Paul McCartney Rejected Ozzy Osbourne — and the Excuse Is Wild
It's not every day a Beatle turns you down, but that's exactly what happened to Ozzy Osbourne.
The Black Sabbath frontman had one wish: to get Paul McCartney to play bass on one of his tracks. He didn't ask for a full Beatles reunion, didn't beg for Yesterday 2.0—just a single bassline. But even that was a no.
The story came straight from Ozzy himself, who told Heat magazine:
"Meeting Paul McCartney was fucking phenomenal. I was in the studio at the same time as him and tried to get him to play bass on one of my songs. But he said he couldn't improve on the bassline that was there."
Ozzy, ever the fanboy, pushed back:
"I said, 'Are you kidding? You could piss on the record and I'd make it my life.'"
McCartney's reason? The bassline was already fine. A strange decision, considering this is the same guy who once recorded himself chewing celery for a Super Furry Animals track, flirted with dubstep via The Bloody Beetroots, and sang Ebony and Ivory into history. But for Ozzy? Apparently not the right fit.
And for Ozzy, it really was personal. He's been open about how The Beatles—and McCartney in particular—shaped his entire life. In a 2016 interview, he recalled hearing She Loves You for the first time while growing up in Aston, Birmingham:
"That song turned my head around. I used to sit on my doorstep and think, 'How the hell am I going to get out of here?' And then one day She Loves You came on the radio."
He told his son the only way to explain it was this:
"Imagine going to bed in one world, and then waking up in another that's so different and exciting that it makes you feel glad to be alive."
That's how deep it ran. So finally meeting McCartney—and then being turned down for a collaboration—wasn't just a musical miss. It was a full-circle moment that didn't quite close the way he hoped.
Ozzy didn't say which song it was, but the encounter clearly stuck with him. And while McCartney was polite about the rejection, there's a chance the heavier sound just wasn't his scene.
Still, considering his past collaborations (again: celery chewing), you have to admit—it's a weird hill to die on.