Ozzy Osbourne wanted to hire Gary Moore as his guitarist before Randy Rhoads, according to a new The Metal Voice interview with Ozzy producer/engineer Max Norman. Ozzy Osbourne Leaks ‘Nasty’ Lemmy Remark.
Ozzy’s first choice was Gary Moore before Randy. Don Airey wanted Gary Moore but neither one of them wanted that.
“I don’t know, I did hear that Gary Moore was talked about, but that’s all I really heard. I don’t think he would have been a good choice anyway because Gary is his own guy, I don’t think Gary wanted to be particularly in a band where somebody else was the big guy.”
When we talked to Carmine Appice…
“Not a big friend of mine, really.”
Anyway, I remember speaking to him, and he was telling us about his contributions. He was called in and it probably wasn’t at your stage, it was at the mixing stage of ‘Bark at the Moon,’ where 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, I think that Carmine is blowing his own trumpet a little bit there. At the end of ‘Bark at the Moon,’ it kind of dissolved a bit. We ran into some financial problems, we ran out of studio time at Ridge Farm, so I couldn’t mix it there.
“Bob Daisley and I flew to New York on the Concorde to mix. So it’s very rushed. It wasn’t really how I wanted it, and it was very rushed… I didn’t like the mastering, I didn’t like the mixes, and I took it back to London, and had a meeting with Ozzy…
“Ozzy didn’t like any of it so they fired me right then. And I remember I had to give Jake a lift home, so I dropped him off somewhere in south London and he was saying, ‘Well, maybe we could get Martin Birch to mix it.’ And I said, ‘I have no fucking clue, I don’t know.’
“And so the whole thing kind of dissolved at the end. And then they gave it to I guess Tony Bongiovi in The Power Station, and that guy, to me, has no ears, so I don’t know what happened to that. Jake will tell you as I will tell you that the original mix has had much more guitar, much less of the keyboard stuff.” Ultimate-Guitar transcribed his remarks.
