Jake E. Lee’s appearance at Back to the Beginning over this past weekend didn’t go entirely to plan, but he isn’t bothered about that. The spot rounded out a powerful full-circle moment for a guitarist who had an uphill battle to be fit for the show. He was simply “thrilled” to be part of.
Lee had huge shoes to fill when he became Ozzy’s second full-time guitarist in 1983, following the untimely death of Randy Rhoads, with Bernie Tormé and Brad Gillis populating the interim. And it was a job made even more daunting, considering he had to handle some of Tony Iommi’s most iconic riffs to boot.
While Rudy Sarzo says Rhoads was “too creative” to play songs like “Paranoid” and “Iron Man” verbatim, Lee was happy to tow the party line. He wanted to honor the “evil” tonality of the original parts.
“He bends so it’s not quite in pitch. It just made it sound so much better,” he tells Guitar World of Iommi’s innovative playing style. “There are things like that that I found challenging.
“Where did he come up with all those riffs? It’s not human. It’s unfathomable!
“I joined in the middle of the Speak of the Devil tour. Half of the set was Black Sabbath, and half was the stuff with Randy, so I just tried to get as close as I could,” he adds.
“One of my favorite Ozzy stories was from that tour,” Lee then says. “We were doing ‘War Pigs.’ It’s the first verse and Ozzy looks at me and mouths, ‘What are the words?’ I knew the words, but he stumped me. I didn’t want to say the wrong words, so I just said, ‘I don’t know…’
“So he started singing ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm!’
“It worked perfectly! It was like, ‘Old MacDonald haaaad a faaarm, he had some pigs with an oink oink here, and an oink oink therrrrrre.’”
Lee says he grew up a “snob” who initially felt rock music was “stupid.” Then Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” turned his head, and from there Iommi’s influence was everything.
“It was huge,” he says. “I saved up my money to where I could finally buy a [Gibson] SG, and that was because of him. I wanted to sound like him. Tone-wise, to this day, Tony Iommi is my greatest inspiration.
“Every time I’m trying to set my stuff up to get the sound right, I play ‘War Pigs.’ If I can sound anything close to what he sounded like on that, I’m going with it.”
After two albums by Ozzy Osbourne’s side, a stint that saw him pen setlist staples like “Bark At The Moon”, and “Shot in the Dark”, Lee was let go in 1987.
When the guitarist was shot multiple times last year, it was revealed that he and Ozzy hadn’t spoken for 37 years. That made Tom Morello’s insistence on Lee playing a starring role at Back to the Beginning all the more poignant. But preparing for the show wasn’t easy.
Lee says he planned to perform “Bark at the Moon” at the show, but the task was made difficult due to arthritis in his left hand and damage to his left arm from the shooting. Instead, flanked by an all-star cast, he tackled “The Ultimate Sin” and — perhaps too close for comfort — “Shot in the Dark”.
The first tune saw him team up with Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale, Nuno Bettencourt, ex-Megadeth bass player David Ellefson, Mike Bordin, and Adam Wakeman, while Disturbed's David Draiman fronted the latter. The slower, more forgiving tracks still gave him plenty of opportunity to stamp his authority all over the songs.
For a guitarist blighted by injuries, the chance to help his biggest guitar hero, and cross paths with Ozzy for the first time in nearly four decades, proved too alluring to retire from. The fact that he even made it at all is something of a miracle; the fact that he played two songs on the night before 45,000 screaming fans and millions more via a live stream makes for a lesson in perseverance. To echo Morello's sentiment, the show wouldn't have been the same without him.
