Ozzy Osbourne has announced that a star-studded list of guitar heroes will appear on his forthcoming album. Some of the names include his former Black Sabbath bandmate Tony Iommi, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and longtime collaborator Zakk Wylde.
Speaking on his show Ozzyspeaks, hosted on his Sirius XM channel, Ozzy’s Boneyard, the frontman declares, "On this new album, I'm working with Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Tony Iommi and Zakk [Wylde]."
Elaborating on his decision to work with the various artists, he continues, "You just write the song and you just ask them to sing [or play] what you [give them]. The good thing is it's interesting to work with somebody else. But the bad thing is if it don't work, you can't [just let it go] 'cause they'll get all pissed off.”
Elsewhere, the vocalist reveals that Eric Clapton has already recorded a "very good" guitar solo for the project, but adding that the guitar legend had a slight grievance about some of the song's lyrics: "Eric Clapton, on this new record, one of the lyrics was about Jesus, and he wasn’t sure about that." explains Ozzy. "But it was all right in the end… [The solo he did] is very good."
Joining the selection of legendary axe-slingers, The Prince Of Darkness confirmed last year that Metallica’s Rob Trujillo, Foo Fighters’ Taylor Hawkins and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith were also to feature.
There is no official release date for the new album as of yet, but in May of 2021, Ozzy revealed that "13 or 14 really strong songs” were already in the works, so the follow up to 2020's No Ordinary Man might not be too far off the horizon.
Andrew Watt, producer of Ordinary Man, will also be returning on production duties. “[Andrew] goes in with a band, he gets some things going, and I’ll go, ‘Yeah, I like that,’ ‘No, I don’t like that,’ ‘That’s okay'", explains Ozzy, detailing his and Watt's creative process.
"We’ve got, like, 13 [or] 14 really strong songs. When I get something really special, I go, ‘Yes, this is a winner.’ There’s one [song] called Patient Number Nine. It’s one we wrote about Sharon [Osbourne] and I.”
