The History of OZZ

<v Speaker 1>Hello everybody, and welcome back to these Surely you can't
<v Speaker 1>be serious podcast. I am here with my best friend
<v Speaker 1>Dee Graves, and we are talking about the effing Prince
<v Speaker 1>of Darkness himself.
<v Speaker 2>Dunham, Dunham, Dunham.
<v Speaker 1>Hey, Hey, we are talking about Ozzy Osbourne and we
<v Speaker 1>are comparing his No More Tears album to the Aerosmith
<v Speaker 1>album that we heard last week. Get a grip the
<v Speaker 1>seventies rockers who have finally gotten sober and produced some
<v Speaker 1>great albums of the nineties. Oh no, bats were harmed
<v Speaker 1>during the recording of this podcast.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so this is gonna be great. We are comparing
<v Speaker 2>a rock god of the seventies to another rock god
<v Speaker 2>of the seventies, but albums that they both produced in
<v Speaker 2>the nineties.
<v Speaker 3>Right.
<v Speaker 2>So our story begins in August of nineteen eighty nine,
<v Speaker 2>when Ozzy is sent to prison for the second time,
<v Speaker 2>this time for attempted murder.
<v Speaker 1>This blew me away. Yeah when I heard this.
<v Speaker 2>Before we get there, though, we need to go back
<v Speaker 2>about forty years and get the history leading up to
<v Speaker 2>that moment.
<v Speaker 1>Let's do it, all right.
<v Speaker 2>So John Michael Osborne was born December third, nineteen forty eight,
<v Speaker 2>which means he's alluding my dad. Yeah, it's crazy.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>His first job was in the music industry, was it. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>he was a tuner for car horns.
<v Speaker 1>I didn't know car horns had to be in tune,
<v Speaker 1>but apparently it's a.
<v Speaker 2>Very important Yeah. You don't want to have it a
<v Speaker 2>flat sounding no? Okay, no little sharp, dark platt Okay,
<v Speaker 2>got it perfect right there?
<v Speaker 1>Me me.
<v Speaker 2>His second job was at a slaughterhouse, which becomes relevant
<v Speaker 2>later on in his life. And then he went to
<v Speaker 2>prison for the first time, and it was for stealing
<v Speaker 2>a black and white TV from a little shop that
<v Speaker 2>didn't work. I mean he chunked it out the window
<v Speaker 2>of the shop, which is probably why it didn't work.
<v Speaker 2>But all he had to do was pay a forty
<v Speaker 2>dollars fine, but his dad said, I'm not paying that fine,
<v Speaker 2>and so what he did instead was get picked up
<v Speaker 2>on the warrant and spend four weeks in prison.
<v Speaker 1>Forts No, I'll take the jail time.
<v Speaker 2>Total lesson from dad. There, thanks a lot, Dad. So
<v Speaker 2>just not too long after that, he had himself a
<v Speaker 2>blue transistor radio, hopefully that he purchased as opposed to stole,
<v Speaker 2>and he heard the song She Loves You by the Beatles,
<v Speaker 2>and he said, I need to be in the music industry.
<v Speaker 2>So in nineteen sixty eight, he had been in the
<v Speaker 2>music industry for a brief period of time and Tony
<v Speaker 2>Eyomi sees an advertisement at the local music shop. It
<v Speaker 2>says Ozzie Zig needs a gig, has own PA. And
<v Speaker 2>it was that has own PA that caught his attention.
<v Speaker 2>This story familiar to you.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, this is just like van Halen, right, yep. They
<v Speaker 1>got the brothers hired David Lee Roth because he had
<v Speaker 1>a PA. Ozzy Osbourne and David Lee Roth hired because
<v Speaker 1>they had their own PA.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. And so they went to the address to talk
<v Speaker 2>to the guy and Eomi when Ozzy came out from
<v Speaker 2>another room, he saw who it was, he turned around,
<v Speaker 2>he walked out because he had known him from their
<v Speaker 2>school days together and he was just a pest and
<v Speaker 2>he was like, I don't want to work with this guy.
<v Speaker 2>But fortunately the PA system won him over. Yah yess,
<v Speaker 2>and they decided to he had a killer PA.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So Tony Eomi was guitarist. But before this meeting takes place,
<v Speaker 2>before Tony Eomi meets Ozzy Osbournen for the first time
<v Speaker 2>he's working in the factories. They all come from Birmingham,
<v Speaker 2>which is a factory.
<v Speaker 1>Town Alabama, not Alabama, And I thought that was a funny.
<v Speaker 2>Actually yeah, right, And so he's he's playing guitar. He
<v Speaker 2>enjoys the guitar, but he's got to work a real job,
<v Speaker 2>and his real job is to be a welder at
<v Speaker 2>a metal factory. And so he would weld after another
<v Speaker 2>guy would cut the metal and send it down to him. Well,
<v Speaker 2>one day he shows up. He's thinking, this is my
<v Speaker 2>last day here because I just got a paying gig
<v Speaker 2>as a member of a band. I'm super excited. Right,
<v Speaker 2>So when he gets there, the other guy whose job
<v Speaker 2>it is to pass him the cut metal isn't there,
<v Speaker 2>and so they're like, okay, we're going to have you do.
<v Speaker 2>It's like I don't really know how to. They're all right,
<v Speaker 2>we'll teach you. And so he's like, I can't believe
<v Speaker 2>this is happening on my last day here. They show
<v Speaker 2>him how to cut the metal. He goes home for lunch.
