WE LOVE YOU ALL: Ozzy Osbourne, 1948-2025

People will debate the first punk band and the first rock band over and over, there are some answers that are better than others but nothing definitive. And maybe, if they are truly bored, they will argue about the first metal band, making claims for Blue Cheer or Led Zeppelin or even Steppenwolf (the first to drop “heavy metal thunder.”). But everyone knows there is no argument. Metal began in one place, with one band. If they had put it on wax a few years earlier Kubrick would’ve hucked out the Strauss, because this is the sound of a monolith coming out of nowhere and irrevocably altering everyone’s mind:

Listen to it. The ominous bells and rain, and then that tritone jarring the world off its axis, the thudding drums and bass keeping it there. What kind of voice could even exist in this? And then the slow moan of Ozzy Osbourne, who died today at 76, crawls into your ear. He is nearly choking on fear and yet still describing the doom headed his way, until the final moment of utter damnation: OH NO PLEASE GOD HELP ME

If rock and roll is about freedom, metal is about power — being tempted by it and ferociously and joyously wielding it, but also witnessing its destruction, being crushed by it. Geezer Butler’s bass (and lyrics) and Tony Iomni’s guitar and Bill Ward’s drums created that power, Ozzy’s voice is what grounds it. It’s not the horny howl of Robert Plant or the banshee cry of Ronnie James Dio or the growls and shouts of everyone who came in his wake. John Darnielle’s 33 1/3 chapbook about Master of Reality is surely the greatest writing about the band and some of the greatest music writing ever set down in print, so I will turn it over to his young narrator to describe Ozzy’s singing: 

He has a voice like a weedwhacker some say but I say it would have to be a custom weedwhacker because it doesn’t sound like anyone else’s, and also it sounds kind of like you know him. Like, when Robert Plant is singing for Led Zeppelin, you can’t really think you’re ever going to see that guy at the arcade and play doubles on Galaga with him. But Ozzy, he sounds like the guy who changes your quarters at the arcade and you wonder, is that this guy’s whole job? Is he married? Does his wife say, “Did you have a good day at the arcade today?” I don’t know if I am telling this right but I will try again later maybe. But anyway this is why Ozzy is great, or part of it anyway, is that he sounds like he could be your friend.

The flip side of power is vulnerability, and that is what lies in Ozzy’s voice. It makes the defeat and despair in his songs more than words, and it makes the strength feel earned, attainable. The same uncle who got me into Black Sabbath in high school also passed on some weights, and my dorky ass would do reps while “Children Of The Grave” blasted out of the stereo. Loving Black Sabbath knows no age boundary, but I think they are especially important to younger people who can see power in a way children cannot, and understand just how little they have and how much they are being denied. And a lot of us are powerless a lot of the time, right? Even Iron Man is shunned until he has his revenge. But one thing you can always do now, because Ozzy and his friends decided to make some sick tunes a half century ago, is put on a Black Sabbath album and sink into the riffs and wails. (And this is the nearly overwhelming sadness at the heart of Darnielle’s book, how his hero cannot do this one thing that gives him life, how he has been denied this music that is a part of him.) 

I’ve been listening to the quasi-bootleg Live At Last while writing this, it fucking rips of course. And although it’s been a while since my last listen, one of the things I remembered was how Ozzy is constantly shouting “WE LOVE YOU!” to the crowd, which is pretty funny in the context of something like “Paranoid” but is charming overall. Even in the sadness of Ozzy’s death, pretty much everyone has taken comfort in the fact that he went out after a final show of love for his and his bandmates’ work, where he could see the incredible lineage of music that followed from that declaration of doom in 1970 and perform for the people who have lived better lives because of the powerlessness and power he sang. We love you too, Ozzy.