The stories that have since come out that surrounded the way the album and band was supposed to be drawn have differed. History appeared to be attempted to be rewritten even as it was taking place, which if you dive beneath the surface tends to bring about some disappointment in the way some things were done and manipulated. And this continued for years after these events, creating a pattern of disappointment for most people involved whose last name was not Osbourne. That will be touched on here, though it is the music itself that is what I would like to concentrate on the most. There is no denying that “Blizzard of Ozz” was what propelled Ozzy onto a stardom that he could not have imagined when the calendar ticked over to 1980. That that stardom was not reflected on the other members of the band is still a disappointment and a tragedy on many levels.
Despite his dismissal from Black Sabbath, Don Arden signed him to Jet Records. At the time Arden was still managing Black Sabbath, and his ultimate aim to was reunite Ozzy with them and go on to create more iconic albums under that banner. Even when the band had brought in Dio, Arden worked fervently behind the scenes to continue to try and have Ozzy replace him.
Early on there was a move to have Ozzy team up with guitarist Gary Moore, something that Moore in many interviews always said he was not interested in. At that time, he was in the US working with his group called G-Force which was where his focus lay. Eventually, Osbourne met up and befriended bass guitarist Bob Daisley, whose last gig had been in Rainbow. Daisley wrote in his contemporaneous autobiography “Just the Facts”, about his first time playing with Osbourne: [PUT IN QUOTE HERE].
With Daisley on board, the Osbourne camp brought in a relatively unknown guitarist called Randy Rhoads, who had been working in a band called Quiet Riot but was also classically trained on the guitar.
These three then began working on material for the album. Eventually, drummer Lee Kerslake was also brought in. Kerslake was best known as the drummer for Uriah Heep, and his experience and solid drumwork brought more professionalism to the band. At the time, the band was to be known as The Blizzard of Ozz, the new group helmed by vocalist Ozzy Osbourne. Of course, this didn’t work out the way it was intended, the first but certainly not the last of a long line of ‘changes’ that were made to ensure that one member of the band was to gain the most exposure at the expense of the rest. Even as the band played their intial gigs under that moniker, eventually it was to pass that the album would in fact be titled “Blizzard of Ozz”, but the artist whose name would be the whole focus of the project would be Ozzy Osbourne.
From the opening riff that kickstarts “I Don’t Know”, this album grabs you and sucks you in. Bob Daisley’s lyrics all tell a story, and that story is almost universally Ozzy’s, and having Ozzy singing about himself without really crafting the lyrics himself is something to behold. “I Don’t Know” is a great track, asking questions about the world around us, all the while also being our first introduction to Randy Rhoads and his amazing talent. There’s a touch of Ozzy questioning what has happened around him, the loss and lament of moving on from Black Sabbath and questioning what happens next with: “What’s the future of mankind? How do I know, I got left behind!”. Randy’s guitar riff from the outset is fabulous, and the undertones of Bob’s bassline complete the scene. That initial solo from Randy as well really opens up what is to come. Then we have the scream of “AAAALLL ABOOOARD!!!” and the forward momentum into what has become one of Ozzy’s signature songs “Crazy Train”, with the wailing guitar riffs, soaring vocals, brilliantly underrated bass line and drum tracking underneath. This is one of the great songs of heavy metal, one that has now even embedded itself into mainstream sports telecasts and the like. Imagine being in the rehearsal space when this first started being put together, that guitar riff and bass riff, and Ozzy screaming Daisley’s lyrics and making them his own. This song has always been a ‘shivers down the spine’ experience, whether it is this version or the live version. Lyrics that have become some of the best known of his career, “Mental wounds still screaming, driving me insane, I’m going off the rails on a crazy train”. Randy’s guitaring on this track has spanned generations and is generally the song that everyone associates with his short span of existence. One of the all time greats.
