Ozzy Osbourne – Blizzard of Ozz – 1980
“Daddy, I want music, not talk!” my four year old daughter shouted to me as we were on a run to the pharmacy last night.
“You got it!” I said and fired up Blizzard of Ozz, which was next on the Listening Post list anyway.
“Daddy! Wanna see my leg kick dance?!?”
I looked back and saw Zoe kicking and jerking her feet to the music.
“You like this music, Zig Zag?” my most often used nickname for her.
“Yeah!”.
Until “Goodbye To Romance”, that is. She doesn't dig the ballads.
When I was 15 I had a job in the greasy spoon in the tourist of Bar Harbor. I mixed the cole slaw and, eventually, I was graduated to fish chowder.
That's when I met Pete. My best friend for a couple years until we lost touch in the early 90s, Pete was a lover of all things metal. Pantera, Van Halen and Ozzy. It was he who convinced me to go to the Bangor State Fair to see Ozzy in concert. He convinced me to bring the album cover with me and wave it, which was a burden, actually.
Because of Peter Daher I got to the concert so early that I was 3 people from the stage. Because of him I saw a new band that really caught fire with both of us, a little band called Def Leppard. Because of him Randy Rhodes looked me right in the eye and smiled at me through a solo.
Thanks, Pete.
Blizzard of Ozz is a perfect record. Even if I hadn't had those experiences I would love this record. Watching my daughter react to it the way she did 30 years later proves that for me. I think a lot of that has to do with healthy competition and need to prove himself after leaving Sabbath.
Of course, without Randy Rhodes I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be writing any of that.
Rhodes brought a magical combination of adoration for the idiom of metal, a respect for classical music, a slavish disciples talent (my god, how many fingers did that man even have? 15?) and a sense of a little bit of radio friendly ear candy.
All of this together brings us classics like “Crazy Train”, “Mr. Crowley” “I Don't Know” AND acoustic gems like “Dee” which bleeds into the righteous “Suicide Solution”. There's room for that power ballad because there's so much of everything else going on.
I find it interesting that both Ozzy and Sabbath would choose to use sacrilegious imagery on their covers. From Ozzy's cross-as-weapon to Sabbath's smoking angels (a theme copied by Van Halen just a couple years later). Dead Kennedys would incorporate the same anti-religious themes on their In God we Trust, inc the next year. No doubt this was all a reaction to the Moral Majority's rise in America.
It all fits the music, by the way.
But I digress.
In short:
I love this record.
Grade: A+
Aside: I Don't Know, Crazy Train, Suicide Solution, Mr. Crowley
BlindSide: Dee, Revelation (Mother Earth), Steal Away (The Night)
DownSide:
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