Ozzy Osbourne says Eddie Van Halen once asked him to join Van Halen

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Eddie Van Halen once asked Ozzy Osbourne to join Van Halen, the former Black Sabbath frontman has revealed.

Van Halen and Black Sabbath toured together back in the ‘70s and, when paying tribute to the late guitarist earlier this month, Osbourne said every time he saw the star “it was fun”.

• Eddie Van Halen, 1955 – 2020: a colossus who turned guitar solos into a firework display

Speaking on the latest episode of his SiriusXM radio show Ozzy’s Boneyard, Osbourne said Van Halen had “phoned me up one time, asked me if I wanted to sing in his band”.

Although Osbourne didn’t specify an exact year when Van Halen extended the invite, he did say it was “way after Sammy [Hagar]” was in the line-up. The guitarist left the band in 1996.

Osbourne added that he thought Van Halen might have been “a bit drunk” when he made the phone call. “We’ve all done one of them calls at four o’clock in the morning,” he said. “‘I’ve got a great idea!’”

Van Halen died on October 6 at the age of 65, following a lengthy battle with cancer. Osbourne was one of many who paid tribute to the musician, calling him “a force to be reckoned with”.

“[I] could sit and watch Eddie Van Halen play guitar all day,” he said. “He’s so entertaining as a guitar player. He made it look like it was not difficult. He made it look like it was a natural thing. Everybody else was trying to be Eddie Van Halen, but there is only one Eddie Van Halen. I thought he was brilliant. God only knows, what you have to do to get that good.”

Meanwhile, Osbourne’s ‘No More Tours 2’ tour has been rescheduled for 2022. The dates, which were originally announced in September 2018, had already been postponed a number of times due to the star’s ill health before the coronavirus pandemic forced them to be moved again.

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