I’ve Listened to Preachers, I’ve Listened to Fools
John Keough on the passing of The Prince of Darkness
Bill here with a quick note: John hit me up after Ozzy died saying “hey can I write a legacy of Ozzy piece for you?” And I said fuck yeah dude go for it. It’s great!
Out of curiosity I searched the Telegram archives for Ozzy pieces and found some remarkable coverage of a show in 83 at the DCU Center (then the Worcester Centrum) in which 12,000 people went nuts and 40 people got arrested.
A little more on that in the next proper newsletter going out to inboxes, hopefully tomorrow, where this piece will also appear. I’m going to start running guest pieces on their own ahead of time like this.
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Now to John…
I’ve Listened to Preachers, I’ve Listened to Fools
By John Edward Keough
Only a couple of weeks past his retirement concert, John Michael ‘Ozzy’ Osbourne has passed from the ravages of Parkinson’s disease. I wanted to write this story for many, many years. The best way to start is to quote Ozzy from an interview hid did with David Von Bader back in 2013:
"It's a name. I didn't wake up one morning and go, 'You know what, I'm going to call myself...' It started as a joke name really. I'm OK with it, you know? You know, it's better than being called an asshole."
This, of course, is about Ozzy’s nickname, The Prince of Darkness. In the 1970’s here and in the UK, the music industry was pulling away from itself. More and more, bands with either gimmicks, or completely new styles were able to sell albums, and sell our venues without the benefit of a traditional Billboard-style hit.
The darker,moodier form of blues we now all call metal, was not new. What Ozzy and Sabbath were able to do was marry three elements folks hadn’t seen before. Heavy, blues music mixed with repetitive lyrics that touched on occult and spiritual themes topped off with the theatrics of Ozzy himself. This combination had not yet been seen in the vast majority of the world.
The other part was they took it serious. KISS had a somewhat parallel career, but many of their antics worked because they (and their crowd) were not taking it seriously. KISS opened for Sabbath for a time, before their own touring act began to sell out bigger venues.
Ozzy’s nickname came very much from his own struggles with addiction played out in real time, but also because his eerie high-pitched voice seemed very much to reflect a connection for fans to another world. Sabbath fans, especially 70s era Sabbath, are dead serious about their band.
Ozzy often credited the Beatles, and in particular the song, ‘She Loves You’ with inspiring him to become a musician. Listening back to that now, it is a long hard road to get to such songs like ‘Diary of a Madman’ (which absolutely, as the kids say, slaps). Yet, Ozzy’s penchant for harmony whether in Sabbath or as a solo artist, makes some sense if we trace it to the Fab Four.
Ozzy’s influence cannot be overstated. No More Tears is all over almost every song from the grunge era. He was ripped off by everyone (I am looking dead at you in the face Candlebox!), and credited by a list of music royalty.
Elton Friggin’ John guested on an Ozzy song. Seriously. (I bet the editor of this fine publication will insert a link to it here: Ordinary Man.) By the way, this song also slaps. The lyrics are nonsensically good.
Elton comes in at this point in the song:
‘Many times I've lost control
They tried to kill my rock and roll
Just remember I'm still here for you
I don't wanna say goodbye
When I do, you'll be alright
After all, I did it all for you’
Makes you wonder what a universe with Elton in a metal band would look like. Probably a better one. That’s a tangent I could get lost in, but we are here to talk about Ozzy.
Ozzy’s struggles and open talk about addiction became a primary part of his public persona, particularly in light of his reality show fame on ‘The Osbournes’, where he appeared as a much softer Prince of Darkness. His grandpa version was shocking to many fans, but he won over scores of former critics by being very much the family man (at least on the show).
He was very famously fired from Sabbath for a few years and it led to a song that again has had profound influence in “Goodbye to Romance”:
‘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’
I could go on and on about specific songs, and how Ozzy’s voice brought elements to them that other singers just could not replicate (including the many, many lead singers for Sabbath when he was separate from them). That would make this a normal post-death rock review.
I am not normal, as those of you who have read me over at This Week in Worcester can attest, or those of you who follow my films. I can’t help but look at Ozzy in the context of the Great Hypocrisy of the West: Public Christianity.
Now, before you attempt to tar and feather this publication, give me a chance. Ozzy was not the hypocrite here.
‘Yes, I've been a bad guy
Been higher than the blue sky
And the truth is I don't wanna die an ordinary man
I've made momma cry
Don't know why I'm still alive
Yes, the truth is I don't wanna die an ordinary man’
See, a hypocrite wouldn’t admit to being a bad guy, or an addict or that he hurt his loved ones. No, hypocrites instead do what was done to Ozzy for decades.
