Former OZZY OSBOURNE guitarist Jake E. Lee spoke to Guitar World magazine about his participation in the upcoming “Back To The Beginning” charity event on July 5 at Villa Park in Birmingham, United Kingdom. The concert will mark the original lineup of BLACK SABBATH‘s last-ever performance and Ozzy‘s final appearance as a solo artist. RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE guitarist Tom Morello will serve as the “musical director” at the show.
Each artist taking part in the concert is expected to will play a classic Ozzy track or two, with Jake telling the magazine about his selection: “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.”
He added: “I’m shooting for ‘Ultimate Sin’ [the title track from his second and final Ozzy album]. It’s heavy, and I like the solo in it.”
Lee also paid tribute to the original BLACK SABBATH lineup during the Guitar World chat, telling the magazine: “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. [Ronnie James] Dio [who replaced Ozzy in SABBATH] 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.”
Lee, who was tapped by Ozzy Osbourne to replace the late Randy Rhoads in the singer’s solo band, played on two Ozzy records: 1983’s “Bark At The Moon” and 1986’s “The Ultimate Sin”.
After performing with Ozzy, Lee formed the hard rock band BADLANDS. He released the solo albums “Retraced” and “Guitar Warrior” in 2005 and 2007, respectively. After a self-imposed exile from the music industry and the public eye, Lee returned with a new band called RED DRAGON CARTEL, releasing a self-titled album in 2013 followed by “Patina” in 2018.
Last October, Lee was shot multiple times in Las Vegas while walking his dog.
In a statement shared with TMZ on the day of the shooting, Osbourne expressed his sympathy for his onetime guitarist. “It’s been 37 years since I’ve seen Jake E. Lee, but that still doesn’t take away from the shock of hearing what happened to him today,” the BLACK SABBATH frontman said. “It’s just another senseless act of gun violence.
“I send my thoughts to him and his beautiful daughter, Jade,” Osbourne added. “I just hope he’ll be okay.”
Back in October 2018, Jake opened up about exactly how he found out he was fired from Ozzy‘s band. Contradicting a clam found on Wikipedia, the guitarist laughed and told Eonmusic: “I had no idea it was coming, but it wasn’t by telegram. I mean, it was the ’80s, and I guess people sent telegrams back then, but I didn’t get it via telegram.”
Going on to reveal that it was Sharon Osbourne‘s job to tell him, the former BADLANDS man said that the manager didn’t have the heart to tell him the news.
“Sharon Osbourne called me, and said she wanted to have dinner with me,” he recalled. “I suppose there was clues in there, because she was talking about how, ‘Someday, Jake, when you have your own band.’ I think her major piece of advice was to be on time: ‘When you’re leader of a band, you kind of need to set an example, and you need to be on time,’ and that was the only clue I had, really.”
Continuing, Jake said that although there were clues, Osbourne didn’t actually tell him he was out of the band. “My roommate at the time was also my guitar tech, and he came back from the Rainbow, and he’d seen [Ozzy bandmates] Phil [Soussan, bass], and Randy Castillo [drums], and he said they came up to him and said, ‘So, what are you going to do now that Jake‘s out of the band?’ So he ran back home and told me, and said, ‘Dude, did you just get fired?’ and I went, ‘No.’ And he went, ‘I think you did.’ [And I said] ‘No. I just saw Sharon, I just had dinner with her, and we talked and talked — I think she would have told me if I was fired.’ And he said, ‘Well, that’s not what Randy and Phil said.’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, come on!'”
He went on: “So I picked the phone up, and I called Sharon back and said, ‘I just heard the weirdest rumor, ‘and she broke down and said, ‘Yes, it’s true.’ And I said, ‘What, do you mean I’m fired?’ And she goes, ‘Yes, that’s why I took you out to dinner.’ [Laughs]”
Contradicting popular perception that there was animosity between the two camps, Lee concluded: “We got along very well when I was in the band. I considered us friends back then, and just the fact that she was supposed to fire me and couldn’t, it’s hilarious in retrospect. That night, it wasn’t so hilarious.”
Ozzy Osbourne photo credit: Ross Halfin / Jake E. Lee photo credit: Joseph Gorelick
