Randy Rhoads: The 1982 Max Norman Interview

Q/A With the Producer of Ozzy's Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman LPs

Ozzy, left, and Randy, right, in front of Ridge Farm.

While working as the resident engineer at England’s Ridge Farm Studio, Max Norman was hired by Ozzy Osbourne to produce Blizzard of Ozz. Released in 1980, the platinum album revitalized Osbourne’s career and made Randy Rhoads a guitar hero. Norman was back onboard for 1981’s Diary of a Madman, which Ozzy cites as his personal favorite among his records. Our interview on August 4, 1982, focused on the techniques Max used to capture Randy’s sound on these first two Ozzy Osbourne albums.

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When did you meet Randy Rhoads?

When we decided to do the first album in England, I met him at a couple of rehearsals up in London, at a place called EZ Hire. That would be about two weeks before we started to record the first album, Blizzard of Ozz.

What was it like working with him?

Great! We had a great time, a real good time.

How long did it take to record Blizzard of Ozz?

The recording took just over a month, as I remember.

What was the usual order for recording a song? How were the tracks laid down from first to last?

We would do the whole thing, including a guide [track], with all four people there playing in the same room. As long as we had a good bass and drum track, we would take it from there.

So you’d lay down the drums, bass, and rhythm guitar simultaneously?

Yeah. Vocals too.

And then the guitars were overdubbed?

Yeah. Same thing for both albums.

How did you record Randy’s parts?

Both of the albums were done at Ridge Farm. There’s a fairly live room downstairs underneath the control room, which we put him in and shut the doors. Well, he wasn’t in there, but the Marshall amp was in there. There was a close mike and a distant mike down there. So all of the original rhythm tracks were done like that. We replaced a lot of them a bit later on, because we opened those doors and turned the Marshall out toward the studio and put even more mikes out in the studio, so we got a much bigger sound from it. In fact, we went back and backtracked on some of them.