For six and a half years, Grammy-winning producer Andrew Watt spoke to Ozzy Osbourne daily, and the day before the metal legend’s death from a heart attack this July was no exception. “Everything was normal,” Watt says, “and the next day the news was just a giant shock.” Watt became close with Osbourne in the course of producing his final two albums, 2020’s Ordinary Man and 2022’s Patient Number 9, and he credits the singer for paving the way for his work with the Rolling Stones, Lady Gaga, and more. A still-grieving Watt looked back at his friendship with Osbourne in our recent interview.
You played at the Back to the Beginning 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.
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It was this amazing thing because [guitarist] Jake E. Lee was there, who hadn’t 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’s 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.
It was just this great, fun thing. It felt like a heavy metal summer camp. That’s 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… I remember the night before the big show, I went out with Sharon to have a curry, ’cause that’s 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.
It 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’s a constant thing. He could see you in your good, your bad, and just in a way that you were — he was witchy like that. He often knew things that were gonna happen before they happened and just had an incredible sense.
When 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’t 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’m here talking to you today.
Because it changed your whole career.
Yeah, it changed everything for me. He saw me as a serious album producer. Up until then, I wasn’t really making full albums. I had made one or two full albums that I was involved in, but I wasn’t 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’s 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’s the funniest person ever of all time.
What 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’s 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’t listening and he heard every single thing. There’d be times we’d be in the studio listening to something and he’s just drawing and I’m like, “Oh, he is not listening.” And then he’d just give me this one line that cuts so deep, in a positive way.
He would always say to me, “Listen to Led Zeppelin and tell me what the loudest thing is.” And me, having my confidence, I’d be like, “It’s the drums. John Bonham.” He said, “Nope, not the drums.” He said, “It’s the bass.”
I would’ve 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’s 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’s a lot of bass on those records. “Under the Graveyard” has so much low end, if you check that out. He was involved in every detail of every single mix-down, too. That’s how much he cared.
Is there any unreleased music from your time together? Is there stuff in the vaults?
[Pause.] I can’t talk about that!
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