Here’s a game that can be played at home: how many artists and bands can you name that single handedly created an entire new genre of music? For all his achievements, both famous and infamous, towering above them all is the bald and immortal truth that Ozzy Osbourne, as a member of Black Sabbath, not only forged a new musical form, but that its sound was the most redoubtable of all. Metal.
Please don’t be fooled by the encomiums and eulogies, though, because Ozzy was not always loved. Long before the Prince of Darkness became an unlikely international treasure, and certainly before metal reaped the credit from high-minded critics that it so obviously deserves, much of his musical output received a very rough ride indeed. In a far from untypical review, Creem magazine, for example, dismissed Sabbath’s masterful 1972 album Vol. 4 as “the same old s—”.
But metal is the people’s music, and, ultimately, the people will out. Perhaps the only pleasing aspect of the death of Ozzy Osbourne is that he lived long enough for his finest singles and albums to be accepted by all. In receiving his just due, those early-day critics – or the worst of them, at least – were proved wrong. The kids, meanwhile, as ever, were right.
Please stand by, then, for 10 highlights from the musical career of Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne…
10. Shot in the Dark (1986)
Although its parent album, The Ultimate Sin, is something of a pop-metal dud, the record’s leadoff single, Shot In The Dark, is a peach. With a chorus to die for, the song’s reverb-heavy sound typifies loud music in the middle part of the eighties – a period that was about to be usurped by speed metal bands who turned up the volume, quickened the tempos and darkened the lights. Ironically, it was this tranche of groups – with Metallica, Slayer and Pantera among them – who would help revivify the reputation of Black Sabbath themselves.
Curiously, Shot In The Dark is notable for its absence from subsequent compilation albums. Ostensibly, the reason given is that Ozzy hates The Ultimate Sin. Maybe. But rumours persist that complications as to who actually wrote the song might be the real story behind these rather glaring omissions.
In a case of too-much-too-soon that seems extreme even by the standards of rock and roll, by the time Sabbath came to record their fourth album, Vol. 4, in Los Angeles in 1972, they were so frazzled on cocaine that they considered titling the record Snowblind. Ensconced in a shared home in Beverly Hills, things became so arduous that, upon returning to England, Geezer Butler’s girlfriend didn’t even recognise him.
If any song can be said to represent the sound of a band running on adrenaline, anxiety and heavy-duty substances, Supernaut is that song. Even the lyrics speak of a artists who are losing control of their senses. “I want to reach out and touch the sky,” Ozzy sang, “I want to touch the sun”. And speaking of people who were on a different plane, Frank Zappa would later tell Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler that Supernaut was one of his favourite rock songs of all time. “You can just hear the adrenaline on it,” he said.
Some of the cuts featured on our list are stone cold bangers. Others, though, make the grade for reasons of wider significance. In its heralding of the moral panic into which metal and hard rock would be swept in the United States, in the 1980s, Suicide Solution belongs to the latter camp.
In 1984, the parents of 19-year-old John McCollum, who had shot himself in the head (it was claimed) immediately after listening to the song, sued Osbourne along with CBS Records for “encouraging self-destructive behaviour” in young people who were “especially susceptible” to the influence of rock and roll. That the lawsuit was dismissed on the grounds that the First Amendment protected the singer’s right to free speech did nothing stop the coming war on loud music. As well as the efforts of the Washington lobby group the Parents Music Resource Center, groups such as Slayer, Suicidial Tendencies and Judas Priest would also find themselves the subject of unwanted legal attention in the wake of tragedies for which they bore no responsibility.
The tasteful monster ballad Mama, I’m Coming Home makes the cut for sentimental reasons. As one of the songs Ozzy Osbourne sang at the Back To The Beginning farewell concert at Villa Park – which, incredibly, took place just this month – the sight of Osbourne singing about returning home, in this case to the very neighbourhood in which he was raised, was poignant even before he passed away. But with the news this week that the gig will next year receive a theatrical release, the performance may well become a defining moment in the history of rock and roll.
There’s a different sentimental reason for the song’s inclusion, too. Mama, I’m Coming Home was co-written by another hard-bitten legend whose death made the world of music an emptier place. Take a bow, Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister.
