mono, put a big long mono, six or seven second reverb behind it. And then when he would do another one, so we would get this tunneling effect. So a lot of this stuff was, it wasn't as cut and dried obviously as Blizzard. And so- There's a difference in production. There's a difference there. There's a difference. One is like, I love both, don't get me wrong. But one's more bigger, brighter, better, you know, bigger production. You can see there's more value there, right? There's a bigger, and the other one's more raw and in your face and tight, you know, yeah.  So I guess we messed around with a second one more. We all got a little better at it, and what he was a little better. And we wanted a progression. Everybody wanted it to move. We just didn't wanna make another blizzard of ours. We wanted to make something that was more accomplished and more sophisticated if you like. And that's really what we were looking for for the second one, I think.  But that's part of Randy's charm, right? That's a neoclassical thing, right? To borrow little classical, that is the little intro, that the intro is actually borrowed classical piece, an old piece, I guess. And then the orchestra and the choirs and then the build up. Just the whole finale to that song. Tell us about the making of that song. Yeah, well, like I say, we're still only working on 24 tracks, so. Wow, 24 tracks. Well, 23 tracks, so. We ended up, and they had warned me that we were gonna put strings and choir on some of these. So I had four tracks to work with, basically. So we went to Lansdown, which is where Uriah Heap used to do all their recording. Until they started working in the roundhouse. But Lansdown, we went to Lansdown to do the chorus, and we had an eight piece choir, I think. You know, the ah, ah, ah, ah, and all this. And the whole deal with that is it's session, it's musician union session. So what we would do is we would do a run through, and then we would do another run through, but we would record the second run through, but not tell them. And then we'd keep that, and then we'd record another run through, or actually do a take, but now we would have a double track. But we wouldn't have to pay for the double track, because they didn't know about it, so. Right, right, right. The old sneaky double track. The old sneaky double track, yes. That's what you had to do in those days, because it would cost you, you know, it would cost you twice as much, actually, if you do a double track, so they would charge you. So we went and did that at Lansdown, and then the, all the strings was actually, so funny.  And we're in there, and it was Lou from Electric Light Orchestra, who was doing the arrangement. And so we're all there at 10 o'clock in the morning, and we're downstairs in where the Beatles did the Y album. It's all Beatles.  And we've got 26 piece strings out there. It's a London Symphony Orchestra string section. So 26 piece strings sitting out there. All these guys with the, you know, dressed up, and I guess they're about 10, 15, and we're all standing around, and we're looking at our watch, and Louie Clark is not there. And this is a big problem, because you only got three hours. And so anyway, Louie walks in at about 10, 20 in the morning with two pints of beer, and he goes, where's the copyist? So we go over there. He goes, right, come with me. So he gives the copyist a pint. He takes a pint, and he sits down at this corner table, and he starts just writing the stuff out, writing out the music. Straight out of his head. It's like Mozart. It's like Amadeus. It's like Dick. He's just, yeah, he just starts writing it out, and he finishes a page, and he throws it to the copy guy, and he keeps writing, and the copy guy grabs it, and he starts copying them out, all by hand. We didn't have, you know, because we didn't have Xerox or anything. So, God damn it, within about 10, 12 minutes, he had the whole thing, he had the whole thing set up. So, you know, 13 copies, and the master copy that Louie had himself. So he said, OK, right, you ready guys? OK, so he goes out there. He stands on the podium, taps his, you know, taps his baton. He goes, OK, run through. He says, OK, run it. And he's drinking his beer, and he goes, OK, run it. So, there they go, and then this thing starts happening. And I'm just standing there. I'm not doing any of the engineering. I leave it to those guys. I'm like, I can't work that fast.  These guys, they do it every day. So they just like, oh, boom, boom, boom, boom. They got 87s. They got, you know, whatever. They got 47s here. They got 87s here. They got everything right correctly. They got the guys sitting correctly, you know, and outcomes to stereo mix of these strings. And once again, we do the whole, OK, run through. OK, one more run through and we record it. And then of course, and then we go to the other two tracks and we record it again so we get another double track. And then, of course, I have to go back to Rich Farm and bounce those together in order to. Yeah, so people don't know what bouncing is. Bouncing is taking multiple tracks and putting it onto one track. Yeah, and in those days, the fidelity wasn't that great because you're coming off the record head because you have to be in sync. So basically you're coming off the record head, which doesn't sound as good as a replay head. And you can only really do it once and you have to be very careful about the amount of generations that you go down. People don't know about this anymore, but you can't really bounce stuff more than twice on a multi-track. Otherwise, it starts sounding pretty bad. So you've got to get things right and then you're afforded one bounce, really. And then... Incredible, you could put that much music and sound so good. Yeah. To this day, you put that album on or even that song and you're like, oh man, but that was maybe the magic back then, right? I just want to know if... Yeah, go ahead. I just want to know if Ozzy soiled the George Martin's chair before leaving Abbey Road. Well, yeah, old George, yeah. There's a master of that guy. I did actually meet George one time over in LA, but what a fantastic guy that guy is. And he just did some unbelievable stuff, you know. And no, I don't think Ozzy... Ozzy soiled anything on that event. But it was really a marvelous thing. And Louis, I mean, the fact that he was 20 minutes late and just pulled this out. And at one o'clock we walked out of there. We had the whole thing. It was like, we're like, what the fuck? It happened so quickly that we were all looking at each other like, whoa. And we didn't even know how good it sounded at that point. We were just like, oh, we got it.  