While Alex Van Halen and Steve Lukather continue work on what is expected to be a final Van Halen album, the drummer has revealed just how close he and Eddie Van Halen came to launching a band with Ozzy Osbourne.
Alex recently confirmed that he and Lukather are developing material recorded during Eddie’s lifetime that was intended as a follow-up to 2012’s A Different Kind of Truth. Yet the electric guitar virtuoso’s legacy might have taken a dramatically different turn had an ambitious early 2000s collaboration with Osbourne not been derailed by a single competing opportunity.
Alex has previously spoken about the Van Halen brothers’ jams with late Chris Cornell — then of Soundgarden and Audioslave — as well as exploratory talks about forming a band with Ozzy. Both projects ultimately stalled for different reasons. The Cornell collaboration, which began taking shape in 2017, was shelved following the singer’s death just months later.
Speaking to Brazilian outlet Kazagastão, Alex revealed that plans to write an album with the Black Sabbath frontman came remarkably close to becoming reality.
“Ed and I met with Sharon [Osbourne, Ozzy’s wife and manager], because we were kind of at a loss as to which direction we wanted to go,” he said, recalling a period around 2000 when Van Halen were in flux.
Their brief tenure with Gary Cherone had ended, and relationships with former singers David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar were strained. Rumors about a new vocalist circulated, with David Coverdale among the names floated. The British singer, however, has consistently dismissed the speculation.
“So we sat with Sharon,” Alex continued. “I mean, it was kind of an interesting evening because she’s a lovely lady. I don’t know what people would say about her, but she’s a lovely lady who really had to fend for herself in a male-dominated world.
“The final thing we talked about was, she says, ‘Okay, it sounds like a good idea. Let’s do that. Let’s make a record together. Only one thing. I have a meeting tomorrow with some people about a television show.’ And the rest is history. That’s how close it got.”
That television show was The Osbournes, which ran for four seasons between 2002 and 2005. The series ultimately took priority, while the Van Halen brothers eventually reunited with Hagar instead. Still, the near-miss remains a tantalizing what-if.
In a previous interview with Rolling Stone, Osbourne confirmed that the TV project won out — and admitted lingering regret.
“Yes, we were discussing it,” he said. “It is something that, if it had come to fruition, would have been phenomenal.
“Eddie and Alex were great friends of mine for a very long time, and it’s a regret of mine that we never got it together. The Osbournes [reality show] got in the way of creating new music at that time, unfortunately.”
In hindsight, the experience left its mark. Filming — which effectively took over his Beverly Hills home — proved far more taxing than he anticipated.
“I thought it was gonna be a piece of cake, but you have a camera crew living in your house for three years and see how you feel at the end of it,” he once told Metal Hammer. “You feel like a fucking laboratory rat. It got to the point where I was falling apart emotionally.”
Elsewhere, Zakk Wylde has said Ozzy hoped they would write another album together after Back to the Beginning, one that would return to their 1990s sound. And Jack Osbourne has recalled the moment at Ozzy’s final gig that defined his partnership with Tony Iommi.
