1948 -
2025
While I
was never a real fan of Ozzy per se, I was a huge fan of Black Sabbath, the
band that first brought him success in the late 60s and through the 70s. As a
teen in the 80s who had absolutely no interest “80s music,” I rebelled by
diving full force into such 70s rock bands as Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, The Who, and
Sabbath. I never saw Ozzy live, but I did own most of his CDs with Black
Sabbath. I also owned his groundbreaking first solo venture, Blizzard of Oz
and his 1991 smash CD, No More Tears.
I kinda
remember the first time I heard him, sometime around age 13: “Iron Man,” on one
of the new classic rock radio stations. I have to say I was floored. Never
before in my short musical life had I heard something like “Iron Man.” What a
unique tune – deceptively simple, or, rather, a simple riff surrounded by more
musically complex “choruses,” solo, and ending. It stuck in my mind for a few
years. I also heard the lesser impressive but somehow more popular “Paranoid”
on the dial.
The winter
of my senior year one of my friends lent me his cassette tape of Black
Sabbath’s greatest hits. Yes, there is such a thing – and I devoured it. I
listened to it nonstop for weeks if not months. My family took a car trip out
to Wisconsin and I, with a new driver’s license, took a late night shift behind
the wheel and popped the cassette in and listened to the entire thing while the
family slumbered in minivan.
Somehow I
obtained a Black Sabbath songbook. How obsessed I was with that book! In the
pre-Internet age, where nobody told you anything unless you paid for a tutor or
read it in a magazine (Guitar magazine), the songbook unnecessarily
complicated all these Sabbath songs I loved from their first four albums.
First, it was in piano notation (not guitar tab). Second, I later leaned Iommi
detuned his guitar 1.5 steps (low E string down to C# and all other strings
tuned standard to that). Third, the piano notation was in C#, making all the
riffs more difficult to play than if it was transcribed in E with a note to
detune to C#. So I could not physically play all the songs, whereas now I can,
albeit tuned 1.5 steps higher than the record.
Back to
Ozzy.
Ozzy’s
persona in the 70s was of a drug-addled unpredictable madman. Eventually his bandmates,
fed up with all his excessive drug intake and personality swings, fired him in
1979. He assumed a “Prince of Darkness” persona which may have been shocking
back then in the early 80s to Tipper Gore and her crew (I wasn’t too shocked as
a teen listening to his solo stuff). But that persona quickly became cartoonish
and sometimes buffoonish (to me, at least) only salvaged temporarily by his
magnum opus, No More Tears.
In the
summer and fall of 1991, when my band was playing out and partying and doing
the recording studio and writing songs, No More Tears came out and was
played a lot. A lot. It blew me away, particularly the eponymous tune. I bought
the CD, put it into regular rotation, and became a proselytizer for 90s Ozzy. About
a decade later I purchased the only other Ozzy CD I ever owned – his equally
phenomenal debut, Blizzard of Oz.
Ozzy’s
main superhero talent was finding superb guitarists to play with. Iommi is
fantastic and was a pretty big influence on my guitar playing as a teen. But Ozzy
also brought to the forefront Randy Rhodes, Jake E. Lee, and Zakk Wylde. Rhodes
is a genius, perhaps the only guitarist to seriously challenge Eddie Van Halen
in the early 80s. But I didn’t care for that style of playing. I much more
enjoyed Zakk Wylde. If you are into it, go to YouTube and check out some of his
solo videos – particularly those of him playing Sabbath songs in a parking lot
and those of him doing a guitar solo live on tour. Phenomenal.
The wife
was into Ozzy’s reality show in the early 00s. I watched a few. It was
fascinating, if a little sad. When we learned of his death yesterday, we were –
as many were – amazed that he made it to the ripe old age of 76. I texted her
reminiscing that we both though he was teetering on the edge of death watching
him on cable twenty years ago.
I also
found it fitting – as just about everyone else in the know – that he died three
weeks after the “final” Black Sabbath reunion show, where he performed the
entire concert seated upon a black throne. The “Back to the Beginning” show was
a benefit concert that took place in Birmingham, England – where Ozzy and the
other members of Black Sabbath grew up. Something like $190 million was raised
for charity, and part of the take went to Cure Parkinson’s, a disease which
Ozzy was suffering from since at least early 2019, and which may have
contributed to his death.
Well done
and good show, old chap.
RIP.