And we were like, oh. And the thing about that, one of the things that makes it work better is that it's done very quickly. So you take the first... Yeah, I agree. You say, okay, I see what's going on. It needs to sound like this, boom. And you do it like that. And you don't second guess it. Just like the show, like what we're doing right now. We're just doing it. Yeah, exactly. You know, you do it on the spur of the moment and you do what you think is right. And it's stuck down. And I always thought if you listen to like, if you listen to Led Zeppelin 2, the stuff like that where Jimmy, he fucks up the guitar solo a bit, but he leaves it. You know, everybody left it. In those days, everybody just left it. He was like, yeah, you're not near enough. Move on. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It has this sort of verity that you don't get so much anymore because everybody wants to make everything perfect. But it had that kind of just live verity, you know, truthfulness to it. And, you know, I remember there was a, there's an old story about Clint Eastwood with his, when he used to act and you know, the director would say, Clint, let's do another one. And he would look at the director and go, was I in focus? And the director go, yeah, yeah, you're in focus. He looked at the DP and DP.  You know, he didn't do more than one or two tapes. That's organic. That's organic. Well, yeah, that's a live performance in a way, right? In a sense. And it's truthful.   You know, Lee Curse, like the brilliant Lee Curse, like great drummer, a vocalist too, a singer. Yeah. How much, how much did he, he told us, you know, he did a lot of guide tracks for Ozzy on the, on the Diary of a Mad Man. Cause he, he participated more in the writing process, I guess on that album that he did on the first, right? Did he hit, did he, did he system on the guide tracks? I don't recall him doing that much of that stuff. I think he did quite some, quite good work with the backing vocal stuff.  But to be honest with you, pretty much all the melodies are Ozzy's melodies. Yeah. And, you know, Ozzy's very sing song. He has that very sing song kind of mentality. And that's really kind of what kind of made those records of, well, one of the things that made them very accessible is the fact that his, his, his melodies are very accessible. I mean, it's kind of poppy really in a way. Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na. I mean, that's, you know, these are like top melodies over a metal band. And a lot of people don't know this, but publishing, right? It's the lyrics and the melodies. No one cares about the drums or you get the lyrics. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't matter yet. Who writes the song? Who's considered the songwriters? The guy writes the melodies and the lyrics, right? So what it is really, it is Ozzy who wrote that album, the two albums that is that we're talking about, and Bob Daisley who wrote the lyrics. So not to say that Randy, you played a massive role. I'm just saying what they consider, you know, publishing or songwriting, right? Yeah. And you know that when you say that it's, this is just the legality of it. And exactly. It's actually not really true. Like, I know that. Because a guitar solo on itself by itself is great, but it's not a song, right? You write the melody. Yeah, I mean, the thing is, it's very much a symbiosis. And, you know, Ozzy would never have written those melodies if he hadn't of had Randy writing you and behind it. Yeah. And, you know, there's a whole thing about staying in the police and excuse me, what's his name, the guitar? I'm tiring you out here. We're tired. Take a break. No, no, no, no. Do it. And any summer.  And what's his name, the guitar player came up with that whole band. Yeah. And basically didn't, doesn't get any of the royalties. Yeah. And that's really the whole song. It's the same as Led Zeppelin stealing spirits. Yeah. It's the same as Led Zeppelin. Yeah. You know, so it's really an unfair thing. Yeah. That it ended up like that, but that was like, that's way back in the Motown days. All that stuff. So that's a whole other conversation about why it's like that. But I don't know. You know, if that's true, then. It's about the melody in the lyrics.  You know what I'm saying? So, yeah. That was never really a fair thing. I don't think, I mean, I think that if you listen to Purple Hayes, half of the song is the riff, you know, but that would not be included in any of the royalties. You know, so, and anyway, Jimmy stole that from somebody else actually. So, you know, but you know what I'm saying. And so did Led Zeppelin with everything, everything they were doing.  And he goes, just keep walking. You know, it's a famous thing. Because he understood the law. And he said, listen, you know, we're not going to get now for this. So they're almost going to get now for it now. Well, I hate to say, but the intro to Dyer of a Madman, right? I don't want to get there. I don't want to go there, but it is, it's, it's, it's no, it's a, it's a space. Lee Brower, Lee Brower. Yeah. But that's not, that's not our thing. That's not our domain.  If you listen to the final countdown, Europe. You know, it's exactly the same as, as, as. You know, one of Randy's things. You know, it's like, dude, you just took the whole thing and made it into a new song. And, you know, because you're writing new lyrics and putting a different melody, then now it's a new song. But to me, that's not that fair. I mean, you should give people, you know, the kudos for writing a great riff.  I mean, the riff is the whole album. You know, it's like, dude, you just took the whole thing and made it into a new song. The riff is the whole out. The riff is the whole song. Yeah. You know. Every guitar shop. But, but he, but, you know, you know, I guess he doesn't get any money for it. I don't know who knows. He probably does get money for it. Yeah, he probably does it.  No, no, no. Just like he said, two phenomenal and historic albums that are really ground breakers.  You know, you got a great band. They're smart. They're writing good stuff. You know, that's what you need.  