10 Ozzy Songs That Got Me Through Life
My Personal Tribute to the Prince of Darkness.
~Maybe, it’s not too late, to learn how to love, and forget how to hate. ~
I must’ve been about eight when I heard my first Ozzy Osbourne cassette. It was “Blizzard of Ozz” and the song was “Crazy Train.” The heavy guitar riffs sounded like wheelsets grinding across railroad tracks on a journey into madness. My mom refused to buy me his music; she thought Ozzy was a devil worshipper. So, I would sneak off with the guys to the park and listen to him blaring out of our friend’s JVC RC-M90 boom box. It didn’t help that in January of 82 Ozzy had mistakenly bitten the head off a bat and then in February of the same year he was arrested in San Antonio for peeing on the Alamo.
Throughout my life, Ozzy’s music spoke to me. To my personal experiences of trying drugs, drinking alcohol, falling in and out of love, believing and disbelieving, facing mental health, and coming to terms with the political world around me.
Here are 10 Ozzy songs, and a few in his Black Sabbath days, that got me through life. A small tribute among many as the heavy metal world mourns the passing of a musical icon.
Number Ten: “War Pigs”
I’ve seen plenty of wars playing on television since I can remember. With every violent conflict, Ozzy, back then on lead vocals for Black Sabbath, left us a reminder of why sometimes war isn’t always what it seems. While many have used it and continue to use it as an anti-war song, I have always felt like Ozzy was admonishing those who abuse power to start wars for control. In my Pro-Palestine anti-Israel days (of nearly twenty-eight years), I never questioned my blind support of the Palestinian cause and hatred for the one Jewish State. It wasn’t until I saw this fan-made version of the song that I started to ask myself, “Are we (Pro-Palestine supporters) the baddies?” I discovered my own answer to that question and made the switch ever since.
Number Nine: “Changes”
Everyone goes through changes in life. Ozzy was only reminding us that all of us go through it no matter who we are. A few years ago, my stepson from a previous marriage was listening to a soulful rendition of “Changes” performed by Charles Bradley. I told him to Google the original version. He took a listen and was blown away. “I didn’t know a white guy originally sung that, Dad.” I asked him if it mattered that he was black listening to it. He said no. I answered, “That’s what music does, Son. It transcends color. Music is colorblind.” Ozzy was a part of that, and this song is proof.
Number Eight: “Paranoid”
I describe the sounds of this one as a whole lotta depression mixed with a little bit of general anxiety disorder. I never fully understood the lyrics until after a nasty bout of Long COVID in 2020. I found myself playing this to calm the nerves and to get my head right. I eventually got over the symptoms, but whenever I hear this song, I shake a little remembering how I thought I was losing my mind. That’s all I wanna say about that.
Number Seven: “The Wizard”
The chaos in this one is magical. From middle school to high school I always pictured Gandalf the Grey, the 1978 “Lord of the Rings” animated version to be exact, strutting down some Middle Earth neighborhood doing his thing. It was the first time I heard a harmonica being played in a hard rock groove accompanied by cymbal tapping. Ozzy’s slick Brummie drawl personified a character commonly misunderstood among the religious. One of opposite religious beliefs summoning and casting for the common good. I could relate to the Wizard growing up as a teenager. His normalization reeked of Asimov’s famous essay “The Wicked Witch is Dead.”
Number Six: “Diary of a Madman”
That opening, to this day, gives me chills; not as much as the Damian the Omen opera chant towards the end. I just never listened to this as an ode to mental illness but more like a silly song about demon possession. Unfortunately, being the silly little kid that I was in the early 80s, I wholeheartedly believed demons were a real thing. Fast forward a few decades and I can relate to that feeling of mental emptiness when the mind takes control. It’s a dialectic far scarier than fictitious creatures with horns on their heads. Ozzy ingeniously captures this essence with lyrics like, “A sickened mind and spirit. / The mirror tells me lies. / Could I mistake myself for someone / Who lives behind my eyes? / Will he escape my soul / Or will he live in me? / Is he trying to get out / Or trying to enter me?” No religious text has explored such questions. But they were enough for me to find my own answers.
