Few vocalists in history are as synonymous with guitar heroics as Ozzy Osbourne. Starting with Tony Iommi and connecting with Randy Rhoads, Brad Gillis, Jake E. Lee, Zakk Wylde and many other greats, Ozzy knew how to pick ’em.
But what about the coulda-beens, shoulda-beens and never-beens? You know – the “close, but no cigar” gang? So many top-notch guitarists have told tales of auditioning for Ozzy and, for one reason or another, weren’t the right fit.
In the spirit of “almost,” GW dials it back to 13 players who were ever-so-nearly the apple of Ozzy’s eye.
George Lynch (auditioned in 1979 and 1982)
The Washington-born future Dokken star auditioned for Ozzy Osbourne not once, but twice. He first tried out in ’79 but lost out to Randy Rhoads. He auditioned again after Rhoads’ death three years later, this time to replace Brad Gillis, who had replaced Rhoads. Lynch insists that he secured the gig but was quickly fired after Ozzy got a load of Jake E. Lee’s look.
“They had two problems with me,” Lynch told Ultimate Guitar last year. “Ozzy had a problem with my short hair. I had short hair at the time. Then his wife [Sharon] had a problem with my green guitar. She said it looked like a booger. [She] didn't care what it sounded like, didn't care what I was playing.”
It’s all a bit hard to believe, given Lynch’s instrumental prowess. That said, Lynch is known as a, shall we say, free spirit. He didn’t jive with Don Dokken, nor did he get on all that well with Oni Logan in Lynch Mob. It’s reasonable to speculate that he might eventually have fallen out with Ozzy.
Richie Ranno (auditioned in 1982)
Back in 2022, the East Coast-raised guitar-slinger Richie Ranno told GW how he met a young Randy Rhoads in 1976 while he was playing with Starz. “Randy was a friend of mine from back in the ’70s,” he told us. “He was a big fan of Starz, and I think he was around 19 when I first met him.”
Fast forward to ’79, and Ranno ran into Rhoads again just before Rhoads left Quiet Riot to join Ozzy’s band. After the fateful plane crash in March 1982, Ozzy called on Ranno for an audition.
“When [the first] two Ozzy solo records came out, I didn’t realize it was that same kid [Rhoads] on guitar,” Ranno says.
“I learned Crazy Train, I Don’t Know, Goodbye to Romance and Over the Mountain. I was trying to play as much like Randy as I could, which wasn’t easy, but it went great. Don Airey told me I was the first person to audition, and I felt like, ‘Fuck, I’m in a bad spot here,’ because you never want to be first.”
Ultimately, Ranno lost out to Bernie Tormé, who wasn’t long for the gig.
Robert Sarzo (nearly asked to join in 1982)
It would have been easy to pivot to guitarist Robert Sarzo, as his brother Rudy was playing bass in Ozzy’s band at the time of Randy Rhoads’ death. In his 2006 memoir, Off the Rails: Aboard the Crazy Train in the Blizzard of Ozz, Rudy wrote that Sharon and Ozzy wanted Robert, nicknamed “the VuDu Man,” to join the band.
Robert would have gotten the job, except for the fact that Sharon’s father, Don Arden – who managed Ozzy at the time – paid Bernie Tormé in advance to replace Rhoads on the Diary of a Madman tour. Ozzy and Sharon reluctantly agreed, and Sarzo missed his chance at stardom.
Vito Bratta (asked to audition in 1982)
One of the less-talked-about would-be Ozzy shredders is New Yorker Vito Bratta, who revealed in 2023 that he had a brush with the Osbournes while Brad Gillis was still in the band.
“Somebody sent a cassette of me doing the Sabbath stuff to Ozzy’s people,” Bratta told GW, revealing this information for the very first time. “And then – if I remember right, it was probably Sharon, but I can’t be sure – called me, saying, ‘Hey, we like your tape, and we want you to come down to the Ritz to play.’”
But Bratta never got the chance to audition properly, as he botched the opportunity over the phone while with Sharon.
