At the age of 25, Phil Soussan was jamming with Jimmy Page and being offered a place in his new band, The Firm. At the same time he was also presented a place in Ozzy Osbourne’s band. He chose to go with Ozzy, replacing Bob Daisley, and appeared on 1986 album The Ultimate Sin, gaining a co-writing credit on hit track Shot in the Dark.
It had been a fast rise through the music scene in London, England. “It was a very small musical community,” Soussan tells Bass Player. “The minute people started to know you, your name got around pretty quick. I started to get a reputation as someone who was pretty solid.”
He says the secret to his success is simple: “A very important thing is being accountable. About 10 percent of it is talent and the rest is attitude, reliability and dependability.”
Post-Ozzy, Soussan worked with Billy Idol, Vince Neil and Steve Lukather. Lately, he’s been recording with Last in Line with Def Leppard’s Vivian Campbell, while working on his next solo record.
No matter what he’s doing, passion steers his muse. “I have a fascination with bass players like your Paul McCartney, Sting and Geddy Lee – people who put together things as one person.”
What led to Ozzy calling you to replace Bob Daisley?
“Bob and I had crossed paths many times. Often there’d be a couple of really great bands working next door to each other, and I’d get to meet those people. Simon Kirke [Free and Bad Company drummer] asked me to play with a band he put together, and I ended up getting that gig. It was a called Wildlife – it was signed to Swan Song Records and we were managed by Led Zeppelin manager Peter Grant.
“That sort of fizzled out, and I got a call to ask if I’d be interested in playing with Jimmy Page – so, of course, I jumped on that. Jimmy was getting back into playing; he’d not been doing very much outside of his studio work for some time.”
Is that when he was putting together The Firm?
“Yes. Initially, It was Jimmy, drummer Chris Slade, and myself. We were playing for weeks and months, rehearsing in a famous room in London called Nomis. We’d just have fun playing the songs we liked and messing around with new ideas.”
What led to the Ozzy gig?
“During that time, Ozzy saw me on TV doing a gig. I knew people in his camp, and I got a call from his secretary, who said, ‘I’ve got this guy who wants to talk with you,’ she put Ozzy on the phone and he said, ‘Why don’t you come down and meet me?’ So, I got an audition amongst a lot of other people. But I went and played, and I got the gig.
“The dilemma I had was, ‘Which do I do now?’ I loved Jimmy, and I really wanted to work with him – but he said, ‘Look, we’re not really going to do for at least another year and a half.’ We knew Paul Rodgers was going to be involved, but he hadn’t started. So Jimmy said, ‘If you want to go work straight away, do the Ozzy gig. If not, we’d love to have you.’
“I opted to do Ozzy, and I left. Of course, Jimmy and The Firm eventually came together, and I stayed good friends with him. He’s a wonderful, wonderful man and a beautiful human being. I absolutely adore him.”
It’s interesting to think about how The Firm might have sounded had you stayed on, instead of Tony Franklin joining.
“Yeah! Tony was playing with Roy Harper, so that was an easy switch. Before that we’d worked on some stuff. There’s a couple of bits and pieces on Firm songs which I know I came up with – but that’s okay. I was just thrilled to be there. It remains one of the absolute highlights of my career.”
What was it like working with a volatile guy like Ozzy in the studio?
“I don’t think Ozzy was an unreliable person. He was very serious about what he did. There was never any issue of that nature. We got to work and all of us showed up. We often worked in the studio, and there was no reason for Ozzy to be there. Randy Castillo and Jake E. Lee would run over stuff for when Ozzy did come down.
The Ultimate Sin had many of the bass parts pre-written by Bob Daisley. How did you handle that?
“Obviously, Bob’s lines were classic. Whenever you’re doing stuff like that, you have to pay tribute to the song, arrangements and parts – replicate them as honestly as possible. My job wasn’t to go in there and do anything but perfectly replicate those lines.”
Did you have any issue doing that?
“I was happy to do that. It was a lot of fun. Bob’s playing, especially on those two early Ozzy albums, is just so incredible. I dare say it’s had some influence over me through time from playing all that stuff, so there was some positive from that.
You co-wrote the album’s biggest hit, Shot in the Dark. How did that go?
“It had been written a long, long time before. We had all the songs for The Ultimate Sin but they felt we needed one more. They had some ideas and were tossing things around, saying, ‘Try this, let’s try that.’
Zakk Wylde pulled out a very unfashionable Les Paul – in the ‘80s, you couldn’t give one away for firewood!
“Finally, they turned to the new guys, me and Randy, who hadn’t written as much. I had three songs that I played then, and one of them was Shot in the Dark. Ozzy said, ‘That’s it – that’s what we’re gonna do!’”
What gear did you use to record The Ultimate Sin?
“I had some really terrific instruments at the time. There was something strange – the producer kept thinking that every single bass was somehow not intonated correctly. Frankly, I couldn’t hear what he was talking about!
