OZZY OSBOURNE SAYS THAT WHILE HE LOVES HIS FORMER SABBATH BANDMATE, TONY IOMMI, HE DOES NOT ENJOY WORKING WITH HIM
Ozzy Osbourne says he doesn’t particularly enjoy working with Tony Iommi.
The original Sabbath singer has spoken about the guitarist in a new interview with The Times– and says he found it difficult working with him.
He says, “Do I like working with him? Not really. Do I like him as a person? Yeah, I love him as a person.
But if people were to say to me, ‘Was there a leader of Black Sabbath?’ I’d have to say it was Tony because without his guitar riffs, we’d be still sitting in fucking rehearsal with our thumbs up our arses going, ‘What do we do now?’”
Osbourne also states that he has moved on from his former band, who played their last show at Birmingham’s Genting Arena in February 2017. He states, “I’ll tell you what it was like. It’s like when you’re younger and you met a girl, Susie, and you break up and you don’t see her for 30 years.
Then she’s in town and you go, ‘Oh, I’ll give Susie a call,’ because your memory only remembers the good parts and you can narrow it then to a week and you go, ‘I remember that week and it was lovely.’ But then you go back and you go, ‘I forgot the f–king four and three-quarter years I was fucking miserable.”
Ozzy says he’s back “in control” now that he’s doing his solo shows and adds, “I get more pleasure out of doing the gigs now.”
Ozzy will headline a special Ozzfest on New Year’s Eve at The Forum in Los Angeles, where he’ll be joined by artists including Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, Jonathan Davis and Body Count.
additional source: Classic Rock via loudersound.com
I get what Ozzy is saying. In Black Sabbath, he was part of a band. There were four relatively equal members, and his was just one vote out of a total of four. Tony obviously came up with the riffs, and Geezer wrote most of the lyrics. Ozzy has admitted in previous interviews that he doesn’t consider himself much of a singer. He is more of a front man, who works to get the crowd into the performance. In Sabbath, he was limited by what Tony and Geezer created. As a solo artist, he’s the boss! He isn’t limited by what others create, because he has the final say in what gets created. It’s natural that he would be more happy in his current situation.
Just for the hell of it, here’s my top 20 Ozzy songs:
20. I Don’t Want To Change The World
19. Crazy Babies
18. Breakin’ All The Rules
17. Party With The Animals
16. Desire
15. S.A.T.O.
14. Mr. Crowley
13. No More Tears
12. You Can’t Kill Rock And Roll
11. Never Know Why
10. Bark At The Moon
9. Mama, I’m Coming Home
8. Lightning Strikes
7. Flying High Again
6. Shot In The Dark
5. I Don’t Know
4. Rock ‘N’ Roll Rebel
3. Road To Nowhere
2. Crazy Train
1. Over The Mountain
Brother Doug! Over the Mountain is my favorite Ozzy song, too!
Great list Doug!
I’d have You Can’t Kill Rock And Roll & Mr. Crowley higher up,
and Lightning Strikes & Never Know Why a little lower.
Perfect 20 songs though!
Bro, 37 years later, and that song still gives me goose bumps! Especially Randy’s amazing solo, just thinking about it gives me goose bumps! Over a thousand listens, and every time it’s the same question, how the hell did he do that??? IMO, greatest guitar solo ever!
What?!?! No Diary of a Madman? How dare you!
I really like, Ultimate Sin, and that would definitely make my list.
Doug! Randy’s solo is amazing! And that drum intro at the beginning of the song gives me a chubby! :o)
Thanks, Mikey!
Madman and Sin are great songs, wasn’t easy leaving them off my top 20.
Rattle, you are so right, from the beginning to the end of that song, it’s just a hell of a ride! I remember my reaction the first time I heard Randy’s solo, it was holy sh-t! WTF was that??? Blew me away!
..guys are so stupid…they make lists of “best” songs or “best” records….women never do that…ask a woman what her favorite song is and she’ll look at you quizzically and tell you that it depends on her mood. I make these lists all the time and then I decided that women are right about this and guys are just missing the point. Unless of course you’re doing a radio show. 🙂
God almighty bro, lighten up! Stop over-analyzing everything to death!