<v Speaker 2>He tells his mom He's like, I'm not going back.
<v Speaker 2>I've got this paying gig coming up, but I don't
<v Speaker 2>need the job. I'm not going back. And his mom's like,
<v Speaker 2>you're going to do the right thing, and you're going
<v Speaker 2>to go back to that job and finish like you should.
<v Speaker 2>And so he goes back and he's cutting the metal
<v Speaker 2>and all of a sudden comes down on his fingers
<v Speaker 2>left hand. He pulls back and pulls the tops of
<v Speaker 2>his fingers off. Oh no, and so music career over
<v Speaker 2>apparently at that point, right, Oh my gosh. Yeah, And
<v Speaker 2>so he's rushed to the hospital. He's just got little
<v Speaker 2>nubs of bone sticking out of the end which they
<v Speaker 2>cut off. He's I mean, to this day, he's missing
<v Speaker 2>those fingers, and so he's distraught and a friend comes
<v Speaker 2>to him and says, you can't give up. He's like,
<v Speaker 2>what do you mean, I've got no fingers And he's like,
<v Speaker 2>just listen to this, and he plays in this music
<v Speaker 2>by Django Reinhardt, and he's like, why you know, are
<v Speaker 2>you trying to make me feel bad? This is great,
<v Speaker 2>this guy's obviously great, and I can't do this. And
<v Speaker 2>he's like, this guy doesn't have the ends of his
<v Speaker 2>fingers either. It's nice, okay. So he melts down these
<v Speaker 2>little like soap bottles and makes plastic ends that he
<v Speaker 2>polishes down, uses a soldering iron to put the hole
<v Speaker 2>so that his fingers can fit in, figures out that
<v Speaker 2>to put some leather on the end so that he
<v Speaker 2>will grab the strings. Yep. And for the last fifty
<v Speaker 2>years he's been a guitarist with fake fingers. He keeps
<v Speaker 2>all of his little fake fingers in his finger box.
<v Speaker 1>That is cool, the finger box.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah sweet.
<v Speaker 2>So he and bill Ward had been together in a
<v Speaker 2>band called Mythology. Bill Ward's the drummer. When they go
<v Speaker 2>to get Ozzy, Ozzy brings along Geezer Butler, who had
<v Speaker 2>been in the band Rare Breed together and Geezer had
<v Speaker 2>been a guitarist, a rhythm guitarist. But Tony Yomi was like, no,
<v Speaker 2>I don't want another guitarist in the band, and he's like, okay,
<v Speaker 2>I guess I'll play the bass then, And so his
<v Speaker 2>first time to play the bass was actually on stage
<v Speaker 2>at their first gig with a borrowed bass that had
<v Speaker 2>only three strings on it. But again, fifty years, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>he's still playing the bass, that's right. So the name
<v Speaker 2>of that original band was called the Polka Tulk Blues Band. Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>Poka band. I totally see how a blues polka band
<v Speaker 2>became Black Sabbath.
<v Speaker 1>Is that insane, It's crazy wow.
<v Speaker 2>And so for that original band, they had a guy
<v Speaker 2>playing the slade guitar, just like the Blues. They had
<v Speaker 2>a guy play in the saxophone. It was Jimmy Phillips
<v Speaker 2>was their slide guitarist. Alan Aker Clark was their saxophone player.
<v Speaker 2>And after a little while they're like, hey, guys, we're
<v Speaker 2>splitting up the band. See you later. And then those
<v Speaker 2>guys didn't get the memo that actually we're putting the
<v Speaker 2>band back together. We're reforming. Five minutes later, we're reforming
<v Speaker 2>as a now, and we're going to call ourself Earth, which,
<v Speaker 2>as he hated. At this time, you've got all the
<v Speaker 2>flower power music going on, right, the San Francisco hippie thing,
<v Speaker 2>and these guys from their industry town, they're still working town.
<v Speaker 2>We're like, this is not our scene, right, And so
<v Speaker 2>they had an entirely different idea how to go now
<v Speaker 2>for about two months. You only quit December of sixty eight,
<v Speaker 2>he quit and joined Jethro Toll really yes, and like
<v Speaker 2>they made him get up in the morning and go
<v Speaker 2>to practice, like he had to practice was at nine.
<v Speaker 2>He had to be up at eight, and so from
<v Speaker 2>that experience he learned the work ethic that probably led
<v Speaker 2>to Black Sabbath being the success that it was. Interesting.
<v Speaker 2>So nineteen sixty nine, they're practicing. They happened to be
<v Speaker 2>across the street from a movie theater and they notice
<v Speaker 2>people keep paying money to go in and see these
<v Speaker 2>scary movies.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and so their idea was, if people enjoy being
<v Speaker 1>scared watching scary movies, then we ought to make scary music.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>They invented the genre that we know today is heavy metal.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. So it's funny because they hated the term heavy metal.
<v Speaker 2>It had nothing musical about it. Honestie said, I'd rather
<v Speaker 2>be called hard rock than heavy metal, because what does
<v Speaker 2>that mean. You know, now everybody that has a guitar
<v Speaker 2>at a bass and drums is a heavy metal band.