Number Five: “Over the Mountain”
Tons of interpretations filled my mind depending on my mood. Some days I felt like Ozzy was talking about running away with your imagination to escape the real world. Other days I felt it was a religious dedication to losing one’s self in spiritual ecstasy. One time I was sure that it meant being able to leave the body and fly through the sky. Ironically, years later I would end up believing that Prophet Muhammad flew from Arabia to Jerusalem on a half donkey half human winged creature named Buraq faster than it takes Usain Bolt to run the 100 meters dash. Maybe today we can say it’s on some Buddhist whirling Sufi Hindu practice that LSD hippies out in the Mojave Desert have yet to try. Or that the mountain is a metaphor for life and reaching over it is death. Whatever it’s about, Ozzy was trying to tell us that there’s some things out there science hasn’t yet figured out.
Number Four: “Mr. Crowley”
Ozzy taught me to appreciate starting a heavy metal song with loads of British synth and then busting in with heavy guitar strumming embedded with what I think might be arpeggio. And who could ignore a Cuban American playing the shit out of a bass in the background? I’m not one to believe in the existence of a fairytale Satan, but I do believe in karma. Ozzy was just telling us what goes around comes around using the myths of the urban legend. Don’t be a Mr. Crowley, folks.
Number Three: “Crazy Train”
There used to be this amusement park ride at Western Playland in Ascarate Park: the Himalaya. Thing was like a huge rolling amphitheater cramped with more Mexicans than a Juarez city bus on a Friday night and a big ass strobe light in the middle of it decorated in flashing light bulbs. It’d start off slow then go medium speed. “All aboaaaaard! Hahahahaha!” Once we heard Ozzy, we knew the DJ was going to make the ride go faster to the point of one enormous blur and uncontrollable nausea. I don’t know what Ozzy was trying to teach me with this one. It didn’t matter. It was a song people threw on to move the crowds and it always worked. It still does.
Number Two: “Flying High Again”
Oh, the marijuana I smoked to this one! In fact, my first time hitting the bong, this song was playing. A few hits afterwards and I distinctly remember Ozzy telling me, “Mamma's gonna worry / I've been a bad, bad boy / No use sayin' sorry / It's something that I enjoy.” It didn’t matter that ‘worry’ didn’t rhyme with ‘sorry’ or that my mother would’ve beat my teenage ass if she saw my bloodshot eyes and THC induced euphoria. The only thing that mattered was the high and the good times that came with it. Now, I can’t stand marijuana; I prefer a chilled glass of Merlot with dinner or a small glass of whiskey on the rocks and soda water mixed in.
Number One: “I Don’t Know”
And last but not least, this one always brings out the ignostic (ignorant + agnostic) in me. Ozzy taught me that we don’t have to pretend to know everything when we don’t know anything. It’s okay to believe or not to believe. Maybe that’s why I chose this as the #1 Ozzy song that got me through life. Never have I heard such words of wisdom like, “You gotta believe in someone. / Asking me who is right. / Asking me who to follow. / Don't ask me, I don't know.” Nuff said.
A Final Toast
On the night that I heard Ozzy passed, I broke out the Johhny Walker Black. I poured it into my cup straight. No ice. No soda water. Pure and raw like Ozzy’s music. I like to think as I took a shot that Ozzy is somewhere out there. Out in the heavens surrounded by the gods playing “Goodbye to Romance” really loud singing in harmony to the part that goes, “I say goodbye to romance, yeah. / Goodbye to friends, I tell you. / Goodbye to all the past. / I guess that we'll meet, / we'll meet in the end.” And as those gods surround him to welcome him to his new abode, Randy comes out from behind them and smiles childishly at Ozzy.