JAKE E. LEE - "My Career In Five Songs"

August 18, 2021, 3 years ago

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JAKE E. LEE - "My Career In Five Songs"

Speaking with Guitar Player, Jake E. Lee - known for his work with Ozzy Osbourne, Badland and Red Dragon Cartel - ran down the five songs that he believes best represent his career. An excerpt is available below.

"Bark At The Moon" 
Ozzy Osbourne - Bark At The Moon (1983)

Lee: "I had written the music to that song back when I was in Rough Cutt. But at that time the riff was all in eighth notes because that was the L.A. thing. It was sort of along the lines of (Mötley Crüe's) “Looks That Kill,” and it worked pretty good that way. Then when I joined Ozzy’s band, he said, 'Okay, we need some songs.' I thought of that riff, but it just didn’t seem very Ozzy-ish. And then it came to me: 'I’ll throw 16th notes underneath it.' And it instantly sounded like an Ozzy song.

The outro solo definitely wasn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever played. What makes it hard is that, up to the end tag, I play the whole thing on the B and G strings. That involves doing this big spread with the fingers on my left hand, because the top notes get higher and the bottom notes get lower. And I didn’t do it so that my fingers would be all spread apart and look impressive. I did it so that, tonally, the solo would sound consistent. But nobody else really does it that way. They do it the easy way, which I understand. But to me it just sounds better on those two strings."

"Winter's Call" 
Badlands s/t (1989)

Lee: "It’s very Zeppelin. When Badlands first got together, everybody assumed it would be a heavy metal band because I came from Ozzy, and Ray (Gillen / vocals) and Eric (Singer / drums)  had been in Black Sabbath. But we decided to go back to the shit that we listened to when we were growing up. Which is probably why the record didn’t sell very well.

The first note I hit in the solo to 'Winter's Call' is a really weird one. I don’t know what you would call it – maybe a flatted second, or a sharped first. Whatever it is, it’s the note I heard my head, and then I played it with an octave so that it came out really pronounced. And I remember Paul O’Neill, who co-produced that record, he hated it. He said, 'Just try hitting the root as that first note.' But I refused. Finally, he started trying to bribe me. He said, 'Look, I have $500 in my wallet. I will give you this $500 if you try it once my way. We won’t even have to use it.' Then he threw in two tickets to Cats, because that was playing on Broadway at the time. But the more insistent he became, the more I dug my heels in. I had a sneaking suspicion that if I did do a more normal entry for the solo, somehow it would end up on the record. So I stuck to my guns on that one."

Check out the complete rundown here.


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