OZZY! OZZY! CZZY
With all the sheer, borderline unspeakable chaos that Ozzy Osbourne has endured, it would be objectively (if a tad morbidly) hilarious if the heavy metal hellion died from a little cut on his thumb. By way of shaking hands with roughly 200 people a day, Osbourne rang in the last quarter of 2018 with three life-threatening staph infections, which forced him to cancel four dates on the US leg of his No More Tours 2 run. Ironic enough if he’d carked it because he shared a bit of sweat with a grubby fan – but to do so on his goddamn farewell tour? The Comedy Channel wouldn’t have it. It’s just too unrealistic.
By default, fans are sceptical of the concept surrounding No More Tours 2 – that Ozzy Osbourne, of all people, would ever properly ‘settle down’. Though his cheekbones have met the cruel fate of gravity, Osbourne has remained an impenetrable force of dynamism throughout the decades. Stutter and tremors be damned, his vocal prowess is as sharp as it’s ever been, and though completely sober now, he still wreaks havoc onstage like a boozed-up twenty-something on their birthday... Just, y’know, sans the munching of errant bat heads.
But hey, even if this is the last time Osbourne melts faces en masse on a stadium scale, we can’t complain. To say it’s been a “good” run would be mildly facetious – by all accounts, it’s been a disastrous run marked by death, drug abuse and one too many bridges burned, a wet dream for drama novelists everywhere – but it’s been nothing if not memorable. At the end of the day, Ozzy Osbourne has cultivated a prodigy unlike any other name in rock’n’roll; without him, it’s hard to say where the genre’s culture – let alone its music – would’ve ended up. He’s the poster boy for depravity, yet he’s synonymous with incandescent talent and unwavering dedication.
And at the core of his iconic sound is a long, generational “who’s who” of game-changing guitarists. From the unmistakably unique riffery of Randy Rhoads to the Southern-fried soloing mayhem of Zakk Wylde, Osbourne has always had a knack for picking them young and shaping them into the kind of fretboard warriors that kids across the globe aspire to emulate. Osbourne never even played the guitar himself – it was a distant love for the instrument, and an understanding of its gravity that transcended the strings themselves, that sparked a unique relationship between him and guitars.
Ultimately, if you’re into fierce, no-frills hard rock with the sickest licks this side of the Solar System, you’re either a diehard Ozzy Osbourne apologist, you’ve found yourself thrashing hair to at least one of his classics, or you’ve fallen head over heals for a band that owes their entire career to the bastard.
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO OZZY
Come March, Osbourne and co. will touch down in Australia for a headline stint on the second local Download Festival (for reference, last year’s bill-toppers were Korn – if that’s not a step up, we dunno what to tell ya). The Prince Of Darkness himself hints that it won’t be
