7 Times A Song’s Album Version Wasn’t The Best One
4. Ozzy Osbourne- Walk On Water
Superior version: Demo version (as heard in “Beavis and Butthead Do America”).
While their representation of 90s slacker teen culture has definitely dated itself, Beavis and Butthead’s filmic debut surprisingly holds up well.
When your protagonists are known for wearing shirts brandishing the logos of AC/DC and Metallica, one would expect the Godfather of Heavy Metal to be a surefire go-to for a soundtrack contribution, and sure enough, Walk on Water is one of the best in Ozzy’s post-No More Tears catalog.
The demo version, that is…
Walk on Water provides the backdrop to one of the film’s montage sequences but the clip that is heard in the film does not match what was made available on the soundtrack. The soundtrack provided a mess of a song with the distorted guitars, eastern-influenced instrumentation and even Ozzy’s vocals bogged down by a dull blanket of sound, muffling the best elements of the early version. Ozzy even sounds mildly annoyed in his delivery of the lyrics.
The demo version was made widely available in Ozzy’s Prince of Darkness box set, the liner notes of which sees Ozzy admit his distaste for the final product - and for good reason, as the demo exceeds it in all ways.
All this metal… let’s take a breather, shall we?