Welcome to the Deep Dive. It's really great to
have you with us today. Yeah, thanks for joining
us. We've got a really wild one today. We really
do. I want you to imagine something for a second.
Imagine being at the absolute pinnacle of your
career, right? You're playing to sold -out arenas
worldwide, making millions, and then you just
decide to... Well, you just walk away from the
machine. You just pack it in. Right. You go home
and you officially retire. But then a few short
years later, you come roaring back with a massive
multi -platinum return. But this return completely
reconfigures your sound and honestly, your entire
creative process. And it's never a smooth transition
when that happens. Exactly. So today's mission
is to explore that exact scenario. We were looking
at the incredibly chaotic creation, the scrapped
recording sessions, and the somewhat paradoxical
success of Ozzy Osbourne's 1995 studio album,
Osmosis. The narrative behind the specific record
is really a masterclass in how messy and, frankly,
psychologically taxing the music industry can
be behind closed doors. It really is. And for
our source today, we're relying on a comprehensively
detailed Wikipedia article that breaks down the
entire history of the album. Yeah, it goes deep
into the intense production. and its deeply fractured
reception. It provides a stark look at the friction
between an artist's vision and a record label's
commercial demands. Especially during a really
transitional era in rock music. So we want to
extract the ultimate insights from the making
of this album. We're going to figure out how
a supposed permanent retirement turned into a
comeback fraught with psychological warfare in
the recording studio. Yeah. Okay, let's unpack
this. So to set the stage, coming off the absolute
juggernaut that was No More Tears in 1991, Ozzy
was at the top of the mountain. He was huge.
Massive. And he called the accompanying tour
the No More Tours Tour. Which is pretty clear.
Right, a definitive statement. He was burned
out on the lifestyle, the touring, the relentless
cycle of the industry. He basically just wanted
out. But his retirement... Didn't last very long
at all. And the reason he gave for coming back
is honestly one of the most relatable things
you will ever read from a legendary rock front
man. It really humanizes him. It does. When talking
about his return to music, Ozzy joked, and I
quote, he said, if you stayed at home day in
and day out for three years with your wife and
a house full of screaming kids, you'd want to
get back out on the road too. It's just so funny.
You have this larger than life figure of heavy
metal essentially admitting that mundane domestic
life was driving him up the wall. Yeah. And most
people listening to this have probably experienced
that feeling, you know, being trapped in a chaotic
house and just needing an escape. How long would
you last before needing a break? Probably not
three years. Right. But for Ozzy, that escape
just happens to be a multimillion dollar recording
studio and a tour bus. Right. Exactly. So he
decides to end the hiatus. And when you are making
a grand return like this, you don't just throw
together a garage band. The personnel brought
in Fraz Hosis was a legitimate supergroup. Oh,
absolutely. You had his longtime guitarist, Zach
Wild, back in the fold. You had Geezer Butler
coming in on bass, and Dean Castronovo was brought
in on drums. And that specific rhythm section
is crucial to understand. How so? Well, Geezer
Butler brings that classic, heavy, swinging groove
that defined early Black Sabbath. But then you
pair him with Dean Castronovo, who has a much
more modern, aggressive, and highly precise attack.
It creates a specific tension. Exactly. Exactly.
Tension in the rhythm tracks. And on top of that,
they brought in Rick Wakeman to play the Mellotron
on tracks like Perry Mason and I Just Want You.
Which is wild. Putting a 1970s prog rock tape
replay keyboard on a mid -90s heavy metal record
is a massive creative swing. It is. It gives
those tracks a dense, almost gothic, psychedelic
atmosphere that you wouldn't normally expect
from an Ozzy solo record. And it was the first
and only Ozzy album to feature that specific
combination of Butler, Cacernovo, and Wakeman.
The pedigree of musicianship in that room was
just staggering. They were building a massive
sonic architecture. But here's where it gets
really interesting. Because the guitarist situation
wasn't always just Zach Wild providing those
massive riffs. Right. Originally, guitar virtuoso
Steve Vai was heavily involved in the project.
He and Ozzy were writing songs together back
in 1994, trying to forge new direction for the
comeback. But out of all the material they worked
on together, only one song, My Little Man, actually
made the final cut for osmosis only one yeah
the wikipedia article notes that vi reportedly
left the project due to a falling out with aussie
and when you think about their respective styles
it makes total sense that they might clash they
are very different musicians vi is an absolute
technical alien he deals in complex polyrhythms
bizarre scales avant -garde composition aussie's
roots are in straightforward meat and potatoes
blues based doom metal Mashing those two musical
philosophies together is inherently volatile.