“I told her, ’Sure, I can come down. What songs do you want me to play?’ She tells me, ‘Do you know anything from Ozzy’s two solo albums?’ I told her, ‘No, I don’t know anything.’ I did love Randy’s stuff, but I didn't have time to sit at home and learn it. I never got around to it.”
At this point, Bratta knew he’d blown it. “Her voice was getting higher and higher,” he recalled. “I told her, ‘You want me to come down there soon, but I don’t know the stuff yet.’ She said, ‘How long do you need?’ I told her, ‘Give me a week.’ She said, ‘Okay, maybe you’re right, it’s not a good idea.’ And she hangs up, and I bang the phone down.”
Ultimately, Bratta went on to stardom with White Lion, but it sure would have been cool to play with Ozzy. “God almighty,” he says. “I remember being frustrated, you know? I felt like, ‘Fuck… this was the shot.’”
Adrian Vandenberg (asked to join in 1983)
According to Vandenberg’s social media, Ozzy asked the Dutchman to join his band while Jake E. Lee was still with him, during the Speak of the Devil tour. On the day Ozzy died (July 22), Vandenberg said of their first meeting, “I was fortunate to spend time with him, starting with touring the USA with Ozzy and his band in 1983.”
Vandenberg added that “There was never a dull moment” on tour with Ozzy, with “daily practical jokes” and Ozzy giving Vandenberg’s self-titled band “daily soundchecks.”
Those soundchecks are probably where the alleged invitation to join took place, but due to commitments with his own band – not to mention Lee’s presence in Ozzy’s group – Vandenberg declined the offer, which may or may not have been formal.
Jimi Bell (auditioned in 1987)
After Jake E. Lee left Ozzy in 1987, several guitarists auditioned for the gig. One of them was Joan Jett’s guitarist, Jimi Bell. In 2022, Bell recounted the details of that audition on the (Don’t) Quit Your Day Job podcast, saying, “I played on this big soundstage with Ozzy, and it went phenomenal. Ozzy really loved it, and when I got done playing, they sat me down and said it was between me and Zakk Wylde.”
History shows that Wylde was chosen, but it wasn’t all bad for Bell. “After deciding to stay with Zakk, Sharon gave my promo pack to Geezer Butler,” he recalled. “At that point, I was flown to England to work with him.” After that, Bell wrote some music for Sabbath’s Master of Insanity, which appeared on 1992’s Dehumanizer, although he wasn’t credited for it.
Marty Friedman (auditioned in 1987)
Looking back, it seems obvious that a Marty Friedman/Ozzy Osbourne pairing would have been a recipe for disaster, as the guitarist is something of a maverick. We’ll never know, as Friedman “failed miserably” when he took his shot at replacing Jake E. Lee in ’87.
He attributes this to his image, recalling during a Rock ’n’ Roll Fantasy Camp Q&A session in 2023: “I was practically homeless at the time, [but] I thought I played everything absolutely just fine, and I thought it sounded great. Everybody was friendly enough.
“But our images were very different. Those guys in the band [were] totally decked out in 1980s Sunset Strip – what do you call it? – skull T-shirts with handcuffs and long necklaces.”
Jennifer Batten (submitted a tape in 1987)
Jennifer Batten can play with anyone; her work with Michael Jackson and Jeff Beck is testament to that. But Ozzy disagreed, as Batten told Ultimate Guitar in 2022.
“I remember before the Michael Jackson thing came up, I was trying to get an audition with Ozzy. They were auditioning everybody in L.A. at the time, and I know my audio got to the right people, and I didn’t even get a chance.”
Batten says the reason was simple: she was a woman. “Looking back, it’s a super-macho gig, and they probably wouldn’t even consider a female for that. Having said that, if it were the same thing today, I think it’d be a whole different story.” The gig ultimately went to Zakk Wylde.
Chris Impellitteri (asked to audition in 1987)
![Impellitteri - Stand In Line [HD] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/ZGoEAPmht-g/maxresdefault.jpg)
Yet another fleet-fingered guitarist who auditioned to be Jake E. Lee’s replacement in 1987 was Chris Impellitteri. Notoriously, Impellitteri is one of the fastest shredders of them all, but it’s hard to envision his style fitting with Ozzy’s music — which, while shred-heavy, also require a bluesy player with feel.