“But I was just taking direction; I was like, ‘Okay, whatever you say.’ So I had Music Mans, Fenders, you name it; I had a Steinberger and I ended up with a Yamaha BB-3000, which the producer felt was intonated correctly, so that’s what I used.
“Along with that I used Marshall 900s – great bass amps which, for some reason, they never sold in America. They were kind of rack-mounted and they went into 4x12 cabinets. Pretty simple but incredibly musical and sweet.”
You were still with Ozzy after Jake E. Lee left. Do you remember when Zakk Wylde auditioned?
“After Jake, so many guitar players came in. They had a similar, saturated sound that they were using back in the ‘80s. They were using racks of effects, and it almost all sounded the same. There was just a lack of cutting definition that you’d find with Gary Moore or someone like that.
“Then Zakk came in and said, ‘I don’t have any of my gear. Do you have an amp I can use?’ We said, ‘Yeah, we’ve got a Marshall sitting in the corner. Nobody’s touched it.’ He opened his case and pulled out a very unfashionable Les Paul – in the ’80s, you couldn’t give away a Les Paul for firewood!
“He plugged it into the Marshall, turned it up, and all of a sudden the air started moving in the room. We hadn’t seen that with anyone else so that was a huge, huge thing.
“So many people who came to audition were great, but they didn’t have the cutting sound that was needed at that time. It had been impressed upon us that Ozzy would be looking for that sound; Zakk had that sound.”
After Ozzy, you worked with Billy Idol. Did your rig change much?
“It was a different style. With Ozzy, I found I could play around with my basslines a bit more. But with Billy it was like, ‘You’re the one who’s driving the song.’ I started playing Spector basses – I think I was one of their first endorsing artists.
We’d be working out very tight arrangements… then if Steve Lukather went off to do some wild, crazy stuff, we were right behind him
“I was living in America then, and my love affair with Marshall had come to a close because they weren’t common. So I went to Ampeg and I’ve been with Ampeg ever since. With Billy Idol, it was just straight-ahead playing the parts, getting through the songs that were already there, and trying to create atmosphere with the bass guitar.
In the early ’90s, you worked with Vince Neil and co-wrote a lot of the songs that ended up on his Exposed album – but Robbie Crane is credited as playing bass.
“I don’t know that he did; I think I played bass on a lot of it. There may have been some stuff that got changed afterward. I had originally penned the songs for an upcoming Ozzy album. After Shot in the Dark, they said to me, ‘We’re going to have a new record and we’d like you to write on there.’ So I took time off and started writing songs.
“To make a long story short, I wasn’t able to cut the deal that I wanted with Ozzy regarding my publishing. We negotiated back and forth and it just wasn’t working out. So, those songs were the basis of what I took to Vince Neil.”
What happened when it came time to record with Vince?
“Vince and I sat down and decided what we liked and what was going to work best. By the time we went to do the album, there was a combination of things that went sadly wrong. His manager passed away unexpectedly and everything started falling apart.
”We’d been a tight unit, but suddenly there was a lot of arguing and differences. It got to the point where I just said, ‘This isn’t what I signed up for.’ I found it frustrating.
“I said to Vince, ‘Hey, listen, we wrote some great songs. We’re friends. If you want to get together to write more stuff, just call me. You know where I am.’ I moved on. Years later, he did call me, and I ended up going on the road with him. We’re still friends; I love Vince. He’s a good guy and I appreciate our friendship.”
What was it like working with Steve Lukather on his album Luke?
“He’s not a bad guitar player, is he?! We had incredible chemistry. Sometimes, you sit down to write with someone and you’re not sure what to do. But we’d have 10 minutes, pick up a couple of guitars, and have the basis of a song. It happened without fail.
“He’d come over and say, ‘I’ve only got 20 minutes; I’ve got to be somewhere,’ and we’d pick up instruments and come up with one or two ideas. Then I’d sit around and piece stuff together. Sometimes I did more on songs; sometimes I did less, but we had a very successful writing partnership.
It’s an older style of playing with Last in Line… there’s a great deal of interplay between bass and guitar
“With Luke, a lot of stuff is instrumented around the guitar parts. We’d be working out very tight arrangements which correlated with what the guitar was doing. Then if Steve went off to do some wild, crazy stuff, we were right behind him.”
How does that differ from what you’ve been doing with Vivian Campbell in Last in Line?
“It’s an older style of playing with Last in Line, where the basslines are almost independent. They’re not tied to whatever else is going on, so there’s a great deal of interplay between the bass and guitar. Vivian is one of those players who plugs straight into an amp and that’s it – nothing else. You really get the sense of the air in the room moving.”
What’s next for you?
“Last in Line is taking a bit of time off for various reasons that I can’t really get into, as far as the things Vivian is going through. We have another album we’re supposed to do. We usually come in with nothing, plug in, play, jam, and see what comes out.
“In the meantime, I’ve been playing a lot with Carmine Appice and working on a new solo record. I've done two solo albums; I don't do them frequently, but it's time for another.”
