{"id":47166,"date":"2025-09-27T17:28:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T17:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/47166\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T17:28:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T17:28:07","slug":"inside-ozzy-osbournes-final-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/47166\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Ozzy Osbourne’s Final Days"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFor six and a half years, Grammy-winning producer Andrew Watt<\/a> spoke to Ozzy Osbourne<\/a> daily, and the day before the metal legend\u2019s death<\/a> from a heart attack<\/a> this July was no exception. \u201cEverything was normal,\u201d Watt says, \u201cand the next day the news was just a giant shock.\u201d Watt became close with Osbourne in the course of producing his final two albums, 2020\u2019s Ordinary Man and 2022\u2019s Patient Number 9, and he credits the singer for paving the way for his work <\/a>with the Rolling Stones, Lady Gaga<\/a>, and more. A still-grieving Watt looked back at his friendship with Osbourne in our recent interview.<\/p>\n

\n

You played at the Back to the Beginning<\/a> concert. What was that experience like?
The experience at the show was unbelievable, and at this current moment, it feels like a dream sequence. The whole last month of his life feels like a dream. I had been in London working on a project, and going to the show and getting to Birmingham was amazing. And I got there and there was this big photo shoot, everyone was there.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was this amazing thing because [guitarist] Jake E. Lee was there, who hadn\u2019t seen Ozzy in 30 years. And all these people were there from all walks of his life, bands that he loved. Musicians that he loved. There\u2019s this really great photo shoot that Ross Halfin was conducting and Ozzy was telling him to fuck off the whole time, and he was telling Ozzy to fuck off back.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was just this great, fun thing. It felt like a heavy metal summer camp. That\u2019s the best way to describe it. And then we were all together every day, and getting to be with Sharon and Jack and Kelly and everyone\u2026 I remember the night before the big show, I went out with Sharon to have a curry, \u2019cause that\u2019s what you eat in Birmingham. And we brought one back to the hotel for Ozzy. Hung out with him for a long time and talked. We had a couple hours together in his room the night before the show. [Pauses.] This is hard to talk about.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt must feel like losing a family member.
It does, yeah. He saw me in a way that I did not see myself, and if you talk to anyone that loves him or was lucky enough to be loved by him, that\u2019s a constant thing. He could see you in your good, your bad, and just in a way that you were \u2014 he was witchy like that. He often knew things that were gonna happen before they happened and just had an incredible sense.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tWhen we made all those albums together, he was recovering from this accident [a fall at home] that he had. And it was the first time that I was ever making music where I realized that music was something bigger than just making songs. It was giving him a purpose when he didn\u2019t feel well and making him feel great and laugh and sing and dance and heal. Those two albums were incredible, and they, for me, are the reason why I\u2019m here talking to you today.<\/p>\n

\n\tBecause it changed your whole career.
Yeah, it changed everything for me. He saw me as a serious album producer. Up until then, I wasn\u2019t really making full albums. I had made one or two full albums that I was involved in, but I wasn\u2019t doing it like that. And he saw in me that I could do this. And it was a dream come true. He gave me the confidence, and he taught me so much about how to mix rock music and take it all the way to the end. He really believed in me. He let me play guitar on his albums, and that\u2019s just unbelievable. We were really big for each other, both as collaborators and as friends. And, fuck, man, more than anything, I miss the laughter. He\u2019s the funniest person ever of all time.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat did he teach you specifically about mixing?
You have to understand. This man was making Paranoid when he was 21 years old. So he had a 55-year career where everything was grandiose and at the highest level. And he\u2019s one of the smartest people I have ever met, and a history buff, and a genius, a literal genius. His persona was [just] persona. He was incredibly brilliant, incredibly sharp. His ears were reactive. You could think he wasn\u2019t listening and he heard every single thing. There\u2019d be times we\u2019d be in the studio listening to something and he\u2019s just drawing and I\u2019m like, \u201cOh, he is not listening.\u201d And then he\u2019d just give me this one line that cuts so deep, in a positive way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tHe would always say to me, \u201cListen to Led Zeppelin<\/a> and tell me what the loudest thing is.\u201d And me, having my confidence, I\u2019d be like, \u201cIt\u2019s the drums. John Bonham.\u201d He said, \u201cNope, not the drums.\u201d He said, \u201cIt\u2019s the bass.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tI would\u2019ve said the drums, too.
He pointed out the bass is the most important thing in a rock song. You have to make sure the bass is there and pumping and cutting through and providing that sense of rhythm, because it\u2019s the bridge between the drums and the guitars. It makes the song heavy, because the guitars can poke through if you have them mixed in the right way. The bass is a hard thing to really get cutting, but also representing the bottom. He was very bass-focused, mix-wise, and making sure the bass came through. And if you listen to the records that we made together, there\u2019s a lot of bass on those records. \u201cUnder the Graveyard\u201d<\/a> has so much low end, if you check that out. He was involved in every detail of every single mix-down, too. That\u2019s how much he cared.<\/p>\n

\n\tIs there any unreleased music from your time together? Is there stuff in the vaults?
[Pause.] I can\u2019t talk about that!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For six and a half years, Grammy-winning producer Andrew Watt spoke to Ozzy Osbourne daily, and the day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[25674,93,61,60,6552,17450,278,6542,26218],"class_list":{"0":"post-47166","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-andrew-watt","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-lady-gaga","13":"tag-led-zeppelin","14":"tag-music","15":"tag-ozzy-osbourne","16":"tag-rolling-stone"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}