Page 1 of 1

Michael Schenker and late night phone call from Ozzy

Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 7:10 am
by chilinvilin
http://www.metalsludge.tv/?p=42940

LRI: Speaking of your middle years, I wanted to ask you about your experience with Ozzy asking you to replace the late Randy Rhoads who was a fan of early Scorpions. How did that come about?

Michael: It was 1982 and I received a call in the middle of the night, he told me about what happened and he was devastated and he asked me, you know, if I would join but I was in the middle of making my “Assault Attack” album with Graham Bonnet and Cozy Powell. I had also heard horror stories that Ozzy was dragging people by their hair (laughs) and off the stage and stuff like that and I thought about my joining the Scorpions for “Lovedrive” and thought that I made a mistake when i did join and thought that it was not good for me. I could not go onstage and copy all these guitarists and recreate all of their parts, I had to be a creator and my experience with the Scorpions was always a good reminder later in my career whenever I was asked to join all these other other projects, Deep Purple asked me too, Phil Lynott asked me but I would always have to think back and say “Michael, you are not going to be happy if you do this because you will always have to play all of this stuff that other people played on all these albums, you need to be self-expressive, you need to create and not copy”. It was always tempting, believe me but the voice was always in the back of my head saying “Michael, you will not be happy” and that was basically it. There was always that final understanding that I needed to be free and not be in a position where I was replacing someone.

Re: Michael Schenker and late night phone call from Ozzy

Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 3:35 pm
by Paul Wolfe
It was always tempting, believe me but the voice was always in the back of my head saying “Michael, you will not be happy” and that was basically it. There was always that final understanding that I needed to be free and not be in a position where I was replacing someone.
Very far cry from the story I had heard of Ozzy saying that Schenker wanted outrageous amounts of money to replace Randy.