Ozzy Osbourne (1948 - 2025)

I didn’t want a Bar Mitzvah. But my parents insisted. I threatened if they made my do it, that I would recite the lyrics to “Hotel California” in place of my torah portion. Eventually, I lost this familial battle. But I had my revenge – if merely symbolic – when my parents provided a jukebox for the kids’ party adjacent to the reception. When we went to the jukebox rental place I was asked to fill out a form requesting singles to populate the jukebox. And the jukebox arrived fully loaded, each and every selection, with Black Sabbath. The irony of a Bar Mitzvah soundtracked by Black Shabbat was not remotely lost on me.

 

“Electric Funeral” was, at the time, my favorite. It opens with a plodding wah wah riff by Tony Iommi, followed by a descending line that, in his very imitable style, Ozzy sings along with, hugging the contours, and merely providing words to the already-present melody. This imitability is one of the things that made Ozzy inimitable. He often sang the utterly obvious. Think of “Iron Man.” Following that leaden riff (“Leaden Man”?) with words out of a twelve year-old’s sixth grade note book. Any other singer could do it, but no other singer would dare. To a twelve year-old, trying to sort out emotions, interests, understanding of, and taste in, music, Ozzy was so completely on my level as to require no effort to join him on his wavelength. Like many of his melodies, copping what was already there, I copped his words, his tunes, his lyrics. And of course, the lyrics were the pivotal component of my revenge. Above, I called it “merely symbolic.” But I don’t, in reality, believe that. The symbolic is powerful. There’s nothing “merely” about it.

 

Sabbath and Ozzy allowed my pre-pubescent self to recognize a different way to be in the world. One could raise a middle finger (or two) when confronted with a camera lens. Rather than singing about girls or love or American pie, one could sing about funerals, even electric funerals. One could sing about paranoia and war pigs and how, according to Ozzy, fairies wear boots. You gotta believe him! I hadn’t smoked my first joint quite yet. But “Sweet Leaf” made me feel like I should want to. 

 

 

When I first walked into a record store with my own money. I was too young to have codified my taste. I didn’t yet understand the cultural signifiers of genre and style. So I walked out with the Captain and Tenille’s Love Will Keep Us Together and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. I probably didn’t know what incongruous meant. I didn’t need to yet.

 

I have loved the first four Black Sabbath records ever since. But I stopped keeping up with Ozzy at that juncture of his career. I was not on board the “Crazy Train.” Over the years, on tour with my own band, with Sabbath blasting in the van, I never stopped shaking my head at the improbability of Black Sabbath as a band and Ozzy as a singer and front man. The whole endeavor was simultaneously childish and schticky, while also being riveting and exhilarating. As with all the best music, one finds oneself asking, “Who the fuck told them they could do that?!” In rock and roll – unlike in most jazz or classical or what have you – that question is incorrectly formulated. In rock and roll, the issue is not that someone told them they could do that, it’s that no one told them that they couldn’t. They didn’t have the rule book (and wouldn’t or couldn’t have read it if they did). Sabbath, as much as any rock and roll band, was firing shots into the darkness, unsure even if targets existed. They weren’t after bullseyes so much as the snotty, joyous, thrill of the BANG! Who the fuck cares if part A segues seamlessly or sensibly into part B. What matters is that each part tickles that particular node of the reptilian brain that triggers a flurry of response unimpeded by any semblance of an ought.

 

Perhaps my favorite Ozzy verse – maybe my favorite verse of anyone’s – is the second verse in “Fairies Wear Boots.” Ozzy has been describing what may be a psychotropic hallucination. He has peered through a window and seen fairies dancing with a dwarf. The fairies, apparently, were wearing boots and Ozzy is at pains to convince us of this particular detail. After interludes containing some of Iommi’s best and most pasted-together licks, after drummer Bill Ward has hit us with a few of his patented falling-down-the-stairs fills, Ozzy returns, troubled by what he has seen. He seeks help.

 

So I went to the doctor to see what he could give me.

He said “Son, Son, you’ve gone too far,

‘Cause smoking and tripping is all that you do” …

 

It appears that Ozzy’s doctor has correctly diagnosed the issue. On the other hand, Ozzy still has one more line to deliver, to complete the quatrain form that is the template for the rock and roll verse. To refresh our memories, this is where Ozzy left off (at least in my telling):

So I went to the doctor to see what he could give me.

He said “Son, Son, you’ve gone too far,

‘Cause smoking and tripping is all that you do” …

 

Conventionally, the lyricist would, at this point have two mandates. First, formally, to complete the rhyme of the line ending in “too far.” And second, narratively, to provide a response to the doctor’s interdiction. As the lyricist and singer, these are the puzzles to be solved as Ozzy moves from line three to line four. Ozzy’s solution to these puzzles, line four, consists of one word, “Yeah!” bellowed with a sizeable dollop of reverb, sending it off into oblivion.

 

So long, Ozzy. And yeah. Fuck yeah.