Artist: Osbourne, Ozzy
Label: Sony BMG
Release: 1981
Rating: 4/5
You could say Black Sabbath made a smart move when they fired Ozzy in 1979 over his drug abuse and unreliability and replaced him with Ronnie James Dio. Two monumental albums followed, first “Heaven and Hell” and then “Mob Rules”, which many still consider the best Sabbath albums ever. On the other hand, Ozzy, who had been fairly successfully revived by the daughter of their manager at the time after weeks of booze-soaked jitters in a darkened hotel room, decided to go solo. Osbourne tried out a whole bunch of guitarists (George Lynch among them), but what bugged him about all of them was that they were trying to imitate Tony Iommi, the man he had parted ways with in circumstances that were anything but friendly. Just before he gave up, tiny Randy Rhoads, guitarist of the then still unknown Quiet Riot, showed up to the audition with his Les Paul, played a few riffs through his humble little amp and got the job on the spot. “He started playing and it felt like God had walked into my life,” Ozzy recalls.
That, in a nutshell, is the origin story of one of the most important albums in metal history, Ozzy’s debut, “Blizzard of Ozz”. Of course, the record owes some of its success to Osbourne’s excesses and scandals, with which he outraged the puritanical, God-fearing public across the pond, but you can argue that the album was shaped above all by Randy’s inventiveness and technical polish on an instrument that was going through a rebirth at the time. After the lively I Dont’ Know, a mighty minor-key riff mows us down, and after a few bars it morphs into an energetic, melodic major-key figure, on the wings of which Crazy Train comes charging in, still a trademark of Ozzy’s repertoire today, with the song rounded off by an accomplished but not overly flashy solo. The surprisingly saccharine Goodbye to Romance and the acoustic Dee are followed by the ominous rhythms of Suicide Solution, which surely kicked up the most dust of all the songs on the album, since it drove one unfortunate young man to actually take his own life. And because America wouldn’t be America without a lawsuit following right away, the matter moved to court, where it was, of course, thrown out, much like the case against Judas Priest and the alleged suicidal messages on “Stained Class” (1978), under whose influence two more troubled teens took their own lives. Typical of Americans to blame others for their own stupidity, the commentary could go, and Halford added that if he ever did intend to leave hidden messages in his songs, he’d rather urge listeners to buy his albums.
The mysterious Mr. Crowley kicks off with the sound of organs, and it’s graced with one of Randy’s most beautiful solos. The first part of it confidently sweeps the floor with all the shredders of the day, while the second, with its classical inspirations, opens up entirely new horizons for the electric guitar. The last three songs are the weakest, convincing us with neither lyrics nor music, but they don’t hurt the overall impression of this influential album. What did hurt it was Ozzy himself, when he “decorated” the 2002 CD edition not only with a new mix and mastering, but also by re-recording the drums and bass, thereby deciding, out of old grudges, to rob Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake of all the automatic royalties from his back catalog. So this isn’t your ordinary remix but a completely new creation that largely desecrated both “Blizzard of Ozz” and its successor “Diary of a Madman” (1982), and what’s worse, this important information is nowhere to be found on the cover but hidden way at the back of the booklet. So if you don’t have the vinyl, I warmly recommend the 22-bit remaster from 1995, which decently preserves the original sound and atmosphere, and give the shameful 2002 edition a wide berth.
But let’s leave the squabbles and Ozzy’s poor judgment aside (which was undoubtedly influenced by his wife, who, after getting him back on his feet, successfully turned the prince of darkness into a caricature) and go back to 1981. The golden age of the electric guitar had thus begun. Randy Rhoads stepped up alongside Eddie van Halen and, together with him, opened a new chapter in rock, one enriched the year before by Maiden’s legendary debut, Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades” and Priest’s “Britis Steel”. Metal was starting to push its way out of the underground and into the mainstream, shining in all its diversity by the mid-eighties, only to collapse ignominiously thanks to the harmful influence of the banal LA scene. The heroic era, marked above all by the NWOBHM, great virtuosos and million-selling records, can’t be judged solely by the dreadful image typical of Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, where everything good got corrupted. The true spirit of the eighties lives in the first half of the decade, when you can still recognize its original power and energy, captured in packed stadiums and sold-out world tours, and in big personalities like Randy, for whom the instrument meant not just a source of income and promotion but a way of life. The last great revolution in rock music thus begins with those very albums, among them “Blizzard of Ozz”, which might strike today’s listener as rather dated and clunky, but in the context of its time holds priceless value, above all thanks to the mighty legacy of Randy Rhoads.
Lineup
Ozzy Osbourne – vocals
Randy Rhoads – guitar
Bob Daisley – bass guitar
Lee Keslake – drums
Production
Ozzy Osbourne
Tracklist
1. I Don’t Know
2. Crazy Train
3. Goodbye To Romance
4. Dee
5. Suicide Solution
6. Mr. Crowley
7. No Bone Movies
8. Revelation (Mother Earth)
9. Steal Away The Night
Album length: 39.32