So the friction there seems inevitable. But the
real bombshell from the source material isn't
just that they had a falling out, it's what happened
to the music they made. Yes. What's fascinating
here is a detail from a 2023 interview where
Vai revealed that he is, quote, Sitting on a
whole Ozzy album from that time period. That
blows my mind. Somewhere locked in a vault, there
is an entire unreleased album of music written
and recorded by Ozzy Osbourne and Steve Vai from
1994. It's the ultimate music industry white
whale. A completely lost album featuring two
titans of their respective instruments just sitting
on a shelf somewhere because the personal and
creative chemistry dissolved. it really makes
you wonder what that alternate universe version
of the 90s would have looked like if they had
managed to hold it together it really does But
the fragility of the creative process is always
looming over these massive projects. You can
have the budget, the label support, and the talent
in the room, but if the interpersonal dynamics
fracture, the whole thing gets shelved. And the
scrapped Steve Vai project was really just the
beginning of the false starts surrounding Osmosis.
Yeah, because the Vai situation wasn't even the
only time an entire iteration of this album was
thrown in the trash. Not at all. The original
vision for the record was entirely different
from the disc that fans eventually bought and
stored. Before the final version was produced,
the album was actually being helmed by Michael
Wagner. And Wagner was a very known quantity
in Ozzy's camp. He had mixed the incredibly successful
No More Tears album. So it was a safe bet. The
strategy seemed incredibly sound. Reunite Ozzy
with the guy who helped polish his biggest solo
hit. So they were recording at Granny's House
Recording Studio out in Reno, Nevada in early
1994. And they had a totally different rhythm
section for those Reno sessions. Mikey Nez on
bass and Randy Castillo on drums. The stated
intention was to make an album that sounded similar
to No More Tears. And they completely finished
seven songs. They had a working album ready to
go. Ready to go. But the corporate side of the
music business had a very different agenda. According
to the source, Epic Records allegedly demanded
a change in the production style. They absolutely
did not want a No More Tears Part II. They wanted
to pivot. Because to understand why, you have
to look at the music landscape in 1994 and 1995.
Grunge and alternative rock had completely taken
over. Bands like Soundgarden, Alice in Chains,
and Pearl Jam were dominating the era. Which
is brutal. Epic Records essentially looked at
a nearly finished album, paid for all that studio
time in Reno, and told them to start over from
scratch just to chase a trend. Yeah. They took
tracks like Perry Mason, See You on the Other
Side, Tomorrow, and Old L .A. Tonight, and completely
re - re -recorded them with Beinhorn. And they
moved the entire production from the relatively
relaxed environment of Reno, Nevada to high -pressure,
incredibly expensive metropolitan studios in
Paris and New York City. Talk about a shift in
vibe. Exactly. Some of Wagner's original tracks,
like Amy and Living with the Enemy, were relegated
to B -sides. A track called Slow Burn was left
completely unreleased. Think about being the
artist in that situation. You think you're done
with your big comeback record and suddenly you
are relocated across the globe with a new producer,
new studios and new band members. It's exhausting.
And the relationship between Ozzy and this new
producer, Michael Beinhorn, deteriorated rapidly.
The article includes this explosive quote from
Ozzy from 2001. Oh, this quote is intense. It
is. He said. And I quote, after doing Osmosis
with Michael Beinhorn producing, I didn't care
if I never made another album again. There'd
be these fucking mind games. He'd have me singing
all day and then I'd get three quarters through
and he'd go, your voice sounds tired. Let's pick
it up tomorrow. And I knew that the next day
he'd go, your voice has changed. Let's start
again. If we connect this to the bigger picture,
you really start to see the immense crushing
pressure that legacy artists face when they become
caught in the machinery of label demand. Ozzy
was trapped. On one side. Epic Records is demanding
a highly specific, modern, heavy but polished
sound to compete with the alt -rock boom. On
the other side, you have a producer like Beinhorn
employing psychological attrition to get it.
Right. But to play devil's advocate for a moment
here. Sure. Didn't Beinhorn technically do exactly
what he was hired to do? Epic Records wanted
a massive, pristine commercial hit to compete
in a cutthroat 90s market. They brought Beinhorn
in to be the bad guy and push Ozzy past his comfort
zone to achieve a very specific audio standard.
Does the end justify the means in that scenario?
Well, it's the central dilemma of commercial
art, isn't it? Yeah. Beinhorn was pushing for
a highly polished, heavily layered vocal performance
that required endless tracking. But the toll
it takes on the human being behind the microphone
is severe. When you are in a sterile vocal booth
in Paris singing the same chorus 50 times while
the producer constantly moves the goalposts,
you lose your confidence. You lose the spark.
You lose the spontaneous energy of rock and roll.
The environment shifts from a place of musical
expression. into a grueling endurance test. It's
no wonder Ozzy said he didn't care if he ever
made another record. The very thing he came out
of retirement to enjoy doing again was weaponized
against him. Right. So after the Steve -I drama,
the scrapped Reno sessions, the massive label
interference, and the endless mind games in the
vocal booth, logic dictates this album should
have been a bloated, disjointed disaster. Oh,
totally. But Osmosis was an absolute smash hit.
Commercially speaking, the label's gamble paid
off immensely. It hit number four on the U .S.
