Documentary Ozzy Osbourne - 30 Years After the Blizzard
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RIP Lee Kerslake. 
Ozzy doesn't even fucking mention him or Daisley in this video, so I couldn't watch very much of it. He and Sharon are real pieces of work...
Randy, Lee and Bob basically wrote the damned album while Ozzy was passed out on the couch, from the other sources I've read.
Ozzy doesn't even fucking mention him or Daisley in this video, so I couldn't watch very much of it. He and Sharon are real pieces of work...
Randy, Lee and Bob basically wrote the damned album while Ozzy was passed out on the couch, from the other sources I've read.
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:agreed:RIP Lee Kerslake.
Ozzy doesn't even fucking mention him or Daisley in this video, so I couldn't watch very much of it. He and Sharon are real pieces of work...
Randy, Lee and Bob basically wrote the damned album while Ozzy was passed out on the couch, from the other sources I've read.
Ozzy has been the weak link of every single band he has ever been, and not by a little bit. Dude had zero work ethic and a shitty voice.
While I wouldn't go as far as saying he had a shitty voice while he still had a voice (just a very mediocre one), I agree with this. If he hadn't happened to own a PA system back in the day he clearly wouldn't have been talented enough to make it on his own without Sabbath, either from a songwriting- or voice perspective. His voice is just good enough to not destroy the songs he sings on, but definitely not good enough that it really improves the songs.
I guess the real talent he had at his disposal was career management, which wasn't really due to himself, but the people around him (including his wife I guess). While the way the musicians in his band have been treated is terrible, someone clearly had the knack of spotting talent. I guess keeping Ozzy in good enough shape to perform at all over the decades despite his substance abuse takes some doing as well.
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Ozzy has a talent for coming up with vocal melodies. Any melodies in his era of Sabbath that weren't just singing the riff were ones he came up with. But that's really about it. He's not a lyricist or musician.
He's a good entertainer, but I just don't have much appetite to listen to him spout off about music he had very little hand in devising, especially given the timing of giving free access to this video at the same time that Lee passed away.
It's especially galling, because apparently Lee needed advanced medical care toward the end that he couldn't afford--but maybe he could have if he hadn't been fucked over on the royalties by Ozzy and Sharon all those years. I don't for a minute buy the notion that everything is Sharon's fault. Sure, she learned how to be a viper from her father, but it's a fiction that Ozzy was never involved in any of those decisions.
He's a good entertainer, but I just don't have much appetite to listen to him spout off about music he had very little hand in devising, especially given the timing of giving free access to this video at the same time that Lee passed away.
It's especially galling, because apparently Lee needed advanced medical care toward the end that he couldn't afford--but maybe he could have if he hadn't been fucked over on the royalties by Ozzy and Sharon all those years. I don't for a minute buy the notion that everything is Sharon's fault. Sure, she learned how to be a viper from her father, but it's a fiction that Ozzy was never involved in any of those decisions.
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ehh....i really doubt that Ozzy had much say in who was in the studio or on stage with him. In the 80s, he was fucked out of his mind on drugs and booze and he became so dependent on what Sharon told him to do. Lets face it, the dude is just a puppet.
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I think that Sharon is an eminently unlikable person, and that her and Ozzy play off that to their benefit. Ozzy coming off as the crazy, lovable idiot that you'd love to have a beer with is more image than substance at this point, and has been for a while. The likely truth is that they are a power couple that crushes everyone in their way, and they carefully protect the brand and image that they created.
Ozzy may speak highly of Randy, but that's because he died young. Otherwise, there is a good chance he'd have fucked him over just as hard as Jake E. Lee.
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I really think you are giving Ozzy way too much credit here. Ozzy only cared about boozin, druggin, and fuckin. Sharron had to come on halfway through the motley crue/ozzy tour to make sure nobody died and banned Motley Crue of all groupies. And in the later years, after Sharon organized Iron Maiden to get pelted by eggs due to Bruce' on stage banter, Steve Harris went to go apologize to Ozzy and Ozzy had no idea what the hell Steve was talking about. Fact of the matter is, Ozzy never really cared because everything was always laid out for him.
