In the summer of 1979, Ozzy Osbourne was at rock bottom.
Kicked out of Black Sabbath, the band he had fronted for more than a decade, he was holed up in an LA hotel room, numbing his feelings of humiliation and depression with booze and drugs. At the age of 30, he thought was finished.
But with Blizzard Of Ozz, his debut solo album – released in September 1980, five months after Sabbath’s Heaven And Hell – he pulled off a heroic comeback. And in the resurrection of Ozzy Osbourne, two figures were pivotal.
It was Sharon Arden, daughter of infamous rock manager Don Arden, who rescued Ozzy from oblivion, becoming his manager and later his wife.
And it was Randy Rhoads, a young American guitarist, whose brilliance inspired the greatest music Ozzy ever made outside of Black Sabbath.
Randy Rhoads was eight years younger than Ozzy, and a former member of Quiet Riot, the LA band who went on to have a US No.1 album in 1983 with Metal Health.
While slight in stature – “about four foot two, and a hundred pounds wet,” Ozzy said – Rhoads was the most explosive rock guitarist since Eddie Van Halen.
And with a rhythm section comprised of two veterans – bassist Bob Daisley, ex-Rainbow, and drummer Lee Kerslake, ex-Uriah Heep – Ozzy had a band with a powerful chemistry and a creative energy that set that unmistakable voice in a new, modern context.
Blizzard Of Ozz was – loudly and proudly – a heavy metal album, but different to anything he had recorded with Sabbath, the sound shaped by Rhoads’ melodic riffing and fizzing pyrotechnics.
In this album’s three deathless anthems, Ozzy’s over-the-top persona is defined: the maniac in Crazy Train, the drunkard in Suicide Solution, the Prince of Darkness in the cod-Satanic Mr. Crowley, a study of infamous occultist Aleister Crowley.
In contrast, Ozzy’s sensitive side is presented in Goodbye To Romance, a broken-hearted ballad, and Revelation (Mother Earth), an eco-conscious epic.
Blizzard Of Ozz hit No.7 in the UK, and No.21 in the US.
The follow-up, Diary Of A Madman, was another big seller, its title track a gothic masterpiece.
But in 1981, Daisley and Kerslake were fired – replaced by bassist Rudy Sarzo, also ex-Quiet Riot, and drummer Tommy Aldridge, formerly of Black Oak Arkansas.
On 19 March 1982, during a US tour, Randy Rhoads died at he age of 25 in a plane crash near Leesburg, Florida. Rhoads was one of two passengers on a light aircraft piloted by the band’s bus driver, Andrew Aycock.
Witnesses reported that Aycock twice flew low over the bus – in which Ozzy and Sharon lay sleeping – before a third pass resulted in disaster. The left wing clipped the back of the bus, and the plane crashed into the garage of a nearby house. All three occupants were killed.
“The day Randy died was the greatest tragedy of my life,” Ozzy said.
Blizzard Of Ozz and Diary Of A Madman stand as testament to the genius of the man who did so much to turn Ozzy’s life around.
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