Long before Mike McCready linked up with Ozzy Osbourne on 2022’s Patient Number 9 album, the Pearl Jam guitarist tried to bring the Prince of Darkness a guitar riff idea.
Speaking with the State of Love & Trust podcast, McCready says that he originally came up with the riff for a possible second album with Mad Season, the grunge supergroup that also featured Layne Staley of Alice in Chains. He then pitched it to Ozzy around the time of his 2001 album, Down to Earth.
“I brought that riff to Ozzy, and I was playing it through a little amp,” McCready recalls. “He listened to it, and he just wasn’t into it.”
He adds, “I should’ve probably done a really good job of recording it and bringing him the original, maybe.”
McCready did end up collaborating with Ozzy about 20 years later on the aforementioned Patient Number 9, lending his guitar to a song called “Immortal.”
In other Pearl Jam-related happenings, the band has announced an auction for a painting done by the artist Munk One in real time as frontman Eddie Vedder was performing a solo show in Los Angeles in 2022. The piece is signed by Vedder and Munk.