It didn't matter what this band played. It fucking, it always worked. It always sounded great because he's with great. It was just a great symbiosis. Yeah, you know, when you get a great point. Yeah, that's a great way to start the part two somewhere down the road, right? We'll take dissect all these bands and all the other great albums. Oh, yeah, we got we got tons. We may have to do like a six parter mini series here. We'll do it by country. So, so where were you? So these two great albums are released. Now, Bob and Lee are out because of their, you know, I guess there was a little bit of complications there. We won't get it to all that. Everybody knows the stories. Tommy comes in, Rudy comes in. They're on tour in the U.S. and the tragic, I mean, tragic accident of Randy Rhodes. Where were you when you found heard the news? If you want to talk about it, if you don't want to talk about it, that that's cool too. No, actually, I thought about this and. Yeah, I was very obviously very shocked and disappointed and saddened. I was sitting at the back in which you about Randy and I said, No, what happened? And he goes, Oh, he got killed.  I'm like, what happened? You know, so he explained what happened. And I said to him, I remember saying to what's Ozzy going to do now?  And in fact, we actually did end up being awful for Ozzy, because after that, it kind of just started to slow down. And well, we had pretty good time with Jake. And I think Jake kind of worked as hard as he could. And that's probably what you're going to ask me next is. We're off to Brad Gillis next. But anyways, I just to me, you know, I was probably like, I think 15 years old at the time, I was following Ozzy since and it was to it was like the first real rock and roll hero of mine that tragically passed, right? Yeah. I think I was even in Florida that year, like when that happened, like the month later or two. And it was just it was just it was just devastating. Yeah. And just this day, it's devastating because it was so tragic. Yeah, it was a huge shock. And I remember I couldn't understand because I forget where I was, right? I forget where I was. I think I was maybe a rich farm or something, but I spoke to him on the phone and he was saying, oh, we're just winding up the tour. And he actually said to me, he said, I think I'm going to get the train home from Florida. I think the tour was going to end in Florida and he said, I think I'm going to get the train home to LA. He said, I don't like flying. He hated flying. Yeah. And years later, I found out basically talking to Lee that it was what's his name, the keyboard player, Don who persuaded him to go on the plane. Don I found out it's been in therapy for many years because of that. And I feel very sorry for him because and I at the time I could not understand why Randy got on that plane because he hated planes. It was very, very afraid of planes. And I just couldn't understand it. And I guess Don Airy persuaded him to get on the plane and I think I think Rudy saw it on his book said there was a struggle. Like Don Airy saw it was a Don Airy who saw a struggle in the cockpit of the plane. Like maybe it was veering towards the bus and Randy pulled it to veer towards the house. Anyways, that's just, you know, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I can't confirm that. I'm just sort of trying to go for memory. I went to see Ozzy some time after that. We were working on the trivia record and I went up to Don's compound up in the hills there in the LA. And I was having a few drinks with Ozzy and he was saying that he saw Randy actually in the wreckage in the garage trying to get out and these kind of things and you know, I take all that stuff with a pinch of salt. I think it's very easy for witnesses to imagine stuff or think of stuff and I have no idea. I mean, yeah, you know, maybe that's true. Maybe it isn't true. I don't know.  But, you know, hey, I could never understand. I never understood why I got on that. I can understand why Don was very upset because he felt very guilty about persuading him to get on there and, you know, I don't even know if that's true either because I heard that from Lee, but, you know, so who knows exactly what happened. I don't know. I think the guy was doing a lot of blow that the bus driver was flying the plane and if you've been doing blow and driving bus all night, you know, to get in a plane at eight o'clock in the morning or whenever it was, that's just, you know, you're not going to get me on that plane, sure. Yeah. But, you know what, people make errors in judgment all the time. Yeah. So, Randy passes, another record is owing and that would be Speak of the Devil or, I guess, in England Speak to the Devil. Talk of the Devil. Well, we did Bark of the Moon before that. No. And Was it Bark of the Moon? No, no, no. Because Brad Gillis was in Speak of the Devil. Yeah, yeah, we did Bark of the Moon. No, no. Speak of the Devil, Bark of the Moon and then tribute. I think you're, you're, you're Oh, maybe you're right. I don't remember. We need somebody here to break the tie here. Because Brad Gillis replaced Sir Bernie Tome and then Brad Gillis and then J.K. Lee. Right? Am I right? Okay, I have to investigate that, but Alan, Alan, bring this one here. Let me run for one second. I've got to take a peek real quick. Go ahead, Alan. Just use the council. Guys, it was was it not Blizzard of Oz? Yes. Blizzard of Oz. 82 was Speak of the Devil and this should be 83. 83, absolutely. That's it. That's it. Yeah, first it was, first it was Bernie. Then it was Brad Gillis and then it was J.K. Lee. Yeah. And like Rudy said in his book, Rudy he was getting excited because he was leaving Ozzy to do Quiet Riot and Brad Gillis was like, Hey, I want to hear my new band too and they were listening to the Night Ranger, right? Yeah, yeah. And then Ozzy was having a breakdown as everything was going on. But we'll tell Max that there, Alan. Well, Max. Okay, so I'm trying to Max, this is the timeline. Me and Alan have established it. We've looked at the numbers. We've looked at the dates. Blizzard, Diary, Speak of the Devil because there it is in 82. Yeah, Tommy and Rudy are still in the band. And Brad Gillis is the guitarist for the album. And then 83 was Bark at the Moon. Okay, I stand corrected. It's okay. You know what? You've done so much work. It's such a long time ago. It's all good. I get mixed up too. Sometimes my kids don't remember the names. Yeah, the thing about Speak of the Devil I got called up and they they had a contractual obligation to jet records for two more albums. And this was basically Ozy's way just getting out of the whole thing, getting it done. And so we did it downtown in New York. The Ritz. Was it the Ritz, Alan? Yeah, I think it was the Ritz.  