Speed Zine _ 2024 FC: Steve Vai says he once recorded an entire album with Ozzy Osbourne – and used an Octave Divider on all his rhythm parts

February 22, 2023

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Editor's Note

Records that almost were...

When I took a tour of Jack White's Third Man Records – and its adjacent recording studio – during a visit to Nashville a couple years back, our guide told myself and my fellow visitors a jaw-loosening story about her first day on the job.

At one point, a couple of studio employees asked for her assistance in carrying a heavy box, she said. It was only after she completed the task, she added, that she saw the box's label: "Radiohead."

That box, it turns out, contained the tapes from a recording session the band had done at Third Man in 2012 – tapes that, to this day, have never been released.

Radiohead fanatic that I am, I would give... let's just say a lot, of money to hear those tapes – that potential album or EP that never was.

I'd also give a lot of money to hear Steve Vai's lost collaborative full-length album with Ozzy Osbourne, which apparently features the guitar hero using an Octave Divider on all his rhythm guitar parts.

"I don't have any control over it or rights to it, obviously," Vai said in a recent interview, "but we did record some pretty good stuff." Oh, to have been a fly on the wall...

Jackson Maxwell – Associate Editor, guitarworld.com

Steve Vai says he once recorded an entire album with Ozzy Osbourne – and used an Octave Divider on all his rhythm guitar parts

(Lisa Lake/Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

The pair originally met in the '90s to write a track for Osbourne's Ozzmosis album, but got "carried away" and recorded a "real heavy" record as well

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(David Redfern/Redferns)

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(Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

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(Erika Goldring/WireImage)

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(David Redfern/Redferns)

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(Koh Hasebe/Shinko Music/Getty Images)

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The return of a good old, made-in-the-USA Jackson Soloist is a welcome development made even better by modern upgrades that provide improved playability and tonal versatility