Here, Ozzy Osbourne is being held against his will in a mental institution with no hope of getting out alive. The Prince of Darkness yearns to go home and reunite with his wife, Sharon, but the quacks just laugh at him.
Ozzy Osbourne released this seven-minute slice of theatrical madness as the lead single from the album of the same name. He dropped the track on June 25, 2022, just a week after undergoing grueling spinal surgery to adjust pins in his neck. Happily, his hospital experience didn't follow the song's horror scenario and they let him go home.
Andrew Watt, the co-producer and guitar player on Ozzy's 2020
Ordinary Man album, returns to the production desk. He plays guitar and keyboards and lends a hand with vocals too. Ozzy also enlisted English guitar legend Jeff Beck to bring along his Fender Stratocaster and perform lead guitar. The other musicians are Red Hot Chili Peppers' Chad Smith on drums, Metallica's Robert Trujillo on bass, and Black Label Society's
Zakk Wylde on guitars and keyboards. Chad Smith was also behind the sticks on
Ordinary Man, and Zakk Wylde was Ozzy's guitarist for 1988's
No Rest for the Wicked and 1991's
No More Tears.
Ozzy, Watt, Robert Trujillo, and Chad Smith wrote the song with Ali Tamposi. Florida songwriter Tamposi co-penned eight tracks on
Ordinary Man. Her other credits include Camilla Cabello's "
Havana" and Dua Lipa's "
Break My Heart."
Comic book artist Todd McFarlane (Spawn, The Amazing Spider-Man) directed the video. It sees Ozzy hunched over in a mental asylum before he falls into animated world of madness, courtesy of McFarlane's pen.
The clip is Ozzy's first ever to incorporate his own artwork: McFarlane animated his hand-drawn demons, which can be seen during the Jeff Beck solo.
This goes into the increasingly extensive file of Ozzy songs about madness that also includes "
Crazy Train" and "
Diary of a Madman." The attention deficit disorder-suffering Godfather of Metal is renowned for making insanity mainstream, such as the famous incident when he
bit the head off a bat.
"Patient Number 9" debuted at #20 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Airplay chart, meaning Jeff Beck set a new record for the longest gap between appearances on the listing. His previous entry on Mainstream Rock Airplay had been in 1994 with his collaboration with Seal on a cover of Jimi Hendrix' "
Manic Depression." The 28 years and four months it took him to return to the tally bettered the previous record held by Elton John. The Rocket Man clocked a 27 years and five months gap between his 1992 Eric Clapton team-up "
Runaway Train" and his feature on "
Ordinary Man," recorded by, yep, Ozzy Osbourne.
The song climbed to #1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Airplay chart, marking Ozzy Osbourne's fourth visit to its summit. The British rocker previously topped the tally with 2007's "
I Don't Wanna Stop," 2010's "
Let Me Hear You Scream" and 2019's "
Under The Graveyard."
"Patient Number 9" was Jeff Beck's first leader on the listing.
Jeff Beck did both the guitar solos. "We created these two kind of solo sections, one which is the really heavy part, the first one, and then the one that's over the acoustic guitar at the end," Watt explained during an appearance on SiriusXM's Ozzy's Boneyard.
When Beck asked Watt how he should approach them, the producer just said, "'Rip on the first one, melodic on the second."
Beck showed his dedication by re-doing his solos four or five times. "He kept doing it, sending it back to me and would be like, 'No, I can make this part better,' and he kept pushing himself," said Watt. "I didn't have to say anything to him. It was all from him saying, 'I'm gonna do another one, I'm gonna do another one, I'm gonna do another one.' He just kept elevating himself. He's a true master and just listen to what he did."
Ozzy provided all the multiple voices and conversations going on at the beginning of the song over the course of three improvised takes. "We had this long intro and Ozzy wrote this incredible song over it, but it was a long intro with no Ozzy so it's a long time to not hear our guy," said Watt. "So he wrote the song about a mental hospital and I just said, 'Can you do some talking over the track,' and he said, 'Ok.' One take, all that crazy s--t. And then he was like, 'I think I can do one more, it might be cool with two [voices],' so second take. Exactly how you hear it. And then he was like, 'I just want to fill in some gaps and third track, that's the intro. Three in a row, no thinking, that's the intro."
Patient Number 9 landed at #2 on the UK albums chart, marking Ozzy Osbourne's highest-charting UK album of his solo career.
