Ozzy Osbourne always wanted to work with Paul McCartney: “I would die”
There isn’t a single piece of rock and roll history that Ozzy Osbourne hadn’t done by the time he passed away.
Even though he was out of commission in the final years of his life, there’s a good chance that most rock stars would be able to die happy if they accomplished a mere third of what ‘The Prince of Darkness’ was able to do throughout his career. He was practically a walking legend for decades, but there were bound to be more than a few opportunities that ended up falling through the cracks.
Then again, ‘The Ozzman’ was going to be the last person complaining about not being able to work with people. Having someone like Randy Rhoads in a band with you is like a godsend for any other singer, and even if his time with the classical legend was short-lived, Osbourne never took a second of his time onstage for granted, whether that was performing with Black Sabbath all over again or having Zakk Wylde channel his inner Rhoads when working with him later down the line.
But in the past few years, Osbourne seemed to suddenly become a legend all over again. There were parts of The Osbournes that he would have rather not done back in the day, but even after becoming America’s favourite bumbling dad, everyone still loved having him around. The days of being a sinister figure may have been long-gone, but his final albums had a rogues gallery of some of the best in the business working with him.
Duff McKagan and Slash certainly fit the bill when jamming with him, but there are also more than a few artists that work a lot better than most people would think. Osbourne already worked wonders with Post Malone on ‘Take What You Want’, but Malone could return the favour on ‘It’s a Raid’, and even when working on his final album Patient Number Nine, getting Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck to play on his record was a dream come true for a kid that had worshipped the blues band he heard back in the day.
That would have been enough for Osbourne to retire from music altogether, but he felt that getting together with Paul McCartney would have been the final check off of his bucket list. The Beatles had always been his idols ever since he was a little kid, but while the door was open for Macca to add some bass to Osbourne’s record, he remembered getting caught up in too much red tape to get him on the record.
Plans fall through like this all the time in rock and roll, but Osbourne would have continued asking McCartney as much as he could had he had more time, saying, “If Paul McCartney played on my album, I think I would die. To have a Beatle play on my album. I did ask him one time, but he came up with the excuse of, ‘I can’t replace the bass player that was already on there.’ I went, ‘Oh, okay maybe you’re right. Fuckin’ Beatle.’”
While Paul McCartney is the last person on Earth who needs defending, it’s not like he’s exactly experienced in playing metal music. He helped knock down the doors for the genre back when he made ‘Helter Skelter’, but judging by the crew that have worked with Osbourne on more than a few occasions, he certainly wasn’t going to be competing with the kind of chops that Robert Trujillo had when he picked up the bass, either.
Osbourne might not have had that final wish come true by the time he gracefully bowed out, but he didn’t really need a Beatle on his record to prove what he could do. He was one of the greatest frontmen that the world had ever seen for years at that point, and while The Beatles may have been bigger to a certain degree, having a legion of metal fans treating you like a god couldn’t hurt.