Forget which truck it was, but it was probably I can't remember but we mixed it in the power station and no, no, I'm sorry. And it was done very quickly. So I said to them, I said, look we're only doing one night so let's during rehearsals, let's run the whole set and I'll record that as well. Yeah. So if there's any screw ups we got at least we got a bit of an option. So we did that we took the whole afternoon set and then they did the show and the show was pretty good but we did take out of the out of the whole thing we took five tracks I think from the afternoon and then I was faced with the fact that there wasn't any audience there we had to which was the thing back then you got to build it up a bit. Yeah, so I had to add audience and I had to kind of adopt to the ambience of the hall to make sure that it matched up with the other stuff but and then it was a very kind of low budget thing so we went into record farm and I mixed I was, he came in and re-did the vocals and he said and he was listening to Rudy's bass and Rudy doesn't like me for this reason as he said Rudy's bass is fucked and I said he should come in and redo it I said don't worry I'll just turn it down so it was sort of a metallic mix so I the pre-injustice for all is that it? I could hear the bass there though no it's not a justice for all there's no way I hear the bass actually because there isn't a second guitar you do hear the bass right because that's why you hear the bass it's not a justice for all but it was a Rudy and played particularly well I'm not sure why I'm sure he plays better now but at that point it wasn't particularly good but I said don't worry about that I had a vocal right and there was a couple of things with Randy that we had to fix I mean with Brad about Brad no actually Brad did a great job played brilliantly throughout the whole thing great guitars great player and very very self-effacing very modest player did a marvelous job and so we mixed we'd spend about three or four hours tidying up the vocals and then I would mix that side the whole side of the first side and then at about 11 o'clock at night I'd be done and I'd mix the whole thing on orators remember those little four inch speakers mix the whole thing in there because monitoring in that place was horrible so I just mixed it on these tiny little speakers and then we gave that side to the cutting engineer the next morning and he started cutting the first side as I was mixing the second side of the vocals the next day so we did four days in just to stick at the black Sabbath yeah just to stick at the black Sabbath I'm surprised he didn't do Heaven and Hell just to stick it to Donna and to stick it to Donna so I could say that so the whole thing was done in four days I did the second side and even that they were cutting it so it was cut and mastered on the fifth day they did the last side of the film and that was it we walked off and we were done so for me it was a six day job you know the press on this was the seven day miracle that was the press the seven day miracle in seven days they created this album album I love it to this day I got the CD here but I got the album somewhere and you know what I think what makes it so cool is because it was live it maybe wasn't necessarily live as we know it traditionally but because it was recorded on the spot there was a live vibe does that make sense once again it has the truthfulness there's no second or third takes really it's what they did and that's it like an early Led Zeppelin album or something where they just take what they get roll the tape Jimmy roll the tape we got to fix this there wasn't any of that it was like so that was pretty fast we'll move on to unless Alan you have a speak of the devil question we're moving along here to bark at the moon now Ozzie gets a new guitarist Jake E. Lee and we just talked to George Lynch and apparently he auditioned too apparently he did I didn't know that at the time apparently and I'm sure others Bob Daisley mentioned to us was Gary Moore that suggested Jake E. Lee for the band oh I didn't know that either I knew Gary quite well too actually Ozzie's first choice was Gary Moore before Randy was he not well yeah Don Arden wanted Gary Moore and teamed them up but neither one of them wanted that so it was more of a Don Arden thing yeah according to Ozzie's books yeah I don't know I did hear that Gary Moore was talked about and that's all I really heard I don't know what the ins and outs of it you know what I found the most interesting I don't think he would have been a good choice anyway because Gary is my different sound and he's his own guy too I don't think Gary wanted to be in particularly in a band where somebody else was the big guy yeah you know what I found interesting when we talked to Carmen at peace Carmen at peace Carmen at peace not a big friend of mine well anyways I remember speaking to him and he was telling us about his his contributions he was called in and probably wasn't at your stage it was at the mixing stage of Bark at the Moon where Tommy sound there was something about Tommy Aldridge's drumming that didn't fit the groove and they brought in Carmine to tighten things up or to make it sound a certain way yeah I don't know what happened there Carmine is blowing his own trumpet a little bit there I can't say nothing the end of Bark at the Moon it kind of dissolved a bit there was a lot of we ran into some financial problems we ran out of studio time at Rich Farm so I couldn't mix it there so Bob Daisy and I flew to New York on the Concorde to mix so it was very rushed at the power station and it wasn't it wasn't really how I wanted it and it was very rushed and we I bought those and then I had to go and master it and I had to master it with Howie Weinberger who I I'd never really worked with before and I would normally master with Bob Ludwig and I didn't like the mastering I didn't like the mixes and I took it back to London and I had a meeting with Ozzy and there was a few other people there where meatloaf was there and we were hanging in North London somewhere at the North London Holiday Inn