“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…’“: Andrew Watt on what Ozzy Osbourne taught him about mixing

Andrew Watt, producer for the Stones, Pearl Jam and of course, Ozzy Osbourne, has been talking about his relationship with the late Black Sabbath singer and, in particular, what Ozzy taught him about mixing.

You wouldn’t necessarily have Ozzy down as a production guru. But, according to Watt. “You have to understand. This man was making Paranoid when he was 21,” the producer pointed out in an interview with Rolling Stone.

“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’ve ever met, and a history buff, and a genius, a literal genius.”

High praise indeed. “His ears were reactive,” Watt went on. “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’s not listening’. And then he’d just give me this one line that cuts so deep, in a positive way.”

Watt explained that when it came to heavy rock, Ozzy’s ears were operating on a higher plain to everyone else’s. “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. It’s the bass.’”

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“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. 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 it out.

"He was involved in every detail of every single mix-down too. That’s how much he cared.”

Interesting stuff. Watt became close to Ozzy during the last six years of his life and says he spoke to the singer on a daily basis, including the day before he died. “Everything was normal,” Watt says of that day, “and the next day the news was just a giant shock.”