Steve Vai admits to speaking a bit carelessly about “sitting on an entire Ozzy album”

Photo by Christopher Carroll ROCK Photography

Steve Vai admits to speaking a bit carelessly about “sitting on an entire Ozzy album”

Former David Lee Roth and Whitesnake guitarist Steve Vai was recently interviewed by Eamon O’Neill for UK’s eonmusic. During the interview, Vai revealed that he was “sitting on an entire Ozzy album”.

Photo by Christopher Carroll ROCK Photography

Vai indicated, “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 that I recorded that’s 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. The interesting thing about that stuff we recorded from a guitar perspective is all of my rhythm guitar parts, I use an octave divider [guitar effect], and that record doesn’t sound like anything else.” This good news of course sparked a flurry of news articles including from Sleaze Roxx whose article was titled “Ozzy Osbourne and Steve Vai recorded an album together which remains unreleased.”

The guitarist has now admitted to speaking a bit carelessly during that interview and apparently he should have described the situation in a different manner.

The following message was posted on Vai‘s Facebook page earlier today:

“In a recent interview I spoke a bit carelessly about “Sitting on an entire Ozzy album” and then the clickbait headlines went viral.

To clarify, Ozzy and I got together back around 96 and spent some time trying to come up with some potential songs for an album that he already had half recorded. That record later came out as “Ozzmosis”. We demoed a handful of tracks and then there was a bunch of tracks I built for him to check out. He ended up picking one song to use on his album and that’s “My Little Man”. It was re-recorded with his band, and it came out great. Only one other demoed track from those sessions had an Ozzy scratch vocal on it and I handed in all the Master demo tapes to the label and kept safety tapes of the tracks I personally built. All in all, there was (is) enough music for a whole record, but those songs would require re-recording. The demos are bumpy road maps but not the goal.

I, like many Ozzy fans, would love if there was a secret hidden Ozzy album somewhere, only to be revealed to our surprised ears at a future time, but it wouldn’t come from those sessions. So sorry for the confusion.”