the big Holiday Inn in North London and Ozzy didn't like any of it so they fired me right then and I remember I had to give Jacob Lyft home so I dropped him off somewhere in South London and he was saying well maybe we can get Martin Burch to mix it and all this kind of stuff and I said I had no fucking clue so the whole thing kind of dissolved at the end and then they gave it to I guess Tony Bon Jovi in his house station and that guy has to me has no ears so I don't know what happened to that and Jake will tell you as I will tell you that the original mix has had much more guitar much less of the keyboard stuff you know what he did actually we interviewed Jake Lee and he said there was a fear that since there was an unknown in the air that they weren't sure because Randy's gone now and Jake's a new guy so they mixed down the guitars a lot that was that was probably Tony Bon Jovi's idea or maybe Carmine's idea I don't know the tracks are pretty good there wasn't anything wrong with Tommy's drumming I don't know where Carmine gets all that I think Carmine basically suffers from the lack of being a big guy being a big guy but keep in mind Carmine was brought in just to clarify Carmine was brought in he wasn't to consult and to help he didn't offer his services they brought him in I think he was talking to Ozzy down at the rainbow or something I don't know what happened I found all this out a lot later on but I didn't particularly like the mixes but everything was put together pretty good so it all worked anyway it was a decent record anyway I don't have the original mixes that I did I wish I did they always end up getting redone anyway as we saw with the first two records you know what I was pleasantly surprised that Ozzy wrote everything by himself on one finger on the piano when the um came out I remember Ozzy wrote this whole thing by himself lyrics and music and one finger on the piano I go wow man he's got an ear yeah pretty good it was a bit of a debacle towards the end of it like I say we didn't have enough Sharon and Ozzy bought a Rolls Royce and I think that sucked up a lot of the budget and so we didn't have enough time at Ridge Farm to finish it off or mix it so we had like I say we had to fly to New York and do it and then and that was you know doing it flying to New York going in the studio next day we had like five days of something to mix it it just wasn't very conducive and it didn't turn out all that good and I didn't really like the mixes and I especially didn't like the mastering and that's no slight on Howie and no slight on any of these guys everybody's trying to do the best thing but that didn't work out for me at all so you know whatever that's what happened so I mean it's a pretty big album regardless it struck a there was something done right somebody I certainly think that Jake's a major force Jake's a great writer and he writes and he's a great great player and he's good enough to hook up with him again like a couple of years ago or last year whatever it was with his Red Dragon album I mixed his mix the last Red Dragon album and that's the first time I've seen him since I dropped him off and we were talking about Martin Burch like 28 years ago whenever it was so you know and the first thing he said to me is he said are those driving shoes and I'm like what anyway so he's really great to hang out with him and he's very Jake hasn't changed over the years he's a very modest guy and he does what he wants to do and he's very he very kind of doesn't like the music business because of that and because of the way they treated him he wrote lots of that stuff and that's why it's good and in a way he is as much of a force as Randy was and unfortunately by this time the die had been cast with the whole management situation if you like and that all became kind of non-musical and just all about the money and how best to fuck people over basically I get into trouble I get into trouble with this all the time the last time I was on what's his name show on Sirius Eddie Eddie's yeah and we were talking about the same thing and I was saying how badly I thought they treated you know the guys in Blizzard and I got a seasoned disaster yet the next day from Ozzie's lawyers saying you better shut the fuck up or we're going to sue the shit out of you basically and this is what happens every time I talk about this stuff but I don't give a fuck so you can't get blood out of a stone well you know what you received a metal Hall of Fame award along with Lee and Bob for your contributions to Blizzard of Oz and Diary of a Mad Man you know and these albums will go and Ozzie included and all the people who participated these albums have gone down in history not only in metal but in hard rock just in music they have gone down in history is probably two of the greatest albums ever made right yeah that's huge and Bark at the Moon you know what I would say it's a close you know it's right up there too you know it there it's a great album yeah that's off to everybody it's been a sort of a good third and then you know and then after that it seemed to tail off and and I don't know if that's I think that probably the main cause of that is the management sort of squashing the music and just turning into a commodity and you know it was such a great band that first for the first two records that band was so good you just couldn't do any wrong they could play any fucking song and it would sound really good so you know that when you when you've got that but they never seem to last that long you know very few bands that go more than a few years with having that kind of line of like cream you know Hendrix or you know maybe the stones is you know probably the only one that keeps going you know yeah and you know you got like you know you see this happen all the time bands don't last that long you know because of the personalities and what kind of makes them good is also what destroys them in the end so you know you see this happening over and over and over again like I saw it with bad company and you know they were breaking up at the time we were making that background rough diamond and you know that was just a debacle and I watched Simon Kirk getting punched by Paul Rogers it was just some awful awful stuff you know and it's a real real shame when you see that kind of stuff you know but I gotta say the first few records the mood of those records is great because everybody was in a