There was nothing polished or pretty about them.”
Ozzy Osbourne had an appreciation for talent. From hiring talented young musicians to inviting interesting bands to tour with him, he always wanted to be surrounded by great artists. In 1986, he invited Metallica to tour with him, right around the time after they released “Master of Puppets.”
In an interview with BraveWords, Jake E. Lee, Ozzy’s former guitarist from this period, was asked how he felt about seeing Metallica perform for the first time. He stated how impressed he was, and how particularly fascinating it was to him that they didn’t have to dress in specific outfits for their show:
“No, I knew who Metallica was. But they were different. I really liked it. Especially with Cliff – nothing against any of the bass players – but there was magic. I’m glad I got to see them all those times with Cliff. They were heavy as shit. They were angry, there was nothing polished or pretty about them.”
“I thought that was awesome. Especially that Ultimate Sin tour. That’s where we had to dress a certain way, you know? Ozzy had that gold glitter big-shouldered thing going and he had a guy that made clothes for everybody. You couldn’t dress yourself if you were in Ozzy. Not back then.”
“So you had to go to the clothing designer and say what you wanted and I remember seeing Ozzy’s outfit, seeing the bass players’, and I was like, ‘Damn, if I have to wear this shit can you please just mute it down?’ I mean, most of my shit is black and white, there’s no glitter. And I still felt uncomfortable.”
Jake E. Lee continued, recalling what Sharon Osbourne once told him about the dress code:
“And I remember one of Sharon’s things was ‘You can’t dress like the punters. You can’t be on stage and look like you could also be in the front row.’ When I joined, she told me that. I remembered that, but I didn’t think we had to go that far.”
“And I love that Metallica went out in jeans and t-shirt’s and just *** tore it up. I thought that was awesome. It had a punk attitude to it.”
