{"id":637650,"date":"2026-06-14T03:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T03:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/637650\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T03:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T03:26:10","slug":"russ-ballard-tried-to-write-a-song-with-ozzy-osbourne-and-failed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/637650\/","title":{"rendered":"Russ Ballard tried to write a song with Ozzy Osbourne \u2013 and failed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Legendary songwriter Russ Ballard has recalled the time he tried and failed to write a song with Ozzy Osbourne<\/a> \u2013 only for the Prince Of Darkness to offer tips on buying some expensive military hardware instead.<\/p>\n

Speaking in the brand new issue of Classic Rock magazine<\/a>, former Argent singer-turned-hitmaker Ballard \u2013 who penned such classic anthems as Since You Been Gone<\/a> and God Gave Rock And Roll To You<\/a>, as popularised by Rainbow and Kiss respectively \u2013 looked back on a brief but amusing attempt to collaborate with Ozzy.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis happened after Ozzy had his hit with Lita Ford [Close My Eyes Forever], so it would have been at the end of the 1980s,\u201d recalls Ballard. \u201cOzzy\u2019s record company called me to say that he had done an album but it needed a single, and would I like to write with him?<\/p>\n

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\u201cSo Ozzy came to my house,\u201d continues Ballard. \u201cHe arrived walking with a stick and it looked like he\u2019d been having a bit of a rough time. He was really, really funny. We sat in my sitting room, which looked out on a huge garden. Ozzy asked whether I had night-sight goggles. And of course I didn\u2019t. He told me you could pick up an ex-military pair for ten thousand dollars. He had a pair.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was saying all of this really funny stuff, though I\u2019m not sure it was meant to be. We were having such a fun time we didn\u2019t do any writing. Boy, he was a very, very funny guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In the same interview, Ballard also reveals that Ritchie Blackmore<\/a> asked him to write another song nearly 40 years after Blackmore\u2019s band, Rainbow, had a hit with Since You Been Gone.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Ritchie put Rainbow back together, his manager invited me to play with them at a gig at the O2 Arena [in 2017],\u201d says Ballard. \u201cWe did Since You Been Gone together. Because we had similar backgrounds we got along really well; like him, I used to be in [60s band] The Outlaws.<\/p>\n

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\u201cRitchie said he did these big gigs to make money, but what he enjoyed best was playing in churches and castles with his missus [Candice Night]. He asked if I\u2019d write him another song. I replied: \u201cSure. What do you want, rock?\u201d But he preferred minstrel music. In the end, though, I never heard from Ritchie again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read the full interview with Russ Ballard in the brand new issue of Classic Rock, on sale now. Order it online<\/a> and have it delivered straight to your door.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Legendary songwriter Russ Ballard has recalled the time he tried and failed to write a song with Ozzy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-637650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}