great mood and everybody was 100% into it and that's what you need to make these kind of records and it comes through somehow it comes through the music even if it's an ambivalent song it still comes through the feel the power yeah like you said they were struggling musicians at that time too you know so they had nothing to improve they weren't resting on their laurels laurels I should say they really had to come up with the goods because they were still struggling yeah and as far as I know Ozzie Ozzie had 30 grand that he got from Black Sabbath when they fired him and that was the money he used to make Blizzard of Oz and that was that's the story that I don't know if that's true it could be just BS but as that was the story I heard that he had this severance pay and he had just enough money to go and make a record and find the people and all that kind of stuff that's probably BS but it's a kind of cool story the other thing that happened you probably heard this story before but I was waiting for them to show up and we had the big side doors open I was waiting for the truck to show up with the equipment and this guy showed up in a car and I didn't recognize him and I thought he was one of the roadies and I said oh you know we're sitting in the control room we'll wait for the gear to get here and he was like okay and I played him some BS stuff which he hated and fortunately I didn't say anything but that was Ozzie but I didn't recognize him I thought he was one of the road crew and then when everybody showed up and they were like what's up Ozzie I was like oh thank fuck I kept my gob shut you know what I mean you know what there's a reason why people love Ozzie over these years it's probably his melody his you know his sense his humor you know he's an icon right and yeah he's a very very funny guy he would say many many funny things and you know I remember him saying one time he said oh you know the doctor told me I can only have one drink a day I'm up to April 2027 already but you know shit like that he would just come out with these things just really really funny and guys are really really funny and very astute and then sometimes they'd just be like in a land of his own and you know I'm just gonna leave you on this I'm really happy that when you did when I did meet you in person and you did receive your award and so did Lee he was in person when was the last time you saw Lee Kerslake actually I had seen him about three years before because Peter Peter was the name from LA was making that big movie about Randy and all this stuff Peter Margolis who was a producer in LA and he invited me over to Ridge Farm and had Lee down there at the same time so we could reminisce and talk about this stuff and they shot a bunch of footage there and then Sharon came down and just squashed the whole thing and I think the guys got like 200 hours of film but it was not allowed to cut it together that's another lawsuit there I don't even want to get into that there's a lot of stories that is and I guess to end off the tribute to Randy as you know your final I guess production yeah the ghost of Randy Rhodes you know come back that was kind of weird there were occasions after Randy died that I was doing Y and T for instance I was doing Black Tiger that'll be in part two of this at Ridge Farm and we had we were talking about Randy to the singer and at night we were doing some solos we were talking about Randy and the tones and stuff and there was this big boulder lightning and it hit the power lines outside and just everything went out everything went black so we kind of looked at it we were stumbling around in the dark turning on a little lighting matches and I went and we turned everything back on we got the power back on and there was no sound coming out of the speakers so I went to the power ramp and they were just the fuses the metal wire inside the fuses had just vaporized against the fuses so they would just look like pieces of metal the fuses the whole thing of vaporized so I was talking to Minicaddy Dave and I we were looking at each other we were just talking about Randy we were kind of a little bit freaked out by that but of course we were doing a tribute they came down and they called me up and said can you do tribute and I was like well what have you done for me lately but I was in New York at the time and they said okay we got this one they sent me two cassettes purporting to be two different shows and I listened to these two cassettes and one of them worked really well one of them sounded really good and the other one sounded like kind of crappy and they said which show should we use you know so I said well obviously you want to use this one they said wait a minute something weird is going on here so I listened to them again and I realized that Randy made the same mistake in both of these tapes so actually both tapes of the same show but one of them Randy was turned down he was actually in balance with everything it didn't sound that good but the other one Randy was really loud and he was like very excited of course live and he would play really on top of the beat so if you try and put him back in the mix against the drummer it's a mess because he's out of time he's really in front of the beat but if you turn him up it sounds really fucking good because he's driving the whole thing along and you don't give a shit about the drums anymore so this was a great show it's a King Biscondale show from at the Midwest somewhere there was also the Montreal that's what I wanted to ask you in Rudy's book it says it's from a Montreal show here at the Theatres Saint Denis which is a great venue and they played in Toronto the night before and they were fantastic and this show they just didn't click and he was surprised to say that that's what he thought in his book was released as tribute years later I think the guitar solo was let's clarify this well as far as I know and this was only from one show I know because it's a one big 12 inch reel running at 15 IPS the whole show was on one reel and that means that that would be just over an hour of running time and there's no edits on the reel so I know it's one show I think it was Cleveland so I don't know where the Montreal thing comes from but I think that's a misnomer I don't think that's true as far as I know and I remember looking at the box and it was a King Biscondale thing and I believe it was Cleveland but I could be totally wrong