Former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Jake E. Lee on Thursday said he’s feeling strong physically, but still recovering mentally, after he was shot three times earlier this week in Las Vegas.
“Physically, I’m OK. Probably take awhile before I’m all back, but I’ll get there,” Lee told TheWrap in an exclusive update. “Mentally I’m trying to process it all. A man wanted me dead. Police found 15 shell casings. He unloaded his clip on me. So lucky he only hit me three times and in recoverable areas. It’s just crazy.”
Early on Tuesday morning, Lee was shot three times — once in the chest, arm and foot — while walking his dog. He was hospitalized afterwards, following a bizarre attack that Las Vegas authorities believe was “completely random,” his representatives said on Tuesday.
The 67-year-old guitarist rocketed to fame in the early 1980s when he joined Ozzy Osbourne’s solo band, following the death of iconic guitarist Randy Rhoads.
Lee made an immediate impact on Osbourne’s band — his first major public appearance with them came in front of hundreds of thousands of people at the 1983 U.S. Festival. His buzzsaw riff was the backbone to Osbourne’s 1983 hit “Bark at the Moon,” off of the album with the same name, and in 1986, he played on Osbourne’s “The Ultimate Sin” album, which included the hit single “Shot in the Dark.”
Osbourne offered his support to Lee in a statement shared with TMZ on Tuesday.
“It’s been 37 years since I’ve seen Jake E. Lee, but that still doesn’t take away from the shock of hearing what happened to him today,” Osbourne said. “It’s just another senseless act of gun violence. I send my thoughts to him and his beautiful daughter, Jade. I just hope he’ll be OK.”
Classic rock-focused radio host Eddie Trunk, in a post on X, suggested Osbourne give Lee a different kind of support following the shooting: a cut of the publishing for songs he helped write 40 years ago.
A dispute over writing credits and royalties are allegedly what has kept Lee and Osbourne apart for the last three decades — even after an attempted reunion in the early 2010s.
Of forming his 2014 metal band Red Dragon Cartel, Lee said in a 2018 interview that he bowed out of making music professionally because “it’s an ugly business.”
“But I did start to get a little itchy after 10 years or so. I was kind of jamming with bands every once and a while here in Las Vegas, and eventually, Kevin Churko, the producer, he initially contacted me because he was doing Ozzy’s albums … He also lives in Las Vegas, about what it would take for me to come back and play with Ozzy,” he said.
The musician also previously founded the band Badlands with former Black Sabbath members Ray Gillen and Eric Singer. Red Dragon Cartel have released two studio albums, one in 2014 and the other in 2018.
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