99 bottles of beer on the wall…
Doug, it’s the truth; talk to any woman about music and they’re right Doug…lol….women move with the music, they are the music, women are ethereal and men are just sort of clod like….lol….Doug, i am actually against this analysis thing which you speak of; the list. “Let’s make a list” it’s an epidemic with males, it is.
Lol…the debate over your list….it’s just….the thing is, my lists kept changing and I realized that all the women I talk to about music think making a list of “best” music is the dumbest thing ever…lol…..
My wife loves my lists! We compare and go back and forth all the time, it’s all in good fun! What’s the big deal? It’s not dumb, sometimes it’s fun years ahead to look back at old lists and see where your head was at that time! Ah sh-t, see, now you got me over-analyzing! What’s your top 20 Ozzy songs?
Doug, of course, your wife loves your lists. You have a charmed life,….. lol, I am not laughing at that, I am laughing at the fact that you actually came up with 20 Ozzy songs to make a list. I can’t even think of anything past maybe a half dozen of his songs that I would actually rank as being worthy of a list. 20? …I had Kill ‘Em All on today, haven’t listened to that record in over probably 15 years and I noted that Kirk plays almost the exact same guitar solos in every song….lol…but then man, are there three better metal songs in a row on a record than those last three? Then, you go to Some Girls, which is just an ingeniously sequenced record …you don’t have to subjectively go in there and try to get into it it just works on you. Screaming for Vengeance…(I know Dana will agree) is that record where a band just hits this synergy where they take music to a whole new launching off point. ….Back IN Black is one classic after another…on the same record! ….Ozzy never made that one great record, his records have some great songs and some that are pretty good. I would say Crazy Train, Bark at the Moon, Mr. Crowley are his best songs and then the rest depends on what I am psychically going for on a given moment…for self pity there’s Tonight, for being on some extended psychotic drug binge there’s Diary of a Madman and Secret Loser, for wanting to tell everybody that I am much cooler than they are and on some sort of higher plane than them there’s S.A.T.O….Man, they just don’t make artists like Ozzy and Sammy anymore where you could live vicarously through them and be great yourself…that’s what a great artist does. For when I am mad at the world there’s You Can’t Kill Rock and Roll……
If you’re a fan of a band/artist, then it’s not that hard to come up with a top 20 list! You don’t consider Blizzard Of Ozz and Diary Of A Madman great records? Really?
RHOADS!!!!
It’s about the songs…look at that Uriah Heep record where it was this herculean effort by a lot of people to produce a great record. Ozzy and Randy made great music but those two records don’t carry the day all the way through…Little Dolls is just decent and Believer is this dense mass that’s not very inviting until you get to the chorus but by then you’ve already checked out pretty much…Over the Mountain, which you rate freaking number one! is almost a great song…it doesn’t light up the sky like Bark at the Moon does….then that first one has two of his best songs but then Suicide Solution suffers from the same ailment as Believer and it’s even worse….that ballad? really Doug R.? you’re telling me that song entertains you? ….sober, I mean.
Great records are rare and overrating is a huge problem…Great records:
Back In Black
British Steel
Screaming For Vengeance
Pyromania
Van Halen
ZoSo
Blackout
Abominog
Metallica
Holy Diver
Mob Rules
Some Girls
Abbey Road
These records have great songs all the way through and the highlights on them go above anything you experienced before and/or the consistency throughout never declines AND there’s this arc over the whole record that forms this narrative to where the whole record becomes more than just a collection of songs….those are great records.
Note there’s not one Kiss record on my list, Kiss didn’t make great records, they would come damn close and then blow it. Deep Purple never made great records, House of Blue Light comes close but they would have songs or moments….Ozzy is a bit better than Purple at making records.
I know I am going to get flamed, but I think the first Blue Murder, and Lynch Mob, albums are both pretty fantastic records.
Shanny, I’m really short on time, (Christmas decorating all day) so I’ll be breif. “Goodbye To Romance” I can take it or leave it, has nothing to do with being sober, just depends on the mood I’m in. Blizzard/Diary ARE great records, RR was a musician magician! Destroyer IS a great record, first 5 Zep records, Aerosmith’s Get Your Wings, Toys, Rocks, Nugent, I could go on all day, but I got to go. I know what I like, and why, as do you, that’s all that really matters.