<v Speaker 2>But there's no question the music that they were doing
<v Speaker 2>back in the seventies was different. It is different. So
<v Speaker 2>they had decided to do scary lyrics. Geezer had started
<v Speaker 2>studying the occult, which didn't go over real well for
<v Speaker 2>his Catholic upbringing, and he had also developed an interesting
<v Speaker 2>classical music and so one day while he's practicing, he's
<v Speaker 2>trying to figure out this music from Gustaf Holtz Mars
<v Speaker 2>from the Planets. Okay, listen to that real quick. When
<v Speaker 2>he comes back the next day, Eomi has a guitar
<v Speaker 2>riff that sounds very similar to what he had been
<v Speaker 2>trying to figure out. Yeah, and they're like, oh, wait,
<v Speaker 2>this is a whole new song. We can make this
<v Speaker 2>a song. And then they're like, hey, what do we
<v Speaker 2>call it? Hey, let's call it the thing that's in
<v Speaker 2>the theater across the street, Black Sabbath.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I think that has Boris Karloff in it.
<v Speaker 2>Yep, that's the one nineteen sixty three movie. And so
<v Speaker 2>that's what they named song, Black Sabbath.
<v Speaker 3>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>And then they say that's what we should name the band.
<v Speaker 2>And then they say that's what we should name the album.
<v Speaker 2>Wait a minute, what album?
<v Speaker 3>Ah?
<v Speaker 2>Yes, they got a record deal. Yes, so they are
<v Speaker 2>big time now. They get paid one thousand dollars to
<v Speaker 2>make a record.
<v Speaker 3>Yes.
<v Speaker 2>So they make the record Black Sabbath in two days,
<v Speaker 2>twelve hours.
<v Speaker 3>Wow.
<v Speaker 2>And the second day they spent mixing. The first day
<v Speaker 2>was was all the recording. They did almost everything live
<v Speaker 2>almost everything in one take. They had Ozzie in a
<v Speaker 2>separate room, but they all played and sang at the
<v Speaker 2>same time.
<v Speaker 1>Twelve hours, twelve hours.
<v Speaker 2>Incredible, and they produced one of the most iconic albums
<v Speaker 2>in history. The album is released February Friday, the thirteenth,
<v Speaker 2>nineteen seventy. Oh. So they start touring. Okay, the album
<v Speaker 2>is hated by the critics but loved by the fans,
<v Speaker 2>right right. And so they get back from touring and
<v Speaker 2>they see Black Sabbath in the UK album charts and
<v Speaker 2>they go, is there another band named Black Sabbath? No idiot,
<v Speaker 2>that's us. So just a few months later, June nineteen seventy,
<v Speaker 2>they start recording their second album. They spend an astronomical
<v Speaker 2>amount of time on this one, a whole six days.
<v Speaker 2>This time. It's an album you might have heard of.
<v Speaker 2>It's called Paranoid. So this one was originally supposed to
<v Speaker 2>be called War Pigs. There's even kind of this picture
<v Speaker 2>of a war pig looking thing on the front of
<v Speaker 2>the album, and Warpigs has to do with their hatred
<v Speaker 2>for Vietnam. But Warner the record company changed the name
<v Speaker 2>to Paranoid, kept the picture, changed the name a little weird.
<v Speaker 2>But of course it's again the same story. They've reached
<v Speaker 2>the end of the album, they don't have enough songs,
<v Speaker 2>and then Tony Yomi's playing some guitar lick and they go, hey,
<v Speaker 2>that sounds good, let's do that, and that in twenty
<v Speaker 2>to twenty five minutes later becomes the song Paranoid Wow.
<v Speaker 2>Paranoid gets released as a single in September of nineteen
<v Speaker 2>seventy shoots up to number four on the UK Singles.
<v Speaker 2>The album comes out the next month, it hits number one.
<v Speaker 2>And with these songs War Pigs, Paranoid, Iron Man, they're
<v Speaker 2>seeing success like they've never seen, which means they're realizing
<v Speaker 2>their biggest fear. They're becoming a pop band. So album
<v Speaker 2>number three, they spend more time in the studio and
<v Speaker 2>they get a briefcase full of money for drugs. Oh good, Yeah, yes,
<v Speaker 2>because that's what you do in the seventies for your bands,
<v Speaker 2>is you give them drugs and more time to record.
<v Speaker 1>It's part of the recording budget, you know.
<v Speaker 2>So Master of Reality comes out in nineteen seventy one,
<v Speaker 2>It goes gold in two months. It has acoustic songs
<v Speaker 2>for the first time, it's got a couple of crowd favorites,
<v Speaker 2>Child of the Grave and Sweet Leaf, and they're continuing
<v Speaker 2>to rock. On albums number one and two, they were
<v Speaker 2>sober because they didn't have any money to buy.
<v Speaker 1>It, any money drugs.
<v Speaker 2>Right, So they were going to name album number four
<v Speaker 2>snow blindness. Can you guess what that's about?
<v Speaker 3>Cookie?
<v Speaker 2>Yes?
<v Speaker 3>Right?
<v Speaker 2>Came from the song that's about doing cocaine. The record
<v Speaker 2>label was like, no, you won't, and so that album
<v Speaker 2>is just called Volume four without a Volume one through three.
<v Speaker 2>That doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, but whatever,
<v Speaker 2>it still went gold in less than a month. This
<v Speaker 2>is their fourth consecutive album to sell a million copies. Wow,
<v Speaker 2>the drugs were so prevalent by this time that Ozzy
<v Speaker 2>can't remember recording some of the albums. Yeah, And it's
<v Speaker 2>amazing because he said almost the exact same thing that
<v Speaker 2>Joe Perry said. He said, we went from being a
<v Speaker 2>rock band messing with drugs to a drug band messing
<v Speaker 2>with rock. It's incredible. I mean, the storylines parallel.
