Ozzy Osbourne was told to rip off Metallica by turning down the bass in the mix on ‘Speak on the Devil’ for Rudy Sarzo, much like Metallica did to Jason Newsted on ‘…And Justice For All.’ Ozzy Osbourne ‘Struggles’ To Sing In Studio.
Engineer Max Norman told The Metal Voice, “I got called up and they had a contractual obligation to Jet Records for two more albums. This was basically Ozzy’s way of just getting out of the whole thing, getting it done. So we did it downtown, in New York. We mixed it in the Record Plant, and it was done very quickly.
“So I said to them, ‘We’re only doing one night, so let’s run the whole set during rehearsals and I’ll record that as well. So if there are any screw-ups, 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 then I was faced with the fact that there wasn’t any audience there. So I had to add an audience, and I had to kind of adopt the audience of the hall to make sure that it matched up with the other stuff. It was a very low-budget thing.
“So, we went into Record Plant, I mixed, Ozzy came in and re-did the vocals, and he was listening to Rudy’s bass – and Rudy doesn’t like me for this reason.
“Ozzy said, ‘Rudy’s bass is fucked. He should come in and redo it.’ I said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll just turn it down.’ So it’s sort of a Metallica mess.” Ultimate-Guitar transcribed his comments.
