What Held Up a Potential Ozzy Osbourne-Van Halen Brothers Album?

Alex Van Halen confirmed that talks were had about a potential album pairing he and Eddie Van Halen with Ozzy Osbourne, but one significant piece of pop culture history stood in the way.

In a new chat with Gastão Moreira of Brazil's KazaGastão, the drummer confirmed the frequently floated rumor that there was the potential for an Ozzy-Van Halen brothers collab. In fact, it got as far as the discussion stages, but ultimately Ozzy's life took another turn at the time and the pairing never got off the ground.

Why Didn't the Ozzy Osbourne-Van Halen Brothers Album Ever Happen?

There had been much respect between Ozzy Osbourne and Van Halen over the years as Black Sabbath had famously taken Van Halen out on one of their earliest tours. A friendship had continued over the years and so it was not too much of a stretch for the Van Halen brothers to reach out.

Within the chat, Alex explained, "Ed and I met with Sharon because we were kind of at a loss of which direction we wanted to go. That was probably around 2000, because it was right before the TV show. The next day they had that TV show."

Van Halen praised Sharon as "a lovely lady" and shared that they had come to the conclusion by the end of their meeting that it was something they both wanted to pursue. But there was one hold up.

"We got together and the final thing we talked about was she says, 'Ok, 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,'" says Alex. "And the rest is history. That's how close it got."

The Osbournes reality series was eventually greenlit for television, things got busier for Ozzy and the pairing with the Van Halen brothers never came to fruition.

Alex Van Halen Speaks With Brazil's KazaGastão

What Else Has Been Said About the Ozzy-Van Halen Brothers Pairing?

The oft-rumored potential collaboration has come up in conversations before. Back in 2024, Alex Van Halen told Rolling Stone, "When you get a dog, you don't expect it to be a cat. When you get an Ozzy, you get Ozzy. Play the music, he'll sing and it's gonna be great."

"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 got in the way of creating new music at that time, unfortunately," he added.

In 2020, Ozzy himself shared on an episode of SiriusXM's Ozzy Speaks that Eddie had once drunk dialed him asking him to sing for the band.

"He phoned me up one time and asked me if I wanted to sing in his band — way after Sammy [Hagar had exited the band]. I think he was a bit drunk," recalled Osbourne. ""We've all done one of them — calling at four o'clock in the morning, going, [intentionally slurs speech]."

Within their respective timelines, this potential meeting about a possible collaboration would have occurred in the period between Ozzy's Ozzmosis album (1995) and before his 2001 album Down to Earth. As for Van Halen, they had split with Gary Cherone in 1999 after the Van Halen III album and they were still a couple years away from reuniting with Sammy Hagar in 2003.

While Ozzy and the Van Halen brothers never came to fruition, see some of the great rock and metal collaborations of the 1990s that did happen in the gallery below.