<v Speaker 1>The fact that these guys emerged the other side of
<v Speaker 1>this drug problem to produce what they produced in the
<v Speaker 1>nies is truly remarkable.
<v Speaker 2>Well, it wasn't without some scars. Have you heard Ozzie talk?
<v Speaker 1>I can't wait to get into the scars. My gosh, gosh,
<v Speaker 1>the stories that this guy can tell. He truly is
<v Speaker 1>somebody who has seen and experienced it all.
<v Speaker 2>Right, And as long as you can catch every third
<v Speaker 2>or fourth word you get an idea. Oh yeah, So
<v Speaker 2>we're onto album number five. They go back to la
<v Speaker 2>where they had done Volume four, except they get there
<v Speaker 2>and the room they had recorded in is taken up
<v Speaker 2>with this giant synthesizer and they can't come up with anything.
<v Speaker 2>They're tired, they're drug addult, no good is coming from anything.
<v Speaker 2>They spend a month there and have no results. So
<v Speaker 2>they end up going back to England to a place
<v Speaker 2>called the clear Water Castle. It's a recording studio that
<v Speaker 2>has been used by Matt Hoopel Deep Purple, White, Snake
<v Speaker 2>Queen and where Led Zeppelin recorded their last album in
<v Speaker 2>Through the Outdoor Wow. They rehearsed in dungeons at this
<v Speaker 2>castle nice, which is where he came up where Eomi
<v Speaker 2>came up with the riff for Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath, which
<v Speaker 2>of course that's what became the name of the.
<v Speaker 1>Album Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.
<v Speaker 2>What was interesting to me. I love the band, Yes,
<v Speaker 2>I think they're fantastic band. They brought the Yes keyboard
<v Speaker 2>just In Rick Wakeman to be a part of the album.
<v Speaker 2>Awesome Sabbath Bloody Sabbath comes out and it's their fifth
<v Speaker 2>platinum More Money for Drugs, which means album number six
<v Speaker 2>and not so much. It doesn't tank, but it doesn't
<v Speaker 2>do as well as the other ones had. And then
<v Speaker 2>in December, to kind of make up for that, the
<v Speaker 2>record label decided we're going to release the greatest hits
<v Speaker 2>album called We Sold Our Soul for Rock and Roll,
<v Speaker 2>which they did without getting any input from the bandital Wrong,
<v Speaker 2>Yeah wrong. Next album is Technical Ecstasy. At this point,
<v Speaker 2>Ozzie is losing interest. The album is done and Ozzy
<v Speaker 2>gets committed to the Stafford County Asylum.
<v Speaker 3>Wow.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, the drugs have gotten pretty bad. Yes, the drinking
<v Speaker 2>has gotten really, really bad. In nineteen seventy seven, Ozzy
<v Speaker 2>quits really yeah okay, and so they're scrambling. They have
<v Speaker 2>things coming up in the next two days, and so
<v Speaker 2>Tony Yomi gets Dave Walker from Fleetwood Mac who is
<v Speaker 2>a friend of his, to come in and be their singer,
<v Speaker 2>and Dave Walker says later on I ran into Ozzie
<v Speaker 2>at a pub and I could tell he wasn't fully
<v Speaker 2>committed to leaving the band. And sure enough, nineteen seventy eight,
<v Speaker 2>Ozzy rejoins the band, but he says it's just to
<v Speaker 2>get money from the record label and to get fat
<v Speaker 2>on beer and put out.
<v Speaker 1>An album YEP that sounds like Ozzie.
<v Speaker 2>So after he rejoins the band, days later they're in
<v Speaker 2>Toronto recording Never Say Die. This is nineteen seventy eight.
<v Speaker 2>They go on tour. Do you know who they're opening?
<v Speaker 2>Banded Van Halen? There you go wow. So that is
<v Speaker 2>when we tie back to one of our earliest episodes
<v Speaker 2>on the Van Halen Boys, where Van Halen is showing
<v Speaker 2>up Ozzy Osbourne and.
<v Speaker 1>Black Sabbage loaded yep, drug addl Ozzy Osbourne.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>And final show of that tour is Ozzie's final show
<v Speaker 2>with Black's abam right until they reunite in the late nineties.
<v Speaker 2>So his drug use had gotten so bad that in
<v Speaker 2>nineteen seventy nine, at the behest of their manager Don
<v Speaker 2>Arden Don Arden, they fired Ozzie. Now Don Arden had
<v Speaker 2>come along Midway through this Ozzie's stint with Black Sabbath,
<v Speaker 2>and it didn't go well because he was taken over
<v Speaker 2>for their old managers, who then served Ozzy papers while
<v Speaker 2>he was on stage during a live performance. What Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>And then you know, two years of litigation follows that.
<v Speaker 1>Hey, you know what, you absolutely know where he's going
<v Speaker 1>to be at that moment. Other than that, you may
<v Speaker 1>not know where he's going to be.
<v Speaker 2>Right. So they had been with Don Arden for a
<v Speaker 2>while and Don was tired of Ozzie's stuff, and so
<v Speaker 2>they said you're done, and they bought him out of
<v Speaker 2>the band for ninety six thousand pounds. And his idea was,
<v Speaker 2>I'm going to go to a hotel room and snort
<v Speaker 2>and drink every last shilling of it. Yeah. But then
<v Speaker 2>Don's daughter, Sharon Arden steps in. Yes. Now, she and
<v Speaker 2>Ozzy had met nine ten years earlier when she was
<v Speaker 2>just a receptionist at Don's office, little eighteen year old
<v Speaker 2>kid basically, But by this time she's grown up and
<v Speaker 2>she thinks she can save him, and she.
