JAKE E. LEE: How I Wrote The OZZY OSBOURNE Song 'Bark At The Moon' (Video)

On March 13, former OZZY OSBOURNE and BADLANDS guitarist Jake E. Lee took part in a half-show/half-question-and-answer-session at the Lava Cable stage in Owasso, Oklahoma.

Lee, the guitarist who wrote "Bark At The Moon", the title track of OZZY OSBOURNE's classic album, shared how he wrote the track to be played originally in 1983 and how it is consistently wronged by tabs all across the web today.

Check out video footage from Lava Cable's "Strike A Chord" below.

In a December 2013 interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, Lee stated about the writing process for "Bark At The Moon": "Well, most of that was really me and [bassist] Bob Daisley. Because Ozzy would show up and kind of play around with songs. I remember that I had the riff for 'Bark At The Moon' and I played that, and he said, 'Oh, I love it — we'll call that one 'Bark At The Moon',' because he already had the album title in mind. So he said, 'That's the one that's going to be 'Bark At The Moon'.' He’d come in with things like that and then he'd drink, and he'd either pass out or leave, which left just me and Bob. We'd stay in the studio and flesh out the songs. It was fun working with Bob. He wrote all of the lyrics, [and he's] a great lyricist. So yeah, me and Bob, we had a good working relationship. It was fun doing that record."

Asked where producer Max Norman fit in during the making of "Bark At The Moon", Lee said: "He was in an interesting position. Because he was starting to be well known because of the Ozzy records. But because he wasn't [well known] when Ozzy did those records, for Ozzy he kind of had to be Ozzy's bitch. If Ozzy said something, he expected Max to do it, period. He didn't get a lot of input as far as that. Although he had a lot of input with me. Because I was brand new at it. I'd never done a record and he was really helpful for me as far as tightening up, doing two takes and lining them up right. He helped me a lot, but he was kind of a little bit of an Ozzy whipping boy for Ozzy and that's why he didn't get a chance to mix the record, which I think was a fuck-up. I mean, he should have. He mixed the first two Ozzy records and they're bitchin'. But then Ozzy figured he could get somebody else better. I think at that point, that's when he switched from Jet Records to Sony. Sony were the big boys, and they said, 'Max Norman? Who's he? Get somebody else!' That's why Tony Bongiovi ended up mixing the record, even though he wasn't there for the recording, and that record could have sounded so much better, I think, if Max had been allowed to mix it."