again they didn't have that much recorded live material with Randy they came really down to this one show like you're saying they gave me, Sharon sent me these two sets and I said look they gave me a great clue because it made me realize that I had to keep Randy way up in the mix which of course is probably obvious but obviously you want to try and make it sonically sound good so you want to put him in the right place but mixing is a devious thing and sometimes it works better if he's too loud musically it works better just because the balance is right doesn't mean the music is right so that was a good clue for me and I said okay so we're going to do this and there is one place where he starts on the what is that flying high again he starts the solo off on the wrong fret and he's actually one fret down and then he realizes and moves to the right place but fortunately he does enough repeats that I could take that piece and move it up to the front and overlay it on the piece where it was out so I fixed that one and at the time I'm sorry dude but I got to fix this he understands I hope you understand listen to this from Wikipedia Max the majority of tribute and again it's Wikipedia and it's true the majority of tribute from I Don't Know through Paranoid was recorded in Cleveland, Ohio on May 11, 1981 with the exception of an extended guitar solo midway through the song Suicide Solution which was recorded at Teatro Saint Denis in Montreal on July 28 and inserted into the song the entire album had been recorded somewhere in Canada that's what I was this particular Montreal show had been recorded and released in 1981 from a radio program called King Biscuit Flower Hour and then they say goodbye to romance No Bone Movies were recorded in South Hampton in the UK with Leakers Lake and Bob Daisley oh well yeah I recorded those yeah I did that in the truck out the back yeah No Bone Movies and Randy did the solo in the truck well I got one reel of tape there you go so I maybe because they thought there was two everything came from Cleveland everything came from one place as far as I could tell there's no cuts in there and it wasn't second generation tape it was running at 15 IPS so if they had dumped it down a generation it would be a little bit dull but the other thing that happened was this is Wikipedia it's not factual Max was there Max had it in his hands that's all we needed to know I mean that might have come from Rudy or I don't know where that comes from but as far as I'm concerned it was one show the tape they went into record and when the tape ran out that's when it went out of record and there's no edits in there there's no overdubs or anything and anyway we ended up with three sides because it was an hour and then we had nothing from the last side and the only thing that I had from Ridge Farm was Randy doing D and what I've done is we just got some PZM microphones those PZM microphones which are boundary layer microphones they look like a flat plate and we just got some of those so we tried some of those I had a 451 on the acoustic and I threw one of those down on the floor in front of him and I ran a quarter inch tape at 15 IPS for a few hours while he was rehearsing it just so that he could go back and listen and mess around with it and basically that's what we put together for the last side was those outtakes and they were just on a two track there was no multi track for that and that's what we had we didn't have anything else they come back to me time and time again dude did you record anything else I said nope that's what we did we only had this amount of time so we did exactly what we knew we had to do and that was it there you go wow I think the Randy Rhodes sorry the Max Norman Ozzie era pretty much yeah people are sending questions I just well we can do some questions if people want questions now fire them off it's a lot of conversation between people if you take a look here let me just go through some questions here we can do questions if you have any questions for Max Norman it's your chance he is here until he loses his voice because he's been talking for like an hour and 40 minutes I gotta get back I have to do some work too of course what are you doing what are you doing I'm actually doing leader Ford's new record nice so it's a concept album because we spoke to leader Ford me and Neil Turbin we spoke to leader Ford she told us it was a concept album it's already public this interview I asked her actually because occasionally I do some interviews and stuff like that and I said is it okay and she said that's fine just don't tell him the title okay the title is it's actually really good and it sounds really great and it's a very kind of modern thing and it's a whole concept thing and I think everybody's really going to enjoy it it's actually really good and all kudos to her for this record for a few years now I think and it's finally coming up and we're taking quite a long time I'm about four mixes I'm just setting up the fourth mix right now okay so when do you think this album is going to be released Lisa I would say well I would have thought that they're pretty laid back about it so these days with the pandemic and everything and everybody working at home I send them a mix a week later I get a couple of notes about it and then I fix it and then I send it so it's like a week here and a week there and a week here I think she's going out on tour in June it is a concept album it is a concept album right yes it is a loose concept or like operation mine crime kind of concept but yeah it's a pretty it's a pretty enclosed concept how would you define the musical style of this album it's pretty modern but they do quite a lot of guitar harmony stuff and it's a pretty modern sound it's not like it's not like an old school thing I'd rather go back to old school stuff now I just got something from Oni Logan for instance that was really old school and they wanted it like Led Zeppelin and I said well perhaps you should play like Led Zeppelin and then you know and I'm not particularly into that old school thing I like to move forward it has to sound like Blizzard or it has to sound like this things have their own intrinsic qualities and the idea is to strengthen those qualities and not try to make it sound like this or sound like this it should sound like it is so I don't look to try and copy sounds like this and this is a very new kind of sound for me the