<v Speaker 1>Does, yeah thankfully multiple times.
<v Speaker 2>So interestingly, Sharon is the one who suggested Ronnie James
<v Speaker 2>Dio from Rainbow to be the replacement singer for Ozzy
<v Speaker 2>for Black Sappen. That is interesting, that is crazy, right,
<v Speaker 2>And then after a little bit of time passes, Don
<v Speaker 2>Arden starts waffling. He's like, now, maybe we should get
<v Speaker 2>Ozzie back in the band. But at this point, Sharon
<v Speaker 2>and Ozzy have begun dating, and she's like, nope, I'm
<v Speaker 2>going to manage him and I'm going to make him
<v Speaker 2>a success. And it was through her that the Blizzard
<v Speaker 2>of Oz band was formed. We got Lee Hurslake on drums.
<v Speaker 2>We've got Bob Daisley on bass who had been with Rainbow. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>We've got Don Airy on keyboards, who had also been
<v Speaker 2>with Rainbow. Okay, like they you know, they intermingled, swapped wives, yep, yep.
<v Speaker 2>And then drum roll please, from the band Quiet Riot.
<v Speaker 1>Comes Randy Rhodes.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so that Blizzard of Oz band name they decided
<v Speaker 2>to change into the album name and give Ozzy Osborne
<v Speaker 2>full credit despite the fact that this is a phenomenal band.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, but hey, I heard that was the record company
<v Speaker 1>that decided to do that.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, ok right, got it. So at this point, they
<v Speaker 2>release Blizzard of Oz and they have to go meet
<v Speaker 2>the folks at CBS Records.
<v Speaker 1>Let's go do a meet and greet with the suits.
<v Speaker 1>This is where the stories to me start to really
<v Speaker 1>take off. Oh my gosh, hey, you've got coked out, drunk,
<v Speaker 1>bloated Ozzy, who's a star. I mean, he is a star.
<v Speaker 2>Right, but CBS Records has been managing the Jackson five
<v Speaker 2>up at this point.
<v Speaker 3>Right.
<v Speaker 1>So Sharon has this idea. I've got a great idea.
<v Speaker 1>They don't know who you are, so we need.
<v Speaker 2>To make an impression.
<v Speaker 1>Here's what's gonna happen. You're gonna put two doves in
<v Speaker 1>your pocket, and when when I bring you in, we're
<v Speaker 1>gonna say, and here is Ozzy Osbourne. You're gonna pull
<v Speaker 1>the doves out of your pocket and release them. They're
<v Speaker 1>gonna fly away, and it's gonna make this wonderful impression.
<v Speaker 2>Peace offering.
<v Speaker 1>It's a peace offering. So before this all happens, Ozzie
<v Speaker 1>comes and he sits down on the knee of like
<v Speaker 1>one of the girls in.
<v Speaker 2>The she's the room. She's the head of publicity.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, she's the head of publicity. Yeah, So he sits
<v Speaker 1>on her knee, he pulls out the doves. The doves
<v Speaker 1>are kind of.
<v Speaker 2>She's she's irritated. I mean he's he's drunk out of
<v Speaker 2>his mind. I mean, at eleven am, what do you
<v Speaker 2>expect he's He's like, I'm well drunk and Cavassia I
<v Speaker 2>just wint right. And so he's drunk. He's sitting on
<v Speaker 2>her lap. He's not a light guy at this point.
<v Speaker 1>He's a big guy.
<v Speaker 2>The doves are like pecking and flapping in his pockets.
<v Speaker 2>He hasn't even taken him out right, So he's drunk high.
<v Speaker 2>She's screaming. He's irritated, and so his solution.
<v Speaker 1>Is, I'm gonna pull this dove out of my pocket
<v Speaker 1>and bite its head right off.
<v Speaker 2>So she loses it.
<v Speaker 1>She's like screaming her head off.
<v Speaker 4>And and really these suits are like, who is this
<v Speaker 4>devil we brought in here?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I've seen have you seen the picture? There's a
<v Speaker 1>blood like trickling down his chin. Yeah, And he's like, ah,
<v Speaker 1>you know, I mean, just craziness.
<v Speaker 2>It didn't go quite the way that he planned.
<v Speaker 1>So they are repulsed and angry.
<v Speaker 2>They have security come up and escort them out of
<v Speaker 2>the bill.
<v Speaker 1>Get this psycho out of here, right, So.
<v Speaker 2>They get a call from the lawyers and they say,
<v Speaker 2>we're not going to terminate the contract. We're not going
<v Speaker 2>to do that. We're going to end you.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>By the way, all of this happened on the same
<v Speaker 2>day that Blizzard of Oz was really which includes did
<v Speaker 2>a track he might have heard of called Crazy Train.
<v Speaker 1>This was the release day of Crazy Train. And so
<v Speaker 1>this event happens the same day that Crazy Train drops.
<v Speaker 1>Six days later, it's like number one on the Hot
<v Speaker 1>Rocks charts. And they call them up and they say,
<v Speaker 1>we knew you guys were something special when you came
<v Speaker 1>into the office.
