Sky wrote:I seen this in an Andrew Klein interview some interested stuff here...
Thanks for posting that Shaun but Klein heard snippets of the tapes on one occasion and where his memory has failed, he's made things up... so I've stuck my oar in..
There is a 4 song demo (Crazy Train, Mr. Crowley, Goodbye to Romance, Looking at you, looking at me), recorded with another drummer named Dixie Lee. They hadn't yet met Lee K. Those versions are so cool.
That demo was recorded at a studio in Birmingham before they found Lee. They didn't do 'Crowley' on the studio demo, the fourth song was 'I Don't Know'.
For Crazy Train, instead of starting with the bass and drums intro, the first thing you hear is Ozzy's voice. He shouts, "All aboard you fucking punks" - and then Randy slides in with the main riff. Fucking great.
No, on the Birmingham studio demo Ozzy doesn't say that. There's no recording of Ozzy saying that. Bob has a tape of a rehearsal/writing session from Monmouth where Ozzy starts 'CT' with, "All abooaard, ya cunts!"
Goodbye to Romance is more acoustic oriented, less electric guitar. I personally like the demo version better than what's on BOO.
It's actually very similar to the final recording, except for the tempo.
On the first day of recording at Ridge, they were doing a mic test. Max asked the band to jam something. They jammed the blues. It was slow and moody like 'Riders on the Storm' (Doors). Ozzy was singing improv. Randy rips to no end. Its about 15 minutes long. As a joke they named it, "Wally Bodger and the Fabulous Flaps."
It wasn't the 'blues', it was a chord progression that Bob came up with that Randy followed. It had a '60s 'Doors' vibe. The song itself wasn't named anything, they called themselves 'Wally Bodger & the 4 Fabulous Flaps'.
Finally, its loaded with all the writing sessions. You can hear the birth and maturation of every song. Bob recorded EVERYTHING including all the conversations when they weren't playing. All the rehearsals were recorded as well. Lee is singing lead vocals on many songs on the days Ozzy never showed up.
Lee sang lead vocals on some of the songs, I wouldn't say 'many'.
Randy experimenting with his pedal board for the first time trying to get sounds. Ozzy asked him how much it cost and Randy told him "200 quid." Ozzy said, "I don't think it was worth it." Randy said, "Oh, I do." This stuff doesn't exist anywhere but on Bob's tapes.
That was at Clearwell Castle, Randy actually told Ozzy, "It cost eleven hundred pounds..." Can anyone here imagine Randy saying '200 quid'?
Ozzy played a bigger role in the writing than people realize. He was right there working on everything with Bob and Randy. Ozzy made a huge contribution to the arrangement of 'Believer'. The song is nothing like what it started out to be. Ozzy may not have written lyrics, but he made a huge contribution.
Ozzy definitely made a contribution to the arrangement of Believer, when he was there that is, but not 'huge' though. They can all be heard discussing the song on the tapes.
Bob has recordings of the songs from the albums, without the singing. Max gave him copies so that he could take them to his room to write lyrics. However, some of these contain alternative guitar leads that were recorded before the final take. Ozzy instructed Max on day 1 to keep everything Randy records, no matter how many times he does a take. They still have all of it.
No, Bob got out-takes from Max just to hear the band's performance, nothing to do with writing lyrics. Every time that Bob wrote lyrics it was to Ozzy's guide vocal, so that he'd know how to phrase the lines.
There are also songs recorded that never made the records. One of them is super heavy. A precursor to the style of heavy metal music that would soon grow to be popular in the 80s. The funny thing about that one is, Ozzy is singing the lyrics to Steal Away. When they scrapped the song, they saved the lyrics.
Klein is talking about the first writing sessions at Monmouth and most of what he says here is fabrication. He heard the
beginning of a song that was never developed into a song. Ozzy sang the words 'Steal Away' and other improvised words that bear no resemblance to the final lyrics of that song. There weren't any lyrics to 'Steal Away' at that stage, other than the title line. Bob wrote the lyrics to that song later at Ridge Farm about Yvonne the barmaid at the Plough Inn.