On reflection, if you were to take on the songs individually you can probably find some fault or lack of glory. People who have listened to my podcast over the last four plus years will know full well I am not a lover of the ballad, be it a power ballad or rock ballad or thrash ballad. And there is no doubt that “Goodbye to Romance” is this, a soft rock ballad. The fact that it was the first song written and completed for the album is somewhat amazing in retrospect. It was written with a purpose, that being to be released as a single, but due to other circumstances it never made it to that completion. Ozzy has been quoted as saying it was his way of saying goodbye to his days in Black Sabbath, and being unsure if he could ever scale those heights again. Beyond the obvious ballad tendencies of the track, listening to Ozzy’s vocal line and Randy’s terrific soloing in the middle of the song allows you to gloss over that entirely. I sing along to it every time I listen to the album, but it is a track that I don’ favour. And “Dee” of course is just a Randy ditty which to listen to is an instructional delight, but taken out of the album is nothing special. It showcases his skill, but is an interesting choice to place on the album. That may seem negative, but it isn’t meant to be, because albums are crafted, and that is certainly the case here.
Then to close out the first side of the album we have the wonderful tones of “Suicide Solution”, the song that critics of the band always claimed was suggesting to people that they should contemplate suicide, when it actually suggests the exact opposite. The composition of the song lyrically is one where the creation has a mixed history. Ozzy has claimed that he heard Randy playing a riff at a party, and that he began singing the opening lines over it as something he had in his head. Daisley counters in his autobiography that he wrote the lyrics and that it was about Ozzy’s troubles with excesses at the time. Unfortunately the third person in this puzzle cannot offer us any further light on the subject. It does have some great lyrics throughout, highlighted by “Now you live inside a bottle, the reaper’s travelling at full throttle, it’s catching you but you don’t see, the reaper is you and the reaper is me”. Once again it is Randy’s opening guitar riff that drags you in from the beginning, and Ozzy then pounding in with his vocals. It is an eye opening song lyrically that hits hard and powerfully, speaking from the heart. It’s a great conclusion to the first half of the album.
The second side of the album provides just as much joy. “Mr. Crowley” is an amazing track, full of its own exuberance, both vocally and instrumentally. Ozzy sounds like he is standing on a pulpit preaching the words to his sermon, while Randy’s guitar solo through the middle and conclusion of the song is just stunningly brilliant, taking this song from a terrific one to out and out brilliance. It is one of the most iconic solos in metal. Don Airey, who played the keys on the album, claims that he was an instrumental part of the writing of the song but was uncredited on the album. He wouldn’t be the last member of an Osbourne band to claim that. It is fair to say that Randy’s guitaring on this song took this album to another level, a uniquely crafted level that only someone of his training and differing opinions on his craft (he famously hated playing Black Sabbath songs because he disliked the way they were composed) could have done. For this revitalisation of their lead singers career, it became an important counter point to what he had done before, and if they had just been a Sabbath carbon copy band, it seems unlikely Ozzy’s career from 1980 onward would have been anywhere near as successful.
“No Bone Movies” was the final song written for the album, and was actually only written to be a B-side on a single, but eventually found its way onto the album so that Kerslake would have a writing credit on the album, as all of the other songs had been completed by the time he joined the band. The song itself is okay but it isn’t ground breaking. As it turns out the song that was supposed to be on the album, "You Lookin' at Me Lookin' at You", is actually a better song, and also would probably have fit better than “No Bone Movies”.
The closing two tracks of the album are vastly underrated in the course of Osbourne’s career, and complement each other perfectly. “Revelation (Mother Earth)” is a terrifically moody song about destroying the planet (one that is still relevant today), finishing off with a brilliant hard metal solo piece from Randy, Bob and Lee. This is another track where Don Airey’s keyboards are so prevalent and so important (no, zero credit for writing on this track either, though he again said he had involvement in the writing). The fact that it is so poignant through the first half of the song, before it builds to that brilliant heavy and fast conclusion that segues beautifully into the start of the next track is wonderfully well done. That song of course is “Steal Away (the Night)”, another fantastic fast paced song that is highlighted by Daisley’s perfect running bass line that steals the song. Following on from the slow-paced start to harder finish of “Revelation (Mother Earth)”, this is a sensational way to conclude the album, and beckons to you to turn the album back over and start all over again.
