Ozzy Osbourne released Ozzmosis in the U.S. on October 24, 1995, returning from a brief retirement with his seventh studio album. The band around him paired Zakk Wylde’s guitar and Geezer Butler’s bass with drummer Deen Castronovo and keyboardist Rick Wakeman. “Perry Mason” opened the record, but the path to that lineup had begun with Osbourne trying a different way of writing.
At first, Osbourne had been trying to work out what a life away from music looked like. In an October 1995 interview with John Christ for RIP, he described spending a year at home as a husband and father before telling Sharon Osbourne he wanted to work again. Wylde was occupied with Pride & Glory, so Osbourne began working with other writers, including Jim Vallance, Steve Vai and Mark Hudson. He went to Vancouver to write with Vallance and found the approach productive. Working with professional writers appealed to him because the sessions stayed focused; he contrasted that with band sessions that could disappear into conversation. The songs were melodic, he said, but the album was still heavy. “I’ve never had so much of an arsenal of songs in my life!” he told Christ.
One result was “I Just Want You,” which Osbourne co-wrote with Vallance. The album also retained “My Little Man” from his work with Vai, although the released recording doesn’t feature Vai playing guitar. His official website’s account of the sessions explains that Wylde rerecorded the guitar parts and that this was the sole Osbourne–Vai composition included on the album. Wylde took over the performance of a song another guitarist had helped create.
“My Little Man” also gave Osbourne room to sing from a parent’s perspective, offering reassurance while recognizing that he couldn’t protect a child forever. A related concern runs through “See You on the Other Side,” co-written with Wylde and Lemmy Kilmister: its narrator faces separation while hoping for a reunion beyond death. Read together, the songs give Ozzmosis a recurring concern with the people left behind. Affection and the fear of loss have as much of a place in these lyrics as their darker imagery.
Getting that material onto tape took months. Producer Michael Beinhorn recalled in a January 2019 eonmusic interview that assembling the songs and coordinating the sessions had been a lengthy job, with tracking eventually taking place in Paris. For Castronovo’s drums, he used a two-inch, eight-track analog recording system. The care he put into capturing the kit also explains a frustration he carried afterward: Beinhorn felt the final mix had lost the depth and fine detail of the original recordings. He welcomed the album’s commercial success, but his account makes clear that the released record didn’t fully match what he had heard in the studio.
Osbourne was already back onstage before Ozzmosis reached stores. His Retirement Sucks tour ran through 1995 and 1996, and on the day of the U.S. release he played Memorial Hall in Kansas City, Kansas. The album reached No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and earned double-platinum certification from the RIAA. “Perry Mason” and “See You on the Other Side” both became top-10 Billboard rock singles.
