Not Much of a Tribute for Ozzy Osbourne

by Chris McGinty

Who can we get on the stage? We need Ozzy Osbourne again.

Ozzy, from my perspective, was one of those artists that I always liked, but never went super deep with. The earliest memory of hearing one of his songs was “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath. My brother and I would watch MTV’s Saturday night heavy metal show, “Headbanger’s Ball,” somewhat ironically. We didn’t like that heavy metal crap, but the first hour would be some of the glam rock we liked (Poison, Cinderella, that one Motley Crue song that was actually listenable), but as it got into the heavier stuff we would go watch our VHS recordings of Robotech (or whatever we were into by then).

Black Sabbath – Iron Man

It wasn’t one particular night, but rather a series of nights where they played the video for “Iron Man” and one night I realized that I liked this song I’d dismissed a few times. I’m sure I’d heard “Shot in the Dark” and “Bark at the Moon” by this point, but I had largely ignored them as well. It would be a couple of years before I would find out that Ozzy was the lead singer of Black Sabbath when “Iron Man” was released.

Bark at the Dark

Shot in the Moon

Hmmm…

As a side note, iron must be my heavy metal of choice, because what finally steeled me and lead [sic] me into liking the genre was a one two punch of Iron Maiden. I really liked “Wasted Years,” and my friend, Paul, had the “Powerslave” album and didn’t like it. He gave it to me and boy did I love it. But we’re not discussing Iron Maiden here, and hopefully not for a long time. RIP Paul Di’Anno.

I eventually was given a copy of “The Ultimate Sin” by Ozzy Osbourne, and I loved it. What a great album. It would also prove to be the only Ozzy Osbourne album that I’ve owned to date. I’m not sure why, but for as much as I have listened to Ozzy over the years (and it’s been a lot) I never found his albums in the places I bought music.

Ozzy Osbourne – Thank God for the Bomb

I don’t even want to talk about this next part, because my memory is failing me pretty hard. I feel like I went to Ozz Fest twice. I only had one t-shirt to commemorate this though. The reason I feel like I saw Ozz Fest twice was because Mike Bordin from Faith No More was on drums for Black Sabbath the first time and the following year it was the full original line up. I either never saw them as the full line up or I just can’t remember who else played. Ok, I’m going to go look this up…

Yeah, so I somehow had myself convinced that I saw two Ozz Fests, but I only saw one. This is about like the time that I realized that I had a memory of seeing Gene Loves Jezebel but had no memories of hearing any of their songs live, only to realize later that I had seen Jellyfish. Anyway, I saw Ozzy solo on that tour and with Black Sabbath. Both sets were fantastic. I do remember that.

I acknowledge Ozzy as one of the true talents in the heavy metal genre. I’ve grown to love much of his work with Black Sabbath and many, many of his solo efforts. I like his work with Zakk Wylde and the early stuff with Randy Rhodes in particular, but I recently had a discussion with my boss about Jake E. Lee and how he was the guitarist for some amazing tracks. If I had to boil it down to my favourite three songs: 1. “Perry Mason,” 2. “Thank God for the Bomb,” 3. “Mr. Crowley.” But that doesn’t even scratch the surface.

Ozzy Osbourne – Parry Mason

One final thought, and probably why the timing of his death sucks. He recently did a track with Steve Stevens and Billy Morrisson called “Crack Cocaine.” It was a pretty good song and his voice still sounded great. I was really hoping there would be an upcoming Ozzy album. I was curious what he would do in this day and age. I see now that he actually had an album out in 2020 and another in 2022, so I will have to deep dive those. I’m listening to the title track of “Patient Number 9” as I write this. It’s pretty good.

Steve Stevens, Ozzy Osbourne, Billy Morrison – Crack Cocaine

I’ve become more and more aware as the years have passed that there is a lot of good music out there and I will never get to all of it. I was into some very specific stuff back when I could have made the pivot to Ozzy. I’ve still spent a lot of time with his music, but there’s still a deep dive in my future, it would seem.