The only musician Ozzy Osbourne wanted to work with: “He’s incredible”
As one of the most notorious hellraisers in music history, Ozzy Osbourne might have a long list of personal regrets. Yet, he can’t have many in the writing and production department. After all, he’s pioneered metal, is widely influential, and has worked with an expansive cast of other celebrated figures. Whether this be the other Black Sabbath original members, such as Tony Iommi, or the late Randy Rhoads from his early solo career, he’s triumphant in merging his talent with others.
Although Osbourne holds a somewhat comical and larger-than-life essence today due to his appearances in The Osbournes and his eye-opening memoir I Am Ozzy, which fully outlines how madcap his life has been, there’s much more to him than meets the eye. Sure, he might have bitten the head off a bat and urinated on The Alamo, but he’s also a lifelong lover of great music and not just metal.
He might be ‘The Prince of Darkness’ but his favourite songs of all time are a surprising collection that features The Animals, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and, most surprisingly, Elton John. It also became evident early in Sabbath’s career that Osbourne eschewed the essence of a metal titan, with him very interested in the exciting electronic developments of the era. He even wrote the spacey keyboard line in ‘Who Are You?’ from 1973’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath on his kitchen table.
When discussing the record with Steve Rosen in 1974 – available at The Tapes Archive – Osbourne not only revealed his love of the latest technological developments in music but, in this vein, also the name of the only musician he wanted to work with. This was Yes keyboard maestro Rick Wakeman, who played the synth on the album’s ‘Sabbra Cadabra’.
While his solo career was still years off, Osbourne was full of praise for Wakeman and said he would be the only one he wanted to work with if he were ever to leave Sabbath. At the time, Wakeman was hot property and had already worked with David Bowie.
Rambling, he said: “Rick Wakeman is, he’s incredible, man. I love that guy. I love him. I really do. Any other guy in the world. And it would never happen. That I hope the band never splits. But if the band ever did split. And it’s very, very fucking remote. Very remote. It never will be, you know? And if it did. And I choose another guy to work with. I think I’d choose Rick.”
“He can blow anyone off the fucking stage. I think he’d wipe the floor with Keith Emerson as far as I think,” he added, before celebrating Wakeman’s sociable character and nouse in the studio.
As the potential of a solo career had already been discussed, Osbourne was asked whether he would have the prog legend on a potential record. “I really would, yeah,” the Black Sabbath frontman said. “I feel that it wouldn’t be me. You know? Ozzy Osborne and Rick Wakeman, and it would probably go anyway on the strength of Rick Wakeman’s success on his own anyway. I digged to work with the guy I really would.”
At the time, Osbourne couldn’t ever see the collaboration happening because they were tied down to record labels for what seemed like an eternity. Never say never, though. After a brief retirement in 1991, Osbourne returned with Ozzmosis in 1995, an all-star album that featured Wakeman playing Mellotron on ‘Perry Mason’ and ‘I Just Want You’.
