In interviews for Rolling Stone’s recent deep profile on Ozzy Osbourne and his health struggles, he shared many funny and revealing tales about his friends and himself. They have now released what couldn’t fit in that story. A couple of excerpts follows...
- Randy Rhoads, the first guitarist Osbourne worked with after Black Sabbath, wasn’t a big Eddie Van Halen fan.
Before joining Osbourne’s band, Rhoads had played guitar in the glam-rock group Quiet Riot, which had been gigging on the Sunset Strip at the same time as Van Halen. Both Rhoads (who was recently recognized by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) and Van Halen were guitarists to watch in the mid-1970s, playing with a similar flare and incorporating finger-tapping into their fleet-fingered solos. Still, Eddie Van Halen became a guitar hero before Rhoads, thanks to Van Halen’s immediate success.
“I heard recently that Eddie [Van Halen] said he taught Randy all his licks… he never,” Osbourne says. “To be honest, Randy didn’t have a nice thing to say about Eddie. Maybe they had a falling out or whatever, but they were rivals.”
- Ozzy understands his influence as one of heavy metal’s innovators - he just doesn’t always fully get it.
“Bands on the Ozzfest would say, ‘Man, Sabbath influenced me,'” Osbourne says, looking perplexed. “I’d listen to some of them, and I’d go, ‘I guess I can hear a bit of Sabbath there.’ But other bands, I’d be like, ‘What the fuck is going on?'” He growls in his best death-metal vomit voice: “Death, die, arrrgh.” “Man, what the fuck is that all about?” he asks. “But then again, we gave somebody a stage.”
Read more at Rolling Stone.
Ozzy released his new album, Patient Number 9, on September 9 via Epic. Tomorrow, Friday, September 16, he'll will launch a new 3-part video series, "A Look Inside Patient Number 9". A teaser for Episode 1, entitled "When Ozzy Calls", can be viewed below:
Produced by Andrew Watt, Patient Number 9 marks Ozzy’s 13th solo studio album. It’s heavy, it’s hard-hitting, it’s historic - it’s everything you’d want from an Ozzy record and maybe more. Working with producer Watt for the second time, Ozzy welcomed a dynamic A-list featured guests. For the first time ever, Black Sabbath co-founder, guitarist, and riff-master Tony Iommi appears on an Ozzy solo album.
The record also boasts guitarists Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Mike McCready of Pearl Jam, and longstanding righthand man and six-string beast Zakk Wylde who plays on the majority of the tracks. For the bulk of the album, Chad Smith of Red Hot Chili Peppers held down drums, while the late Taylor Hawkins of Foo Fighters appears on three songs. Old friend and one-time Ozzy band member Robert Trujillo of Metallica plays bass on most of the album’s tracks, with Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses and Chris Chaney supplying bass on a few songs.
Order Patient Number 9 here.
Tracklisting:
"Patient Number 9" (feat. Jeff Beck)
"Immortal" (feat. Mike McCready)
"Parasite" (feat. Zakk Wylde)
"No Escape From Now" (feat. Tony Iommi)
"One Of Those Days" (feat. Eric Clapton)
"A Thousand Shades" (feat. Jeff Beck)
"Mr. Darkness" (feat. Zakk Wylde)
"Nothing Feels Right" (feat. Zakk Wylde)
"Evil Shuffle" (feat. Zakk Wylde)
"Degradation Rules" (feat. Tony Iommi)
"Dead And Gone"
"God Only Knows"
"Darkside Blues"
"Patient Number 9" video:
"One Of Those Days" video:
Last week (Thursday, September 8), Ozzy performed the halftime show for the Los Angeles Rams season opener at SoFi Stadium on the eve of the release of his Patient Number 9 album. Because that performance was only seen by game attendees (NBC also aired a short clip of during the game telecast), Ozzy has obtained the full performance to share with his fans.
Ozzy was joined by longtime band members Zakk Wylde and Tommy Clufetos, along with Chris Chaney (Jane’s Addiction) and Patient Number 9 producer Andrew Watt (who also worked with Ozzy’s on 2020’s Ordinary Man album) for a medley of the album’s title track, along with his legendary classic (and popular sports anthem) “Crazy Train.” Watch the performance below:
(Randy Rhoads photo - The Record Plant 1977, by Ron Sobol)