<v Speaker 2>Wait it go. So that's the Dove thing. And so
<v Speaker 2>at that point, all of Ozzie's fans thought he was
<v Speaker 2>into killing animals. I guess yeah, And so they would
<v Speaker 2>throw stuff at him on stage.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, like frogs and rats and mice and rabbits and
<v Speaker 1>all kinds of stuff.
<v Speaker 2>And occasionally they would throw a plastic bat.
<v Speaker 1>This is the stuff of legends here. So Buddy throws
<v Speaker 1>a bat on the stage.
<v Speaker 2>So he picks it up. He thinks it's one of.
<v Speaker 1>Those rubber flap around stupid toy bats. It's not. It's
<v Speaker 1>not even dead. It's still alive. He says. It bit him.
<v Speaker 1>So then he bit the head off the bat. Okay, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>so you know it's this big thing. Sharon says she
<v Speaker 1>saw the fur still in his mouth. She's like heaving,
<v Speaker 1>grossed out. They leave the show. They're on the road
<v Speaker 1>and they realize that bat was alive and bitch, you've
<v Speaker 1>got to get Raby shots. So I heard him talking
<v Speaker 1>about you like Raby shot is not fun.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he hasn't quit drinking or doing drugs at this point.
<v Speaker 1>He hasn't quit biting the head off animals either.
<v Speaker 2>You know, well, it just maybe in the haze, it's
<v Speaker 2>hard to tell a rubber from fur.
<v Speaker 1>So just just to recap, the dovehead incident happened March
<v Speaker 1>twenty seventh, nineteen eighty one. The bathhead incident happened January twentieth,
<v Speaker 1>nineteen eighty two. Okay, yep, on February the nineteenth, nineteen
<v Speaker 1>eighty two. I've got a story for you. So they're
<v Speaker 1>in San Antonio for a show at the like the
<v Speaker 1>like the County Fair. I mean it's not like it's
<v Speaker 1>not like the big place, right. So Ozzie is drunk
<v Speaker 1>and high. Sharon does not want him to get out,
<v Speaker 1>but she's got to go do publicity responsibilities whatever. So
<v Speaker 1>she hides his clothes so he can't leave. But Ozzie's
<v Speaker 1>too smart for us, So what does he do.
<v Speaker 2>He puts on a dress, He puts on.
<v Speaker 1>Her dress, and he rolls out of the hotel drunk
<v Speaker 1>as can be. So he's gonna get down a jug
<v Speaker 1>out Lamu. So he goes down to the Alamo and
<v Speaker 1>he realizes, well, crap I got a pee, so he
<v Speaker 1>this is broad daylight on zips, takes it out and
<v Speaker 1>peas on what they call the Cenotaph, which is inside
<v Speaker 1>the Alamo Plaza. It's not the Alamo per se. People
<v Speaker 1>always say he PE's on the Alamo. But he takes
<v Speaker 1>a leak on the Cenotaph, which is a grave basically
<v Speaker 1>a big grave monument to all those who fought and
<v Speaker 1>died at.
<v Speaker 2>The alamossing on your grave.
<v Speaker 4>You know how Texans take this type of thing. You
<v Speaker 4>know how people of San Antonio would take this personally. Yeah,
<v Speaker 4>so he's arrested, yep, right, he pays a forty dollars fine, they.
<v Speaker 1>Get him out. He plays the Fair or whatever that night,
<v Speaker 1>but he is banned from playing San Antonio until nineteen
<v Speaker 1>ninety two the No More Tours tour.
<v Speaker 2>Wow, So second album that Ozzy Osbourne releases as a
<v Speaker 2>quote unquote solo act, still with the same band, still
<v Speaker 2>mostly written by Kerslake, still fantastic leads by Randy Rhodes
<v Speaker 2>that qualify him as one of the greatest guitarists of
<v Speaker 2>all time. Right, that one's Diary of a Madman.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so yeah. So in nineteen eighty one he releases
<v Speaker 1>Diary of a Madman for Me Flying High again. That's
<v Speaker 1>the song that everybody knows.
<v Speaker 2>So we are recording on March nineteenth. It is exactly
<v Speaker 2>thirty nine years ago that there was a tragedy. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and we lost one of the greatest guitarists of all time. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>March nineteenth, nineteen eighty two, the band was in Florida
<v Speaker 2>for the Diary of a Madman tour. They were a
<v Speaker 2>week away from playing Madison Square Garden in New York City.
<v Speaker 2>And Andrew Acock, who was the band's tour bus driver,
<v Speaker 2>owned some land near the area, also was a pilot
<v Speaker 2>and he was basically having some fun, yeah, driving people
<v Speaker 2>around in the plane. And he got Randy Rhodes and
<v Speaker 2>the band's costume and makeup designer whose name was Rachel
<v Speaker 2>Youngblood to come up with the plane with them. He
<v Speaker 2>thought it would be funny if they buzzed the tour.
<v Speaker 1>Bus, yes, where Ossie was asleep.
<v Speaker 2>Sleep Yeah. And so as he attempts to buzz the
<v Speaker 2>tour bus, his wing actually cuts into the bus, causing
<v Speaker 2>the plane to graze a tree and crash in the
<v Speaker 2>garage of a big mansion nearby, killing Rhodes, Acock and
<v Speaker 2>young Blood.
