Ozzy Osbourne is set to release his 13th solo album, Patient Number 9. He sat down with The Sun newspaper to discuss the line-up of legends featuring on the new record. He’s plucked stars from British rock royalty such as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi along with America’s finest, Mike McCready (Pearl Jam), Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Robert Trujillo (Metallica) and Duff McKagan (Guns N’ Roses).
“I’ve never been someone who has guests on albums,” he told The Sun, “You can’t reproduce what they do when you’re playing live but I’m blown away by those people on my record.” Ozzy managed to get the legendary list of names together during Covid, “As usual, America went over the top when the pandemic started. People were buying a thousand f***ing kitchen rolls!” “So they weren’t going on a tour bus and, for about three months, they weren’t even going out at all.”
He went on to say how “gaga” it made him working with artists he admires. On working with Eric Clapton, he says, “He’s f***ing Eric Clapton!” “Nowadays, there are thousands of bands but in the Sixties and early Seventies, there weren’t very many in the business. And Eric Clapton was THE guitar player.”
Someone Ozzy hadn’t worked with before was late drummer Taylor Hawkins. “We were with him the week before he died,” explains Osbourne, “My producer knew him so Taylor came into the studio. He just said, ‘I play for Foo Fighters and Dave Grohl’s my boss’.” “He was a nice, nice man.”
Ozzy says the inspiration for the album’s name, Patient Number 9, is “about being in a lunatic asylum and I should have probably been in a few of those,” he says. The record will be released on 9th September.
Closing the #CommonwealthGames #Birmingham Forever! pic.twitter.com/CE0qFy3gTC
— Ozzy Osbourne (@OzzyOsbourne) August 9, 2022
In 2020, Osbourne told Good Morning America that he had been living with Parkinson’s disease. Despite his challenging diagnosis, Osbourne has not been slowing down. Along with releasing his new album, he’s going on tour and even surprised fans with a performance to close the Commonwealth Games in his hometown of Birmingham.
Ozzy rose to fame as the frontman of Black Sabbath, he went on to have a successful solo career, releasing 12 studio albums, the first seven of which received multi-platinum certifications in the US. He joins fellow Black Sabbath member, Tony Iommi, on two new tracks ‘No Escape From Now’ and ‘Degradation Rules’.
