Ozzy Osbourne’s New ‘Ordinary Man’ LP Band Includes Duff McKagan, Chad Smith
Ozzy Osbourne has assembled quite a rhythm section for Ordinary Man, his first new solo album in a decade.
Guns N' Roses bassist Duff McKagan and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith join producer and guitarist Andrew Watt as Osbourne's backing band for the new LP, which is due in early 2020.
Ordinary Man will be Osbourne's first solo effort since 2010’s Scream, and his first overall since he reunited with Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler for 2013's 13.
You can listen to lead track, “Under the Graveyard," below.
"This album was a gift from my higher power -- it is proof to me that you should never give up," Osbourne said in a press release. "It all started when [daughter] Kelly comes in and says, 'Do you want to work on a Post Malone song?" he explained. "My first thing was, 'Who the fuck is Post Malone?' I went to [producer] Andrew [Watt]'s house, and he said we will work really quick."
The quality of the resulting track, "Take What You Want," helped convince Osbourne, who has been forced to postpone his farewell tour several times as a result of a series of health issues, to resume work on his own music.
"After we finished that song, he said, 'Would you be interested in starting an album?'" Osbourne recalled. "I said, 'That would be fucking great,' but now I am thinking I don't want to be working in a basement studio for six months! And in just a short time, we had the album done. Duff and Chad came in and we would go in and jam during the day, and I would go work out the songs in the evenings. I previously had said to Sharon I should be doing an album, but in the back of my mind I was going, 'I haven't got the fucking strength.' But Andrew pulled it out of me. I really hope people listen to it and enjoy it, because I put my heart and soul into this album."
Osbourne previously credited the nine-song Ordinary Man as the "catalyst" that helped give him the strength to recover from his health maladies. “The album was all finished in four weeks," he explained. "I said to Sharon that I didn’t feel like I’d made an album because we haven’t ended up screaming at each other.”
Noting that the work had ended a period of “lying in my own self-pity for months,” he added that "if it wasn’t for making this record, I would still be in traction, thinking, ‘I’m going to be lying here forever.' … I’ve missed music so badly. My fans are so loyal and so good. Up until making the album, I thought I was dying. But that got me off my arse. ... It’s the greatest album I’ve done.”