The first time I gave any real thought to Ozzy Osbourne was when, back in high school, a kid a year younger than me stuck a pair of soft foam headphones over my ears during lunch period and made me listen to the opening of “Crazy Train.” Something about the song, Ozzy’s first single as a solo artist, evidently meant a lot to my schoolmate, so I listened for what that might have been. Maybe the echoes, or the rattle, or the opening riff? I don’t know. He rushed off, and we never spoke of it again.
Less than a decade later, as a professional music critic, I attended a heavy metal summit, a few days of panel discussions and performances in Southern California. I remember Lemmy from Motörhead was at the bar. I remember Pearl Jam was due to play, and then the band’s record label reportedly removed them from the event’s line-up. Many attendees sensed this decision was made because the label didn’t want the band to be thought of as “metal.” I remember a representative of the label saying, from the stage, that they were going to “break” this band, as in turn them into something big, and the statement felt like an ultimatum, like even though it was an affirmative (i.e., the band had bright commercial prospects), inherent in it was the violence of the other meaning of “break,” separating by force into pieces. In a way, the label was separating Pearl Jam from metal by force.
At that same summit, which coincided with one of Ozzy’s many comebacks over the years, he performed to a small and adoring audience. During the verses of each song, he would look lost, sad, tired — and then, when the chorus came around, the whole audience sang with him, and he would get energized, glowing from within … and then the verse would come back around, and the audience would quiet down, and Ozzy would again look depleted, forlorn. I was struck by how much he was not merely buoyed but invigorated, given a semblance of self, by connection with his audience — not the adoration, but a sense of community. He both fed and fed on the power of the gathering.
Years later, I was at a venue outside Chicago to write a long feature about Rob Zombie, who was playing on the same bill as a revivified Black Sabbath. Before the day’s concerts began, I walked by Ozzy backstage, and was directed to a tour bus in which to hang out. Ozzy’s then quite young son, Jack, was on the bus, and we got to talking about Star Wars. I made a dismissive comment about the franchise novels, and he put me in my place with detailed commentary about various books in the series. The imminent start of the concert helped me save face.
I had never paid extended attention to Sabbath until then, even though I was already in my mid-20s. Tony Iommi’s guitar proved captivating, and I made plans to see them later on the tour when I got the chance, which I did soon after returning home to the Bay Area. I was officially a fan.
While Ozzy, throughout his solo releases, flirted with various phases in popular music, Sabbath largely remained steadfast. I still rank “End of the Beginning,” the opening track off their final studio album, 2013’s 13, alongside much of their classic material. I’m not alone in recognizing that one way bands reach mass popularity is that fans find different bands within a given band. While I appreciate the essential role Black Sabbath played in the overall development of heavy metal, I think of them foremost for their status as progenitors of doom metal, as much for the group’s often leaden pace as for the way Ozzy’s vocals always sounded sludgy, and all the more threatening for it.
One of the big lessons of Ozzy’s celebrity — especially during his reality-TV phase as the world’s favorite weird dad — was how, over time, the familiarity of Sabbath’s music revealed it as something entirely different from the absurd Satanic panic with which it had once been associated. Sabbath was comfort music to the core.