<v Speaker 1>Tragedy. Yeah, you can see anybody who's young twenties with money. Hey,
<v Speaker 1>let's get in the plane. We're gonna buzz the tour bus, right,
<v Speaker 1>this is gonna be hilarious and then clip and then
<v Speaker 1>crash and then fireball.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Tragic.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>So after Diary of Madmen in eighty one, we have
<v Speaker 1>Bark at the Moon in nineteen eighty three. The Moon
<v Speaker 1>is kind of the main song that you may know
<v Speaker 1>from that. After that you have The Ultimate Sin in
<v Speaker 1>eighty six that song, so you've got shot in the dark,
<v Speaker 1>Ultimate Sin, and then in eighty eight we get No
<v Speaker 1>Rest for the Wicked.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. And just so that we're clear on where Ozzy
<v Speaker 2>Osbourne is at that point, he was also in the
<v Speaker 2>Decline of Western Civilization, Part two, The Meddle Years. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and he told the director, sobriety fing sucks.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, you forgot to mention one thing. Go ahead on
<v Speaker 1>January fourth, nineteen eighty two, Ozzy Mary's Sharon Arden.
<v Speaker 2>Through those albums you had several guitarists. Eventually Ozzie finds
<v Speaker 2>Zach wild through auditions, who ultimately becomes the most enduring
<v Speaker 2>replacement for Randy Rhoades. Rhodes remains Wild's foremost guitar playing
<v Speaker 2>and stagecraft influence. They have a very similar style, the
<v Speaker 2>style of their guitars similar but to other Zach Wilde,
<v Speaker 2>Ozzy Osbourne and the rest of the band record No
<v Speaker 2>Rest for the Wicked. It's to You on drums, Sinclair
<v Speaker 2>on keyboards, Daisley co writing the lyrics and playing bass,
<v Speaker 2>and then Geezer Butler comes back and plays bass with
<v Speaker 2>him for a while during the tour.
<v Speaker 1>Nice Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>He does a live EP called just Say Ozzy, which
<v Speaker 2>has Geezer on it, which was released a couple of
<v Speaker 2>years later. So nineteen eighty nine, that's when I really
<v Speaker 2>get introduced to him for the first time. There's a
<v Speaker 2>weird thing that happened during the eighties where like everybody
<v Speaker 2>thought that people were in a satanic cult. Do you
<v Speaker 2>remember that? Like it was every youth.
<v Speaker 1>I was like, yeah, no Ozzy Osbourne.
<v Speaker 2>For me as a little kid at that point, I
<v Speaker 2>don't even remember my parents ever saying one word about
<v Speaker 2>Ozzy Osbourne. It was just the perception that I have
<v Speaker 2>was this guy is embracing the satanic thing that everybody
<v Speaker 2>is so scared of right now, staying away from him.
<v Speaker 2>So eighty nine, I'm a little more mature at that point,
<v Speaker 2>I'm hitting thirteen fourteen, I'm starting to open my eyes
<v Speaker 2>a little bit. And then I catch this.
<v Speaker 1>Your eyes are not closed forever, Your eyes are open.
<v Speaker 1>Keep going.
<v Speaker 2>And so I catch this video with this really kind
<v Speaker 2>of hot, slightly trashy looking girl playing guitar, and I'm
<v Speaker 2>like hey, And then I'm like hey, Ozzy Osbourne singing.
<v Speaker 2>He he doesn't look like the devil. This is okay.
<v Speaker 2>This song is beautiful. Yeah, gets a sad, don't really stands.
<v Speaker 3>On mine.
<v Speaker 1>It's a great guitar song with Ozzy and Leda.
<v Speaker 3>He's in my head way.
<v Speaker 1>So this it was my introduction to you, and I
<v Speaker 1>kind of talked off air. I was very aware of
<v Speaker 1>who Ozzy Osbourne was, but I don't think I really
<v Speaker 1>knew any of his music. But this is where I
<v Speaker 1>jump on board with closed my eyes forever. This song
<v Speaker 1>peaks at number eight on the US Hot one hundred.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, it's a big hit.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. And so now Ozzie is hanging with all of
<v Speaker 2>Doc McGee's bands when they decide to go over to
<v Speaker 2>Moscow and do a little thing that we've talked about
<v Speaker 2>a couple times now.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, we have called the Moscow Music Piece Festival, just
<v Speaker 1>to recap. On this tour, you have bon Jovi, skid Row, Cinderella,
<v Speaker 1>Motley Crue, Ozzy Osbourne and the Scorpions, and Gorky Park, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and maybe the CIA and maybe the CIA.
<v Speaker 2>Different story, different story, all right. So then he comes
<v Speaker 2>home from the Moscow Music Piece Festival and we're back
<v Speaker 2>to where we begin.
<v Speaker 1>Keep in mind, the Moscow Music Peace Festival is all
<v Speaker 1>about no drugs, right, right, get kids off drugs right.
<v Speaker 1>And we talked before Motley Crue was the only band
<v Speaker 1>that was sober, which is.
<v Speaker 2>Easy laughable irony on top of irony. Yes, So he
<v Speaker 2>comes home and is obviously heavily on drugs and drinking
<v Speaker 2>quite a bit. He goes to bed early that night. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>Sharon stays up. They have had a let's say, tumultuous relationship.
<v Speaker 2>They are very in love with each other, but it
<v Speaker 2>is very passionate whether they're matt or not. So they've
<v Speaker 2>had their scuffles.
<v Speaker 1>If you've ever seen the view with Sharon Osborne, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you can tell this woman can be very stubborn and
<v Speaker 1>difficult paining the butt and she's got she's very intelligent.
