Speaking with Eon Music, producer Michael Beinhorn - who has worked with Ozzy, Osbourne, Korn, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Marilyn Manson, Soundgarden and many more - opened up wbout working with Ozzy on the Ozzmosis album in 1995. Following is an excerpt from the interview.

Eon Music: In 1995 you worked on Ozzy Osbourne’s Ozzmosis album; was it a struggle to get that one down?

Beinhorn: "It took a long time (laughing). It took a long time trying out some of the material for it, and I also worked Ozzy’s record in the middle of someone else’s record. It took months to assemble all the material for it and to coordinate everything. It was definitely a movie, and I remember we were looking at studios and Ozzy called up and he told me all the studios he didn’t want to work in, and then he hung the phone up! (laughing). We wound up tracking the record in a studio in Paris, and it was a long, drawn out process."

Eon Music: You had Ozzy, Zakk Wylde, Geezer Butler and Rick Wakeman on there; does it go to show that even with the right ingredients, it doesn’t necessarily lead to a great album?

Beinhorn: "It’s funny because you can work as hard as you can, and you can put as much intent and as much effort into something as you possibly can, but if the stars aren’t aligning and everyone isn’t on the same page? You really need to have so many things heading in the same direction in order for something like that to work. I’m certainly very grateful that the record was a (commercial) success. Unfortunately, a lot got lost in translation too. I’d recorded it a certain way; I had come up with this two inch eight track analogue recording system that no one had ever used before, and I tracked the drums on it, and unfortunately when it was mixed, the guy who was mixing it didn’t really know how to work with it. He lost all the subtleties and the depth of the drum kit, so that part of it was kind of heartbreaking."   

Eon Music: It sounds like it was a completely different recording experience to (Soundgarden's) Superunknown the year before.

Beinhorn: "Well, it’s hard to describe it exactly. Comparatively speaking, on a record like Superunkown, there was just an energy about it, like, I can’t really describe it. It was one of these things where you just knew that this thing was going to happen no matter what; like we were all just pawns it in. I could say; 'Oh, I did this, I did that', but the fact is that we were really just being drawn along by some other kind of force or energy or whatever, that took the whole project to its inevitable conclusion. To me, that’s the best that you could hope for when you have a recording project. Ozzy’s record? Not so much. He’s not much of a participant, or at least he wasn’t on that record. He kind of left us to our own devices. It was me and the other musicians, and I think when you’ve got a record that is basically by a solo artist, it’s a little more difficult if the solo artist isn’t really heavily involved in the creative process." 

Read the complete interview here.