Ozzy Osbourne recorded a whole album with rock legend Steve Vai that is “sitting on the shelf”.
The Grammy-winning musician, producer and songwriter has revealed that he and the 74-year-old Black Sabbath frontman – who recently announced his retirement from touring due to debilitating health issues – recorded “some pretty good stuff” but he has “no control” over whether or not the music is released.
The former Whitesnake guitarist – who has made music with the likes of Alice Cooper, Motörhead and Mary J. Blige – told the music site Eonmusic: “Well, I’m sitting on a whole Ozzy record, and it’s like the GASH record — not ‘like’ the Gash record, but it’s a project that I recorded that’s sitting on the shelf.
“I don’t have any control over it or rights to it, obviously, but we did record some pretty good stuff.”
The pair were only meant to record one song together but got on so well, they ended up with a whole album.
Steve, 62, recalled: “Ozzy and I got carried away because we were having a lot of fun, and we ended up recording a lot of stuff, and then we started scheming, ‘Hey, let’s make a new record.’ And all that was fine and good, and we got excited about it until the hammer came down, and they basically said, ‘What are you doing? No, you’ve just got to take a song from Vai and finish your record. We’re already into it for this much money, and Vai is expense,’ so it worked out perfect, really.”
He revealed one of the tracks was a reworked version of VAI/GASH’s ‘Danger Zone’.
Steve continued: “One of the songs was [VAI / GASH’s] ‘Danger Zone’. I had already written it, and it was already done — it was a GASH track — and I thought, ‘Well, maybe he’d like this’, and I reworked it a bit, but it’s on the shelf.”
And another track from his 1996 LP ‘Fire Garden’.
He added: “There’s also a song called ‘Dyin’ Day’ that’s on my ‘Fire Garden’ album.
“That song originally had lyrics, and that was one.”
Steve admitted it was nerve-wracking following in the footsteps of Ozzy’s previous guitar players, including the legendary late Randy Rhoads, so he came up with a unique and “accessible” style.
He explained: “I thought, ‘Okay, you’re going to work with Ozzy, and all these incredible guitar players have played with Ozzy. What are you going to do?’ I was not going to be conventional.
“Yeah, that’s not me as you know, but I had to be accessible, so I thought, ‘I’m going to use an octave divider on everything.”
From the pair’s sessions in the 1990s, the pair co-wrote ‘My Little Man’, which ended up on Ozzy’s 1995 LP ‘Ozzmosis’.