Ozzy and Billy Idol guitar legend Billy Morrison have “thrown the kitchen sink” at the re-recorded version of Gods Of Rock N Roll, now boasting a choir and massive orchestra!
Last month, Ozzy revealed that he'd teamed up with his old mate Billy Morrison (also Billy Idol's longtime guitar player) for a new song, a reworking of Gods Of Rock N Roll being released on the deluxe version of Billy's star-studded third solo album, The Morrison Project, dropping next month.
The song was originally written by the pair a decade ago, and first appeared as the closing track on Billy's last solo album, 2015’s God Shaped Hole. The forthcoming The Morrison Project record also includes songs with Corey Taylor, Ministry's Al Jourgensen, guitar legend Steve Vai and Cypress Hill. It also featured Ozzy on the banging Crack Cocaine.
On the redone version of Gods Of Rock N Roll, they've pulled out all the stops and souped up the track, which now features a choir and a 61-piece orchestra. You can watch the fly-on-the-wall-style video that shows the recording coming together in the studio with fellow Billy Idol guitarist Steve Stevens exclusively through Kerrang! right now.
“Billy and I wrote Gods Of Rock N Roll together in a hotel room while I was touring in South America about 10 years ago,” says Ozzy. “This re-recorded version of the song finally has all the bells and whistles. I told Billy then that it needed an orchestra and a choir, but it took 10 fucking years for him to listen to me!
“We filmed the music video with director, Ivo Raza, at NRG Studios in Los Angeles and included everyone involved with the track. The end result combines what was filmed in the studio and the footage shot during the orchestral session in Budapest. I feel the orchestral score has breathed new life into Gods Of Rock N Roll. I hope you all like it.”
Indeed we do. So much so that we hit up Billy at home in LA to chat all about the track, the video, and the chemistry that happens when you're jamming with The Prince Of Darkness. Not enough? We're taking you behind the scenes of the video with exclusive shots from on-set, too!
Where did the idea to have the video be a document of the band and the orchestra working in the studio come from?
“The director of the Gods Of Rock N Roll video is the same guy that directed [last year's single] Crack Cocaine, which was very much a performance video, with us standing on rooftops in downtown Los Angeles and drone shots and stuff. I said this time I wanted to do the exact opposite. Think about the video for Band Aid, where it was just a fly-on-the-wall of everyone in the studio.
“It made me smile. I’ve known Ozzy for 30 years, and there's a couple of intimate moments where I was watching the video and I was like, ‘Oh, man, I love that guy.’ It’s just what we’re like – the bits in the video where he gives me a hug, and where he's constantly messing with me. It’s total mischievous Ozzy – there’s a bit where we’re at the board, and he’s flicking the switches and mucking about! I think all that captures something special.”
You look like you’re all having a good time…
“It's all real. When he smiles, it's real, and when I when I give him a hug, it's real. And we are proud of the song, so that video, it just needed to capture Ozzy. I see him a lot, and you know, the media portrays him a certain way, but he's a wonderful, iconic, talented man who is still The Prince Of Darkness. He's still the powerful Prince Of Darkness no matter what people report. Part of my job is to show Ozzy in the powerful light that he deserves. And hopefully we did that with Gods Of Rock N Roll.”
And then there’s the full orchestra, which comes in pretty impressively. How was it working with them?
“Yeah, we paid extra money for that! I've got to give a shout out to the guys at TLG|ZOID. It's a small label, and my album was the first release for them, and now they're they're putting out this deluxe edition. Now, I never had a deluxe edition of anything in my life, right? But we've got the six extra tracks, and Gods Of Rock N Roll is a single from that. Ten years ago, we did a recording of this track, which this version is totally re-recorded, but back then, Ozzy said it would be great to have an orchestra on it. Now, someone like Ozzy can say that – but an orchestra costs a lot of money, and filming an orchestra apparently costs even more. I found that out! Otherwise they all wear shorts and T-shirts because they're not being filmed. Well, you don't want that in a video. So that costs extra. So I go to the guys at TLG|ZOID and go, ’I need you to pay for a 61-piece orchestra and a high school choir,’ and they just stepped up!”
The song was originally written 10 years ago with Ozzy. What’s he like as a writing partner?
“So, my friendship with Ozzy is weirdly not based around music. We've been friends for 29 years, and the fact that he's Ozzy and I have a 30-year career playing music doesn't come into it. We don't sit around trying to plan world domination. But obviously, if you've got two best friends that are musicians, there’s going to be nights where I've got an acoustic guitar in my hand, playing something, and he'll go, ‘Play that again’. And so I do, and he starts singing, and it goes from there. We've written a few songs in our time, but I never pushed them, and I never forced them, and that's probably why we're still friends, you know?
“So, yeah, it’s great writing with Ozzy. He's more than a rock star – he's an icon. So when he looks at me and goes, ‘Play that again,’ and starts singing, I'll take note. And he nails it in the studio. I mean, listen to his voice. Listen to Crack Cocaine, listen to Gods Of Rock N Roll. It’s incredible. He walks into the vocal booth and something happens. The light goes on and you press the record button, and then when he's finished, he'll say run it again, and he'll double-track himself perfectly. So few singers can do that, they have to double-track line by line. He has all that in his head from the moment he writes the top line, he writes the Lyric, he writes the melody, and it's in his head, that's how it goes, and he can deliver it. There’s a wow factor watching him do that.”
There’s a lot going on musically as well – there’s a Beatles-sounding organ somewhere in it…
“That's the Mellotron. Yeah, it's very Beatles. Ozzy is a huge Beatles fan. This song, we threw everything at it. It’s a ballad, and it was written with literally me on acoustic and Ozzy in a hotel room, and we wrote down the lyrics, and then I go away, and I build the track, I get a drummer on it, I play the bass, I play some guitars, you know, blah, blah, blah. So, with this orchestration, we threw the kitchen sink at it. We had the ability, so we may as well. That’s where the Mellotron came in. Oasis use it a lot because they're Beatles fans as well. It’s a very classic sound. But there’s loads in there – there’s the girls choir, there's the orchestra, there's the Mellotron, loads. Barry Pointer, who mixed the song. He said there was 141 tracks on there!”
Now you’ve scaled something like this, do you fancy doing a similar project again?
“Primarily, I'm one of Billy Idol’s guitar players, and I take that position very seriously. It’s been 15 years, and I've been embraced into the Billy Idol family, so my primary job is to support Billy and be there and so that will never change. If in my ridiculously hectic schedule I get a chance to do another Morrison Project album, of course. I love collaboration, as my album shows, there’s Linda Perry, Al Jourgensen, Corey Taylor, Steve Vai, DMC, Cypress Hill, Ozzy… But it's not for any reason other than it makes me happy. There's a reason that I didn't tour this record. And trust me, I got people going, ‘You should put a band together and tour it.’ I don't want to water it down. I'm very proud of the album, and I don’t want that to get watered down by some club band with me singing songs that really should be sung by Ozzy and Linda Perry and Cypress Hill. So I am not doing this to tour the world. You know, I get to do that with Billy Idol. This was a creative endeavour, and I might do it again if the songs I write are good enough. And I had a lot of fun doing it!”
Gods Of Rock N Roll features on The Morrison Project deluxe edition, which is out now.
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