Billboard 200, which at the time was the highest
position Ozzy had ever achieved on that chart
as a solo artist. It had serious momentum. By
the end of 1995, it was certified platinum. And
by April 1999, the RIAA certified it double platinum.
Billboard magazine noted it sold well over three
million copies worldwide. Wow. It wasn't just
coasting on his legacy. It was actively competing
with the biggest bands of the decade. It also
spawned highly successful radio singles that
dominated the rock charts. Perry Mason hit number
three on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Songs
chart. See You on the Other Side hit number five.
These tracks were ubiquitous on rock radio in
the mid -90s. And he took the whole mass of production
on the road, leaning into the irony of his brief
hiatus by launching the Retirement Sucks tour
in August 1995. A great name. The fans clearly
did not care about the behind the scenes drama,
the scrapped Steve Vai tracks or the producer
mind games. They were just thrilled the Prince
of Darkness was back and touring. But the critics
were a completely different story. Very different.
The critical reception was heavily mixed. And
ironically, the critics specifically targeted
the exact production style that the label had
fought so hard and spent so much money to get.
Right. Stephen Thomas Oluwine from AllMusic heavily
criticized the album's lack of musical evolution.
He pointed the finger squarely at Michael Beinhorn's
modern rock -conscious production. Oluwine noted
that on the surface, the music was undeniably
hard and loud, but it actually sounded, quote,
smooth and processed. Smooth and processed. That
is the exact sonic profile Ozzy was going through,
those grueling... endless vocal takes in Paris
and New York to achieve. And the critics immediately
clocked it as artificial. Yes. Chuck Eddy from
Entertainment Weekly gave the album a C's rating.
He argued that the long running lengths of the
tracks made Osmosis feel like a, quote, parody
of the most overinflated opera. And even the
retrospective reviews have been fairly harsh.
Writers for Blabbermouth and Pop Matters have
criticized it in later years, and Ultimate Classic
Rock ranked it near the bottom of Ozzy's discography,
again pointing to that dense, suffocating production
style. Oh, Loudwire liked it, right? Yeah, a
20th anniversary review on Loudwire was a bit
kinder, calling it a sonically pristine extension
of his hard rock songwriting. But overall, the
critical consensus remains very fractured to
this day. So what does this all mean? We have
a record that sold millions, gave Ozzy his highest
chart peak to date, generated massive rock radio
hits, and packed arenas around the world. But
the people paid to analyze and critique music
thought it was overproduced, heavily processed,
and completely bloated. It perfectly illustrates
the intense dissonance that often exists between
commercial viability and critical artistic integrity.
Epic Records and Michael Beinhorn essentially
engineered a product specifically designed to
sell in the mid -90s rock climate. Right. They
demanded a heavily processed, highly polished
sound that could sit comfortably on a playlist
next to Soundgarden or Stone Temple Pilots. And
purely from a business standpoint, they were
proven absolutely right. The fans bought it by
the millions. But artistically, it alienated
the purists and the critics. The reviewers heard
the endless tracking, the precise drum edits,
and the vocal perfection, and they interpreted
it as a lack of authenticity. They felt the grit,
the danger, and the rawness of traditional heavy
metal had been sanded down into a pristine commercial
commodity. The very sound the producer tortured
Ozzy to achieve was precisely what the critics
disliked. It's a fascinating paradox. The label
manufactured a massive commercial success, but
in doing so, they sacrificed the critical acclaim
that usually comes from an artist feeling free,
dangerous, and unconstrained in the recording
studio. When you listen to a track like Perry
Mason now, you aren't just hearing a heavy metal
song. You are hearing the tangible result of
corporate panic, scrap sessions in Reno, discarded
guitar tracks from a virtuoso, and a legendary
singer being pushed to the brink of walking away
forever inside a vocal booth. It's the sound
of an artist surviving the roofless machinery
of the 1990s music industry. We have covered
some serious ground today. Take a moment and
reflect on everything we've explored in this
deep dive. We started with a highly relatable
false retirement. prompted by a chaotic household.
We uncovered the existence of a legendary, completely
lost Steve Vai album sitting in a vault somewhere.
We navigated the sheer chaos of a record label
throwing a finished album in the trash just to
chase a modern trend. And we witnessed the psychological
toll of a producer's mind games, all leading
to a record that sold millions while simultaneously
dividing the critical establishment. It's a story
that challenges our perception of how hit records
are actually constructed behind the scenes. This
raises an important question When a record label
forces an artist through a mentally grueling,
manipulated production process just to achieve
a perfect commercial sound, does the resulting
multi -platinum success actually justify the
psychological toll taken on that artist? Or are
the true, authentic masterpieces, the raw, unreleased
tapes currently sitting locked away in Steve
Vai's vault? That is a phenomenal question to
leave you with. Thank you so much for joining
us on this deep dive. Keep questioning the stories
behind the media you consume. Keep looking for
those hidden narratives. and we will catch you
on the next one.