Ozzy Osbourne on “13”: “It wasn’t really a Black Sabbath album”

In a recently published interview with Stereogum, Ozzy Osbourne reminisced about making “13”, Black Sabbath‘s last studio album. When he was asked if he still feels good about where “13” left things, his answer was:

“Not really, because, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t really get a charge from the album. Although Rick Rubin (producer) is a good friend of mine, I wasn’t really… I was just singing. It was like stepping back in time, but it wasn’t a glorious period. Though Geezer did a lot of lyric writing for me, which he’s very, very good at. It wasn’t an earth-shattering experience for me.”

When asked if Black Sabbath is “totally done” in his mind, Ozzy replied:

“I would like to say it’s completely done. I think it’s time. The only thing I really regret, to be honest, is that Bill Ward didn’t play on the album. It wasn’t really a Black Sabbath album. I’m not saying that one day we might not all go in a room and come up with the perfect Black Sabbath album. But I’ll say, wasn’t recorded the way Black Sabbath recorded records. We’d gone right back past the point where we took charge, back to when someone else had full control of our recording. Which we never did from ‘Vol. 4’ onwards.”