Long before Mike McCready lent his talents to Ozzy Osbourne’s Patient Number 9, the Pearl Jam guitarist once tried pitching a riff to the metal legend — only to have it shot down.
During a recent episode of State of Love & Trust: A Pearl Jam Podcast, McCready shared the little-known story of how a riff originally intended for Mad Season’s scrapped second album ended up on Osbourne’s cutting-room floor.
The short-lived supergroup Mad Season, which featured McCready, Alice in Chains’ Layne Staley, Screaming Trees’ Barrett Martin, and future Walkabouts bassist John Baker Saunders, released just one album, Above, in 1995. While discussing whether any material from their abandoned follow-up ever saw the light of day, McCready recalled his attempt to recycle one of those riffs for Osbourne.
“One of the riffs, I tried to bring in to Ozzy. This was a long time ago. This is probably like 2002 or 2001 [for Osbourne‘s 2001 album Down to Earth]. Prior to that — Ozzy would not remember this — but it was me, Ozzy, Kaz Kobayashi, this Epic rep and a guitar,” McCready remembered (via Loudwire).
To illustrate his point, McCready grabbed a guitar and played the riff — an ominous, blues-infused groove which you can check out at the 29:20 minute mark in the video below. He couldn’t recall its exact name, but he was certain of its origins.
“I forget what that was called, but that was for the second Mad Season record,” he explained. “I brought that riff to Ozzy and I was playing it through a little amp and I think he listened to it and he just wasn’t into it. I should’ve probably done a really good job of recording it.”
McCready chuckled as he admitted, “I’ve never told that story, but that was that song, and I forget the name of it. It was on the second record. But anyways, that was the riff that I brought to Ozzy — that he did not use.”
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