But you're probably right on one thing. Given enough time, they would have fucked over Randy too.
I don't know, I suspect Ozzy didn't WANT to be involved in any of those decisions. It always seemed to me that Sharon was the Irving Azoff that Ozzy needed, the ruthless bitch that figured out she could successfully use Ozzy's history to make them both rich. I think he just signed off on what she said because she made it work, and he didn't have to worry about it.
If he put himself in a position to be fucked over, sure. I suspect he just would have walked away, because he really *was* the star. I think if he doesn't get on the plane and leaves later Ozzy's career slowly slides into nothing - or he becomes like Zakk is, coming back to Ozzy when he needs a paycheck.
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No question that Ozzy has been much more passive than most musicians over his career. However, I don't believe that he was unaware of what he and Sharon did to Daisley and Kerslake. Daisley worked for Ozzy for many years after that (being sure to get paid up front!) and doesn't seem like the type who would have kept that a secret from Ozzy.
Ozzy isn't/wasn't stupid, just very seriously ADHD and often intoxicated. I suspect that Sabbath's experience in the '70s with crooked managers, not to mention his own experience of having to navigate dealing with Iommi, probably hardened him to being able to fuck over band members for his own benefit. I doubt it was tough for Sharon to sell him on doing that.
Supposedly, Ozzy punched Randy in the face when Randy told him of his plan to leave after the Diary tour.
Hard to say what would have become of Randy. I don't sense he was too attached to the idea of stardom, and becoming a classical guitarist and teacher without having to deal with the Sharon Osbournes of the world might have been a worthwhile alternative for such a person. Grunge would have swept away his stardom eventually, anyway.
One interesting thing I've noticed about Randy's work in recent years is how readily apparent the **** Ronson influence was. "Goodbye to Romance" could have fit very easily on a Bowie album from the Ziggy Stardust era. Randy had more chops and theory knowledge than Ronson, but he wasn't really a metal guitarist at the core. Maybe he would gone in a different direction within rock if he'd lived.
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Surprised no one brought up that Ozzy limps his way around the stage nowadays. Basically a string puppet for Sharon to make money.
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I've always thought he would have moved in a different direction, probably becoming the equivalent of a Joe Bonamassa but more innovative - I definitely did not see him doing the Yngwie thing and just releasing crap albums in the style people expected. Playing club shows, teaching, doing clinics and videos, yeah, I could see that. He definitely did not give a crap about the fame.
Got a huge soft spot for Ozzy's albums up to and including the first couple with Zakk. Never really paid too much attention to the politics but I'm absolutely not surprised. I scoffed at the reality tv thing when it came out, and in hindsight its actually pretty fucking horrific. Telling of the Osbourne "brand" and how it steam rolls along. And fuck his kids, so so hard :lol:
But meh, psychopathic business practices or not, his music has always been metal guitar-centric and launched the careers of quite a lot of sick musos, even if not under the greatest of circumstances.
But meh, psychopathic business practices or not, his music has always been metal guitar-centric and launched the careers of quite a lot of sick musos, even if not under the greatest of circumstances.
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So much this!
Ozzy might be crazy, talentless, poor writer and singer, a crook, a puppet and the Lars Ulrich of heavy metal singers, but he's still fucking Ozzy. Even if you don't like his singing, you can't take him out of the equation. Like, Sabbath isn't Sabbath without him (and as much as I love Dio and the Sabbath records are better with him, etc. etc. etc. the Dio years are a total different thing for me than the Ozzy years).
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This is where I am, too.
He's sort of the George Clinton of metal. George was a crap singer and couldn't play an instrument, but he somehow created an environment where lots of great musical things happened in the '70s. Ozzy functioned like that after he left Sabbath. Rhoads/Daisley/Kerslake didn't need him in order to write great music, nor didn't Jake E. Lee and Daisley a few years later, but it might have been very different with an involved singer, and maybe that combo never gets together without him.
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That's a good way of looking at it, considering where Sabbath went with Dio. I absolutely love the Dio era, but it's obvious that RJD was extremely involved in the songwriting process. Then, look at how Dio essentially dominated the songwriting in his solo career. I can't think of a greater contrast in solo output than Ozzy and Dio.
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