Steve Vai and Ozzy Osbourne’s relationship goes all the way back to the ‘Ozzmosis’ album, and they have been working on and off together on projects for some time. Vai recently revealed to Eonmusic that he has a full Osbourne record that is shelved for the time being. Apparently, it’s some pretty good stuff.
When the duo ended up working together on the album back in the day, it was supposed to be for a few songs to add to the list. However, they got carried away, and before they realized it, they recorded a full album, even though Vai was there only to contribute one track to wrap up the album.
During the process, Vai and Ozzy came up with killer tracks that never made the cut, resulting in the guitarist having a full album that involved quite a number of songs waiting around as he didn’t have any control over what to make with them.
Vai’s words about his collaboration with Ozzy Osbourne read:
“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 I recorded 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.”
He added:
“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 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 an expense,’ so it worked out perfectly.”
The more recent news of Ozzy’s retirement might mean that the tracks they worked together on might never see the light of day. Since he can’t take the road due to his health problems, the Prince of Darkness might not want to release any new music, let alone a full album. All we can do for now is wait and see.
