Pioneer of heavy metal
I came home late last night and saw the news that Ozzy Osbourne had died. He looked unwell a few weeks ago at the final Black Sabbath gig in Birmingham, but I thought this due to the Parkinson’s disease, which was diagnosed in 2019. He was clearly a lot worse than was being let on.
Having been a metal fan since the mid-80’s I obviously listened to a lot of Black Sabbath. By the time I was listening to a lot of metal, Ozzy was a few years into his solo career and regularly appeared in the pages of Kerrang! usually alongside the title ‘Clown Prince of Darkness’ after some onstage mishap.
The place of Black Sabbath in defining heavy metal has been discussed at length by many people. Without them we wouldn’t have Judas Priest, Metallica and my favourite, Iron Maiden. It’s easy to dismiss heavy metal as a one-dimensional music genre and a lot of lazy journalist have done just that. Obviously, I disagree and to my mind metal has a greater range of emotion, power, volume, musical skill and lyrical content than any other music genre. Restricting to guitar, bass and drums with judicious use of synthesisers is a choice, in the same way other artists stick to one medium.
Enough beard-stroking.
With Osbourne, Sabbath released eight albums in the ’70s. I don’t have a favourite album, but all my favourite Sabbath songs are from this era, plus the two albums with Ronnie James Dio. ‘Black Sabbath’, ‘Paranoid’, ‘War Pigs’1, ‘Children of the Grave’, ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’… quite a list. ‘Supernaut’ remains one my favourite Iommi riffs.
In 1979 Ozzy was sacked from Sabbath, apparently for doing drugs. This is akin to sacking the Pope for being Catholic. The band got through kilos of cocaine in their time. The song “Snowblind” is about cocaine, Geezer had an “enjoy cocaine” sticker on his bass at one time2 and there is footage of a concert in 1978 where they are all clearly off their tits.
However, sacked he was and Black Sabbath went through a rotation of vocalists starting with Ronnie James Dio3, then Ian Gillan and others and I’m afraid I lost interest after that.
Ozzy’s first solo album, released in 1980, was “Blizzard of Ozz” and included “Crazy Train”. This was the first of his solo songs that I remember, its distinctive Randy Rhodes riff lodged into my brain and hasn’t moved for 40 years. The early death of Rhodes in a plane crash devastated Ozzy and it took much persuasion from his wife and manager Sharon for him to continue. But continue he did, racking up 13 solo albums while occasionally reuniting with Sabbath.
Ozzy’s voice is a divisive issue. I’ve seen it described as ‘soulful and plaintive’, but to me he was always a vocalist rather than a singer. But without that voice, Iommi’s distinctive guitar sound4, Geezer and Bill’s blues-based rhythm section and the overall doom-laden sound and lyrics of the early albums5 and an indifferent, verging on hostile, press (they were described by Lester Bangs as ‘Like Cream, but worse’) they would not have built a fan base and grown to found two distinct music genres. Not only were Black Sabbath the first heavy metal band6 , but they produced the first thrash song in “Symptom of the Universe”.
It is good that his last public appearance was at the final Black Sabbath gig and he looked like he was having a blast. I hope this is the memory he carried with him at the end.
- Which rhymes ‘masses’ with ‘masses’ in the first verse, which always makes Mrs S laugh. ↩︎
- Since replaced with a slightly less controversial AVFC sticker. ↩︎
- One of my favourite vocalists. ↩︎
- A result of a well-documented industrial accident where the tips of his fretting fingers were sheared off by a metal pressing machine. ↩︎
- “The Wizard” and “Planet Caravan” notwithstanding. ↩︎
- Other groups – including The Beatles – had produced heavy metal songs, but Black Sabbath were the first to concentrate on and expand the genre. ↩︎
Grim up North Heath 