Over the course of 15 studio albums, Weezer have assembled one of the most formidable repertoires of rock ‘n’ roll romps around, from Buddy Holly to King of the World.
If fate had it any other way, however, one of these well-known Weezer anthems may not have been a Weezer track at all. In fact, if things had panned out differently, Hash Pipe could have appeared on an Ozzy Osbourne album.
In the latest issue of Guitar World, Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo recalled that the heavy-riffing track, found on the band’s 2001 green album, had originally been offered to Osbourne.
Said Cuomo, “Once, I think it was in 2000, he [Osbourne] asked if I had any songs for him, and I just happened to have written Hash Pipe. 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 it turns out, it's not the only time Cuomo has come into contact with Osbourne. Elsewhere in the interview, Rivers revealed that a more recent encounter occurred when the band was writing Blue Dream – a new Van Weezer track, which features an uncanny similarity to Osbourne’s 1980 smash hit Crazy Train.
After dubbing the tracks "pretty similar", Cuomo explained that credits on the track are set to be shared with Crazy Train writers Osbourne, Randy Rhoads and Bob Daisley, saying, “They get half the song, or something like that. It’s kind of like a sample, really, but we played it.
He continued, “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. Coincidentally, at the same time, our manager said, ‘Hey, you guys should sample the Crazy Train riff in a song.’
“I know he 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.”
To read the rest of Rivers Cuomo’s interview, head over to Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Guitar World, which also features an in-depth feature on the final days and music of late Children of Bodom and Bodom After Midnight mastermind, Alexi Laiho.
