Eric Clapton Uneasy About Rejecting Jesus on Ozzy Osbourne Collab

Ozzy Osbourne is gearing up to release his thirteenth studio album, Patient Number 9, on September 9. Ahead of the album release, Osbourne dropped the title track (which features Jeff Beck) and the song “Degradation Rules (feat. Tony Iommi).” Also ahead of his upcoming release, Osbourne has shared a behind-the-scenes conversation that he had with another collaborator, Eric Clapton, about one of the record’s tracks.

Videos by American Songwriter

Clapton is a featured guitarist on Osbourne’s song “One of Those Days,” and the former was initially concerned about the song’s lyrics. The lyrics reportedly include the line, One of those days that I don’t believe in Jesus.

“That’s going to cause shit, I suppose,” Osbourne said in a recent interview with Classic Rock.

“It’s not an ‘I am an anti-Christ song,’” he continued. “It’s about those days when everything goes fucking wrong, and you’re going nuts trying to fix everything up.”

As far as Clapton’s input goes, Osbourne remembers the slight pushback from the artist. “He said: ‘Oh, I’m not sure about that lyric,’” Osbourne stated. “So we tried to replace it with some alternatives. We did ‘One of those days where I don’t believe in Christmas,’ but it didn’t sound right. Losing faith in Jesus makes much more sense when the world is turning to shit.”

After that conversation, it seems that Clapton was able to embrace the lyrics, more or less.

And as the album release date looms, Osbourne continued to explain his excitement for the record as a whole. In particular, Osbourne is hoping that Patient Number 9 will go No. 1 in the U.K. Osbourne knows that this goal is within reason after seeing his former band Black Sabbath’s 2013 album, 13, hit No. 1 in both the U.K. and the U.S.

Pre-order or listen to Patient Number 9 HERE.

Photo by Jeremy Chan/Getty Images