Impellitteri’s story is similar to Vito Bratta’s in that it began with a phone call. “I came home one night from rehearsal,” he told GW in 2024. “My roommate goes, ‘You’ve got to listen to this message,’ which said, ‘This is Sharon Osbourne. Me and Ozzy have been checking you out, and we really love your guitar playing. We want you to come down and audition.’”
Unlike Bratta, Impellitteri didn’t blow his shot over the phone. Still, he never got past the talking stage. “I talked to Sharon – and, I think, Ozzy – probably three to five times,” he says. “There was some back and forth. The problem was that I’d already signed a deal with Relativity Records.” In this case, business deals rather than image or gender proved to be the impassable obstacle.
Nuno Bettencourt (asked to join in 1995)
On the surface, Extreme guitarist Nuno had everything Ozzy could want in a guitarist. He had singular talent, he could (and can) rip it up with the best of them, and he was a great songwriter.
But like many guitar-playing musos, Nuno is also a maverick whose heart beats strictly to its own drum. This led him to reject an offer to join Ozzy’s band, which was served up on a silver platter in 1995, just before Extreme broke up.
“Nobody says ‘no’ to Ozzy,” Nuno told GW in 2025. “It’s the gig of a lifetime.” So then, why did he? Simple. As iconic as the position is, Nuno never wanted to be known as just Ozzy’s guitarist.
“For better or worse, I’ve always had my sights set on – and I’ll never reach it, probably – becoming Randy or Edward or Brian May or Jimmy Page, and the list goes on. You have this mission to carve your own path, whatever that is.”
Richie Kotzen (auditioned and was asked to join after Steve Vai didn’t work out in 1995)
If the sometime Poison and Mr. Big guitarist Richie Kotzen is to be believed, in 1995 – after Zakk Wylde had departed and an attempt to record with Steve Vai didn’t work out – he was asked aboard the good ship Ozzy.
“I got a phone call from my manager,” Kotzen told Metal Sludge in 2014. “The way it was presented to me was that they had called and wanted to meet with me. Sharon wanted to meet me, and they needed a guitar player. At the time, they had done a lot of work with Steve Vai and, for whatever reason, it didn’t pan out. Zakk wasn’t involved at that point.”
According to Kotzen, he secured the gig but made the mistake of telling a friend, who leaked it to the press. This didn’t sit well with the Osbournes, leading to Joe Holmes taking his place.
“I remember seeing [the report], and I was so fucking pissed,” Kotzen said. “I said, ‘Why the fuck would you go and fucking make this public? I told you this as a friend, and now you’re blabbing it [in public]!’ The whole deal, everything, went dead.”
Buckethead (auditioned around 2005)
Brian “Buckethead” Carroll has never commented on this story, but Ozzy has. According to the singer, he auditioned Buckethead for his solo band just before the 2005 Ozzfest, as he wasn’t quite sure Zakk Wylde would be available. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t really go well.
“I tried out that Buckethead guy,” Ozzy told Revolver in 2005. “I met with him and asked him to work with me, but only if he got rid of the fucking bucket. So I came back a bit later and he’s wearing this green fucking Martian’s hat thing. I haven’t even got out of the room and I’m already playing fucking mind games with the guy.”
Needless to say, Buckethead didn’t get the gig.
Frank Sidoris (auditioned around 2017)
As Osbourne was gearing up for what was to be his “farewell” solo tour, before Zakk Wylde hopped aboard for round three with the Prince of Darkness, he was – once again – auditioning guitar players. One of these was Frank Sidoris.
Ozzy ultimately went with good 'ol Zakk Wylde due to familiarity, but Sidoris – who is now a touring guitarist with Wolfgang Van Halen’s band, Mammoth – left a positive impression. Ozzy later commented in a letter to Sidoris, “I can see why you’ve had success at a young age.”
- This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