drum sounds are very new so it's really quite an interesting album I don't want to say too much about it she told us publicly Monsters we just recorded a song called Monsters for the new album Monsters is about Charles Manson types in the world who brainwash and take advantage of people this is what she told us publicly this is like an interview right I'm not revealing anything and that's kind of what she told us I think that's the next one so I'm teasing everybody that's what I'm doing I'm teasing everybody suspense for the next lead a Ford album tell Lida we're going to interview her it's really enjoyable actually it's very enjoyable I'm always very pleased and when I hear older artists like Lida and I shouldn't really don't say that I'm a more mature artist yes experienced artist it's coming up with stuff classic so I don't want to hear her doing Gotta Let Go again I want to hear her doing new stuff and this is really pretty new and it's actually really good we're looking for Max sonically it's pretty amazing your favorite beer Max fast questions before we end off your favorite beer my favorite beer Stella Artois I'm trying to find a question that's not going to require a long story they're asking about mega death and loudness but we're going to say that for next time so yes lots of stories about those guys too of course there's a lot oh my god we got a lot here you know what I'm going to have to do one every week next artist loudness you know what we're going to anyways we're going to have you back we're going to go through your your your history discography unless Alan do you have anything left no it's just a pure pleasure like we were saying I don't know if Jimmy pressed the record or not he had one but we're saying you know you know like the soundtrack of our outer less it's always included Max Norman and everything we were listening to and I can't wait to do part two and discuss a lot of those albums that I've got sitting right here just where Willie the talk about well yeah you know I'm very I was always very I'm always very pleased if I go out if I go to a show some people come up to me recognize me so you know and they they say that you know I was instrumental in their kind of childhood you know doing this kind of stuff and it's always very humbling for me because there's just trying to do the right thing at the right time and and you know you don't know at the time that these things are going to be what they are and you know so all I was hoping at the right time was that I could get a vibra slap on every album and you know and then the little you know the little bits and pieces that I put in if one person comes up to me and goes oh dude that thing on Black Tiger where you do this you know that's enough for me you know that at least somebody heard it somebody out there finally heard it you know that I tucked in there a little Easter egg you know whatever but you know to me it's it's very humbling that you know I'm very lucky that I was there at the right time I got to work with lots and lots of great people and you know there's lots and lots of stories so I always call me back and we'll go through some more of you know that's fantastic my favorite part about this interview is the way he does Ozzy his impersonation of Ozzy your impersonation of Ozzy is probably my favorite part of this whole oh he's like shapes twist that's what he is to say oh he's like fucking shapes twist yeah very funny yeah funny guy you know very very funny guy alright Max it's such a pleasure you know and hopefully we'll see you at the metal hall of fame next year we'll see you in person and it'll be great yeah that's right yeah well hopefully everything will get back to normal pretty soon now we got the uh like I say I got my second vaccination in a couple of days so good luck with that yeah well yeah sorry we're shipping you the AstraZeneca one I think and the Johnson and Johnson the leftovers go to Canada leftovers that's what we signed up for yeah alright thank everybody for tuning in stay well and looking forward to our next chat yeah next time and you know I feel bad for these people I ask these questions and nobody gets to ask a question so we can do more questions next time yeah yeah we'll do you know what we need to break the ice we need to get everybody familiar with you and you know what there was a lot of like mega death loudness there was a lot of other bands I wanted to stay on topic I wanted to keep it sort of Ozzy because there's just so much there right so yeah well there's you know and then there's um it's same yes Delirious Nomad Coney Hatch like we were discussing earlier Coney Hatch this studio I mean um and mega death yeah you know uh the other ones oh you know I spoke to the other John Oliver I have spoken to him for a long time oh sabotage yes sabotage sabotage too right Lizzie Borden Lizzie Borden yeah visual lives yeah recently yeah oh my god Fates Warning Fates Warning yeah that's right yeah that's a good round and of course um and of course Death Angel uh yeah I love Death Angel I just um I just mixed an EP for those guys Grim Reaper Grim Reaper Steve Grim Reaper Grim Reaper yeah with Nick Boca he's uh he's working out a sweetwater now yeah you we got a lot of stories coming up and vendetta I hear some stories about vendetta vendetta holy shit yeah Neil Turbin asked me to ask you about vendetta and now they're playing opening up for Van Halen but they're playing with eruption before Van Halen went on stage it's like some bizarre thing yeah yeah uh Nicky Buzz yeah he's still around actually I think he's in Chicago now playing blues or something but yeah that was the first uh the first album that I did over in America after the the Aussie stuff and uh for epic records and uh yeah um I did it at the uh record plant the old record plant wherever the hell was Lassie Enneger Lassie Enneger before it moved to 3rd street and then I remember that was amazing because uh there were four rooms and we were in one room and Boston was in B and Fleetwood Mack were in D and we got another show right here we got another show and they had this amazing restaurant next door the entourage where everybody would go over at 5 o'clock would just go over from Skidget that's crazy unbelievable you know wow wow wow and you know we could even throw in Lita for Part 3 yeah all right everybody thank you for great time, thank you Max yeah you will thanks very much for inviting me