(Left) Singer/guitarist Rivers Cuomo of Weezer performs at PNC Music Pavilion on July 25, 2018 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Jeff Hahne/Getty Images): (Right) Ozzy Osbourne Announces “No More Tours 2” Final World Tour at Press Conference at his Los Angeles Home on February 6, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Live Nation)
Turns out Rivers Cuomo and Ozzy Osbourne are closer than you thought.
In a recent interview with Guitar World, Cuomo revealed that “Hash Pipe,” the band’s heavy hitting rock song about a male cross-dressing prostitute known for rambling to people in Santa Monica, was originally offered up to the King of Darkness.
“Once, I think it was in 2000, [Osbourne] asked if I had any songs for him, and I just happened to have written Hash Pipe,” Rivers recalled. “I sent it to him, but he didn’t end up using it. In another reality, it might be interesting to hear him singing that song.”
As heavy as the riff is we’re not surprised that the Weezer frontman was offering up this piece of music. However, Rivers is clearly fan of heavy riffs since his Weezer’s latest album Van Weezer is heavily inspired by hard and classic rock. Included on their fifteenth studio release is “Blue Dream,” which samples Randy Rhoads‘ famous “Crazy Train” riff directly in fact.
The song is a rework on a demo track “Ballad of the Briny” that Rivers wrote back in 2011, but he says they never got quite right.
“The song existed with another riff. The song was good, but the riff was… It was okay, but it wasn’t the greatest guitar riff of all time, which I felt like it should be,” Rivers continued. “Coincidentally, at the same time, our manager said, ‘Hey, you guys should sample the Crazy Train riff in a song.’”
In fact the album credits Ozzy Osbourne, Randy Rhoads, and Bob Daisley for the riff directly.
“They get half the song, or something like that. It’s kind of like a sample, really, but we played it,” said Rivers.
Cuomo went on to say that not only did the suggestion just happen to fit perfectly, but also that they wanted to generate some noise around the song and the album that is paying homage around the rock greats.
“I know [our manager] was thinking: ‘What’s going to get people talking? What is going to confuse the internet?’ He had no idea what I was making, but it just seemed like the perfect suggestion. So we tried it. The tempo fit, and it all just seemed to come together.”
Van Weezer was released May 7th and will be followed by the Hella Mega Tour with Green Day and Fall Out Boy, both were originally was slatted for 2020 but were delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic.