October 2002.
I had started doing my AS Levels in Malone College. I had just made friends with a new arrival called Chris McCormick, who had come from CBS. With long hair, a Westie attitude and a love of metal, he helped to shape my tastes.
Although I had been aware of Ozzy beforehand, the success of The Osbournes had catapulted him to a new level of fame. I had no interest in the show, so I found it intriguing that this guy who loved Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax had so much love for Ozzy.
Lending me 'No More Tears', I understood why. Although not highly regarded by some as it has Zakk Wylde on guitar instead of the late Randy Rhodes, I immediately took to it. There were plenty of heavy songs, introspective songs, experimental songs and, er, Zombie Stomp. It sounded massive and blew my 16-year-old mind.
I got it.
He then lent me a DVD collection (The Black Sabbath Story Vols 1 and 2) with tons of archive footage of Sabbath from Paris 1970 right through to the Dehumaniser period with Dio. Being able to see such amazing footage helped me to contextualise the differing Sabbath line-ups and allowed me to recognise the genius that is Iommi.
And thus began my trip into the world of metal.
When I was a kid, I was hungry. I had my ass hanging out of my pants and I hated the fucking world. When I heard the silly fucking words, ‘If you go to San Francisco, be sure to put a flower in your hair,’ I wanted to fucking strangle John Phillips [of the Mamas and the Papas]. I was sitting in the industrial town of Birmingham, England. My father was dying of asbestos from industrial pollution, and I was an angry young punk.
The story of how Black Sabbath rose from Birmingham to forge a new genre of music has been well-documented over the years, as is the tale of Ozzy’s meteoric rise from drunken ex-Sabbath frontman to iconic figurehead of metal and ubiquitous pop cultural icon. But it’s still worth considering both as they really are remarkable tales.
Think of the genres of metal that developed out of those first six Sabbath albums: doom, stoner, thrash, prog. Hell, even punk and hardcore have traces of Sabbath in their DNA. Not many acts can claim that lineage and be a stadium straddling behemoth. While Fleetwood Mac may have ingested more drugs, while Zeppelin may have had more of a mystique about them, Sabbath wore their madness on their sleeves and soundtracked the descent from 60’s sexual liberation to 70’s violence.
Although Ozzy’s solo career was never as groundbreaking, his work with Randy Rhodes helped usher in a new era of metal, one that was commercial, bright, flashier but still retained an edge of darkness. Even when he jumped on the hair metal bandwagon, it still sounded like Ozzy. His voice: part whine, part howl. It was magnificent and his numerous collaborators brought the best out in him.
Although to some it may seem like teenage nostalgia, moments like these were important in shaping the person that I am today. Being able to recognise the power and diversity of music, having songs to live your life by and seeing a genuine working-class hero (despite all the shenanigans with band members, Sharon and the family) succeed against the odds.
Whenever the end comes for our heroes, we mourn their lives and their legacies, but we also mourn for ourselves as a chapter in our lives has now closed. We remember the overblown emotions listening to this music, we remember the sense of superiority we felt knowing we had this music as a shield and we remember the times spent hearing this music live or in our bedrooms.
Lest we forget.
⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.
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