<v Speaker 3>You know.
<v Speaker 2>As it happens, that got her in some trouble right
<v Speaker 2>now at this moment. But we're not talking about that.
<v Speaker 2>But if we do not talk about those things, let's
<v Speaker 2>slide past that. We're going to move on past that.
<v Speaker 2>So back in August of eighty nine, he goes to
<v Speaker 2>bed early. She's staying up reading a book. And then
<v Speaker 2>a couple hours later he comes down in his underwear. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and he sits down across from her and he says,
<v Speaker 2>I'm really so sorry about this, but we've made a decision,
<v Speaker 2>and you have to die.
<v Speaker 1>We've made a decision.
<v Speaker 2>We've made a decision, speaking of the Prince of Darkness,
<v Speaker 2>We've made a decision, and you have to die. And
<v Speaker 2>she just thinking, you know, he's in his drug addle whatever,
<v Speaker 2>is about to say piss off. But before she can
<v Speaker 2>get past the pith, he's on top of her, choking
<v Speaker 2>her out. Yeah. They're throwing each other back and forth.
<v Speaker 2>All she can think about is, please, don't let the
<v Speaker 2>kids see me die like this, you know, don't let
<v Speaker 2>this be the way that it goes. They roll a bit,
<v Speaker 2>a coffee table gets taken out, and as it happens,
<v Speaker 2>they've got panic buttons in their home, in every room.
<v Speaker 2>She hits the panic button just before she loses consciousness.
<v Speaker 2>When she wakes back up, she can't find him. He's gone.
<v Speaker 1>She doesn't want to look for him. Who knows where
<v Speaker 1>he is, probably taking a leak on some monuments somewhere.
<v Speaker 1>And the police show up and they give me into custody.
<v Speaker 2>For attempted murder.
<v Speaker 1>I had not really heard this story.
<v Speaker 2>Now, have you seen The Wolf of Wall Street? Yes,
<v Speaker 2>so you know the scene with the car when the
<v Speaker 2>queludes kick in. Yes, and he goes to sleep and
<v Speaker 2>thinks he made it home. Okay, Yes, from what I've
<v Speaker 2>heard from Ozzie, it's kind of that same thing, Like
<v Speaker 2>I went to sleep when I got home and I
<v Speaker 2>woke up in jail. Yeah, he has no memory of
<v Speaker 2>what went on, and she was done with him for
<v Speaker 2>a time.
<v Speaker 1>I feeling happy, I feel so sad.
<v Speaker 2>I've lost the best friend could I ever have. At
<v Speaker 2>the behest of everybody, appropriately should have been done with him.
<v Speaker 2>But after six months and him being in rehab and
<v Speaker 2>cleaning himself up, and her saying this wasn't him, this
<v Speaker 2>was the drugs that did this, she decided.
<v Speaker 3>Not to leave them.
<v Speaker 2>A pretty incredible woman really. Yeah. As it turned out,
<v Speaker 2>he produced an album a little bit later on which
<v Speaker 2>we're here to talk about the day.
<v Speaker 3>Yes.
<v Speaker 2>So during the eighties, Yeah, there was this kid whose
<v Speaker 2>dad belonged to a record club, you know where you
<v Speaker 2>just get the mail, Yes, of course, and his dad
<v Speaker 2>would leave these records unopened, you know, they just come
<v Speaker 2>in the mail and the unopened. So finally one day
<v Speaker 2>he's like, heck, I'm just going to take these and
<v Speaker 2>he opens them all up, and this is where he
<v Speaker 2>discovers Black Sabbath and gets into the hard rock of rock.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Ironically, the same week that No More Tears is released, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>he releases what some might call a breakthrough album with
<v Speaker 2>his band Nirvana called never Mind.
<v Speaker 1>Wow, that is interesting. The BMI CD clubs and this
<v Speaker 1>and that I still owe them, like, you know, one
<v Speaker 1>hundred and seventeen dollars or whatever.
<v Speaker 2>They still think. My name is Mark Laar, Mark.
<v Speaker 1>Chilandeler Bong. No More Tears and never Mind are released
<v Speaker 1>the same week.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. On the same day, Guns and Roses released as
<v Speaker 2>USEU Your Illusion one and two.
<v Speaker 1>What a day? Yeah, what a day for hard rock fans. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you get two from Guns n' Roses, Yeah, and No
<v Speaker 1>More Tears from Ausie.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>And the same day that Nevermind came out, Red Hot
<v Speaker 2>Chili Peppers also released Blood Sugar Sex Magic, which is
<v Speaker 2>my opinion best album that they had. So yeah, September
<v Speaker 2>of nineteen ninety one was an incredible month for music.
<v Speaker 1>That was the same month that I started college. I
<v Speaker 1>do remember leaving the dorms and going to the local
<v Speaker 1>record shop and seeing lines of people lined up to
<v Speaker 1>buy usual Illusion.
<v Speaker 2>One and two. Yeah for sure. All Okay, are we
<v Speaker 2>ready to jump into the album.
<v Speaker 1>Let's jump into the album next time. Next time we're
<v Speaker 1>gonna go track by track through No More Tears. We're
<v Speaker 1>gonna talk about the stories behind the songs kind of
<v Speaker 1>the story of the tour. And then we're gonna do
<v Speaker 1>our final judgment, which is better Aerosmiths Get a Grip
<v Speaker 1>or no more tears Come back.
<v Speaker 2>We'll see you next week.