Rock legend Ozzy Osbourne‘s new album, Patient Number 9, is due on September 9, and will feature guest appearances by fellow veterans, including Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. Among the people he reached out to was Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, who, as per recent interview with Metal Hammer, never responded to the Black Sabbath singer’s request for a guitar solo.
“I don’t even know if he plays any more, but I thought getting Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page meant having the greatest guitarists on the planet,” Ozzy said. “But I never heard from him. Maybe he’d lost his phone or something.”
Ozzy’s new album features a stacked lineup of musicians, including Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo and Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan, Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi, Zakk Wylde, Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme and Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready.
According to Blabbermouth, Page said in 2020 that he had been using his free time during the coronavirius to reconnect with his instrument.
“Under the circumstances of having a lockdown and isolating, I picked up the guitar and made a point of playing the guitar every day,” he said. “Whereas before the lockdown, it had gotten to the point where I was always complaining that I didn’t have enough time to play the guitar because there was all this other stuff that was going on.”
“It’s surprising how many things there are, even with Led Zeppelin, so I was not finding enough time to play the guitar as much as I would like,” he explained. “It was there, but not being played. I thought, that’s not going to be the case. I’m now going to play it. I don’t want to make it sound like I’d locked the guitars away. That wasn’t the case. But there were so many things that kept getting in the way of playing — or playing the way that you need to if you’re exploring the instrument still.”
About playing for fans again, Page said the following: “That was the idea before we locked down. But — but — there’ll be a time when we’ll be able to play, so the thing to do is to think how you’d do it if you did do it, and have some surprises up your sleeve, you know?
“I did think about it,” he continued. “But I thought, I better do some serious practicing first [laughs], because it’s been a long time since [Led Zeppelin’s concert at] the O2. I hope we’ll meet up one day, when I’m doing this mythical show one day.”
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