At the time Ozzy Osbourne released No More Tears, the leadoff single from the album of the same name, in 1991, his career was in something of a slump. Despite his previous album, 1989’s No Rest Of The Wicked, attaining double-platinum status in the States, a review in Rolling Stone had stung its creator. It’s fine, they said, but it’s nothing new.
Change, though, was afoot. With its subterranean groove and its excoriating lead guitar work, courtesy of Zakk Wylde, with No More Tears, Ozzy managed to deliver a song that was both familiar yet somehow new. With lyrics such as “your mama told that you’re not supposed to talk to strangers, look in the mirror, tell me, do you think your life’s in danger?” the sense of unease remained, as it should, but the spacious music heralded a surprisingly adept reappraisal of his sound.
In short, despite not being a particularly big hit, No More Tears signalled that there was life in the old god yet. Duly, its parent album would go on to sell more than five million copies in the United States alone.
As far as debut solo singles go, this one is hard to beat. Anchored by Randy Rhoads’s irresistible riff – a series of notes that deftly moved away from the blues-based rock template of the seventies to a sound that would come to define eighties metal – Crazy Train would go on to sell five million copies across the world. It also happens to be the song to which Osbourne’s once-local football team, Aston Villa, take to the field.
Remarkably, following his sacking by Black Sabbath, in 1979, believing his career to be over, Ozzy retired to a hotel room in Los Angeles in which he intended to take drugs and drink until he ran out of money. He then planned to return to Birmingham to rejoin life as a civilian. Little did he know that his career’s second act was about to begin.
To be perfectly honest, at least four songs are deserving of the number one slot on this. Among them, clearly, is War Pigs. Rather impressively, the song was born not from a writing session, but from good old musical chops. On the road in mainland Europe, in 1968, Black Sabbath (who at that time were trading under the name Earth) used to fill out their sets with improvisational jams. According to drummer Bill Ward, this most notable of tracks came together in this way.
As well as much else, War Pigs heralded the news that a new sheriff was in town. Held in check by Ozzy Osbourne’s (largely) unaccompanied vocal, the song offered the clearest imaginable evidence that the hopeful days of the sixties were at an end. Buckle up, boys and girls, things were about to get dark.
If Crazy Train set the template for metal riffs in the eighties, it was Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi’s hulking chord progression in Iron Man that provided the spine for the genre as a whole. So perfect is it, in fact, that when adding his vocal, Ozzy Osbourne wisely decided to simply sing along with Iommi’s thunderous emanations. No additional melody was required.
And here’s a fun fact for you: at the time of the band wrote the song, Iron Man was actually called Iron Bloke. Yeah. Doesn’t work quite so well, does it?
With their tritone chord structures – known as “diabolus in musica”, or “the Devil’s music” – and their dark themes, one thing Sabbath never expected to become was pop stars. But when Paranoid, the title track from their second LP, reached number two on the British singles chart, they did just that. Remarkably, the whole thing came together in an instant. With the parent album needing an extra three-minutes or so of music, at the very last minute, the band wrote the track on the hoof.
As Geezer Butler recalled to Guitar World magazine, “A lot of the Paranoid album was written around the time of our first album, Black Sabbath. We recorded the whole thing in about two or three days, live in the studio. The song Paranoid was written as an afterthought. We basically needed a three-minute filler for the album, and Tony [Iommi] came up with the riff. I quickly did the lyrics, and Ozzy was reading them as he was singing.”
As fast as that, a classic was born.
Placing the opening song from Sabbath’s first album at the top of this pile may imply that things went downhill right from the start. Evidently, they did not. But in a blush over six minutes, with Black Sabbath, the group set the template that is still being followed this day by metal bands from all over the world.
The term “heavy metal” may not have been affixed to Sabbath for a further four years – and even then, at first, it was used as an insult – but it was born right here, with this song. Fifty-five years after its initial release, the damn thing still sound otherworldly. What’s more, its hallmarks remain in constant use. Ominous tempo? Check. Down-tuned guitars? Tick. Lyrics about Satan? Gotcha covered. And then there’s the vocals. With his strange and hypnotic voice drifting uneasily over the top of the music, weirdly off the beat, Ozzy’s own contribution is in itself deeply significant. Welcome to a new world of overwhelming dread.