I had a revelation and conversion to the heavier side of music at the end of 1985, as I was completing Year 10 of high school. That story has been populated on various other podcasts and episodes, but Ozzy Osbourne happened to be one of the first bands and artists that I cottoned onto once this had occurred. “The Ultimate Sin” was one of the first albums I found, as well as a mysterious album that my heavy metal music dealer had discovered in a second hand record store with a white label and simply “Iron Maiden Live” emblazoned across it. Once he got it home, he discovered that instead of being Iron Maiden, it was in fact Ozzy Osbourne. More miraculously, it was the actual “Randy Rhodes Tribute” album, but about 15 months before that album was ever released. So we had that album before most people in the world, and it got played. A Lot. And because that album has basically the entirety of “Blizzard of Ozz” as its makeup, it was my first introduction to that album as well. In fact, it worked out really well, because when I did then get around to buying this album, I knew all the songs, but had heard them in their live versions before their studio versions. That made for an interesting conversion process.
When I first bought this album, it was as a double gatefold, with “Blizzard of Ozz” on one album, and the follow up album “Diary of a Madman” on the other. And my word didn’t those vinyl albums get played until the needle went blunt on my parents stereo. I taped both of those albums to either side of a C90 cassette and took it everywhere I went for years afterwards.
As those of you who are following this podcast closely will know, the past few weeks and the following few weeks have been chock full of amazing albums, albums that are hailed as some of the best heavy metal albums of all time. 1980 and 1990 in particular is full of them. So this album has been out again during all of this, and yet it has received as many if not more plays than the other albums. A part of that is the fact that as of the recording of this album it has been just weeks since the passing of Ozzy Osbourne himself, which of course has then required that one goes back through his entire discography to listen to again in his memory. But more than anything else, it is just the album itself, and how excellent it is.
There is a lot to take away from this album. It revitalised Ozzy Osbourne’s career, giving him the kickstart that he needed to fend off the end of his Sabbath years. It allowed him the riposte he needed after his former band had gotten the jump on him and released an album that was being hailed as their great return, and for him as an artist the ability to leap into the new decade, one where his profile eventually outstripped that of his former bandmates. On the other hand, in many ways it unfortunately did not necessarily give the same support to those that helped to raise him to these heights, that they didn’t get the same credit as they deserved. Randy Rhoads of course was lauded for his guitaring and writing, as he deserved to be, but the contributions of both Daisley and Kerslake would continue to be downplayed and undervalued for years. The fact that the band was actually supposed to be called The Blizzard of Ozz, and not just a solo band of Ozzy Osbourne, is now somewhat lost. It is important to note that without Bob Daisley’s song writing and lyric contributions, this album would have been a far different proposition, and perhaps not as great a success as it became.
What they produced together with “Blizzard of Ozz” is, in my opinion, the equal of what Black Sabbath had done with their self-titled debut album in 1970. Teaming Ozzy's well-known vocals with the amazingly refined guitaring of Randy, the fabulous groove of Daisley’s bass and the drive of Kerslake’s drumming, “Blizzard of Ozz” is a terrific collection of songs that meld together from different genres to form something far more as the sum of its parts. I equate “Blizzard of Ozz” with Black Sabbath’s debut album on a number of levels. Both have the awesome tracks, both have the mid-range tracks and both have the songs that... are a little bit on the average side. And that’s okay, because both albums are iconic for the same reasons, that they were a beginning of something that became truly amazing, and they represent everything that became wonderful about the bands themselves. Some people class them as the untouchable albums, the ones that created the style of music that each went forward with from that point, that they are the untouchable templates. In both cases I choose to class them as being brilliant starting points, that both have the slightest of flaws that are rectified by the time they created their follow ups, the sophomore releases that drew everything great from those first albums, and funnelled it into creating a masterpiece for their follow up.
Apart from this, "Blizzard of Ozz” is still as sensational today as it was on its release all those years ago. Everything about it still hits the right note. The vocals of Osbourne, the genius guitaring from Rhoads, the underrated bass and drums of Daisley and Kerslake, and the songs themselves that still stand the test of time and are as enormous and relevant today as they were back then. And that is what sets this album up as one of the most influential in the heavy metal genre.
No comments:
Post a Comment