One particular leader stands out. The Jimmy Swaggart. Yup, if you don’t know it, he also recently passed away. The actual epitome of American Televangelism. This guy had it all. Money, planes, books and of course, a little action on the side. Some folks in the music industry think Ozzy was talking about him in Trap Door:
‘Can you see your reflection
False strength and hollow protection
Run from pain and rejection
the truth stabs again
till the skin is broken
and the cut is open
and the words once spoken
just fade away’
I can’t pin it down, because Ozzy was often talking about himself, but it fits the late Swaggart. This man once said that Ozzy’s music was ‘degenerate and filth.’ It certainly is not!
As a former sound leader for churches, and a roaming consultant for worship teams, I can tell you that Ozzy’s songs are most likely not going to be played in a church (unless of course a secret metal head is your sound guy). Not that I was ever a secret metal guy. That said, he constantly touched on the spiritual world.
The late, great Lester Bangs, from whom many rock critics copy their entire personality, once wrote of Black Sabbath:
“They are probably the first truly Catholic rock group, or the first group to completely immerse themselves in. the Fall and Redemption: the traditional Christian dualism which asserts that if you don’t walk in the light of the Lord then Satan is certainly pulling your strings, and a bad end can be expected, is even imminent.”
He did so in his epic essay, “Bring Your Mother To The Gas Chamber.” (Yes, that is the title. Creem Magazine circa 1972, and yes I read part two in old issues of Creem when I was a hapless angry loner foster kid. I ate those magazines, and looked for depth. When I encountered Lester, I thought he and I were kindred spirits. I wrote him letters that he never answered, and they were very often parodies of his articles.
He never answered because he died in 1983, but in 1992 I did not know that, I thought Creem was a magazine about current music things, hence my penchant for music much older than me.)
Catholic Rock. I mean, a band with a lead singer (Elton John???) dressed as the Pope, and then a bunch of monks in the band? How could that not be awesome? (St. Paul and the Broken Bones aren’t terrible, check out Apollo and get back to me. If you get that song, you and I can be friends. Sanctify, to cover a little Biblical love, you can play for your person and thank me later).
That said, the dualistic nature of Sabbath was truly borne out in Ozzy’s solo career. Everything was fall and rise. Death and light. Sin and forgiveness. There is no place in the actual, real Bible (not the overly interpreted ones that our current crop of public Christians like to quote) for hypocrisy. Jesus (who would be an elite leadman if He so chose), once said,
‘Beware of these teachers of religious law! For they like to parade around in flowing robes and receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces. And how they love the seats of honor in the synagogues and the head table at banquets. Yet they shamelessly cheat widows out of their property and then pretend to be pious by making long prayers in public. Because of this, they will be more severely punished.’
Jimmy was calling out Ozzy while he was hanging out with each and every sex worker in the (dirrrrty) South. The open embrace of our lovely President Trump (I am sure something he did today proved how wonderful he is) by the Southern Baptists, despite his many divorces (and the other things, you know ‘em), is very much in line with the Swaggart class of preacher. Swaggart was a Pentecostal who thought Pentecostalism was too weird for TV (the first of many compromises, I’m sure).
Ozzy, meanwhile, was torturing himself for thinking about Sharon while he was still married to his first wife Thelma. He was consuming unhealthy amounts of alcohol and drugs, and was never home due to constant touring. Yet, he admitted it. Publicly.
Now, this is not an excuse. I too have admitted my own transgressions on a regular basis (my own Swaggart, the local Q, continues to rail at me and the publisher of this esteemed enterprise). Those very public failures are not washed away in the blood (as the kids say) of public self-flagellation. No, not at all. That said, I would rather laugh with the sinners then cry with the saints (yes, I blatantly ripped off Billy Joel, and I am proud of it).
We come now to the most important part of my study on the great Blizzard of Ozz. The name of the band. Black Sabbath was named after A HORROR MOVIE!!
Those of you who know me are cackling now. Of course it was a horror movie.
Black Sabbath originally in Italian, “I tre volti della paura” literally The Three Faces of Fear was a 1963 horror anthology that did terribly at the theaters but became a bit of a cult classic. Boris Karloff himself serves as a kind of host for the three parts, each taking place in a different time and country.
The subjects of dishonesty, mistaken identity and hypocrisy (and an early film zombie) very much influence the band that took the film’s UK and American title as their moniker. Ozzy bit the heads off of doves, and once, famously, a bat, but he also raised millions for children’s charities.
His last concert is estimated to have brought in $190 million for three causes: Cure Parkinson's, Birmingham Children's Hospital, and Acorn Children's Hospice. A man, who by all accounts, was rich and had it all, gave of himself, and of his excess right up until the end.
He also, very famously, made Trump stop using Crazy Train.
‘Mental wounds not healing
Life's a bitter shame’
The only thing I guess I can hold against Ozzy is that he was a celebrity guest manager for the British Bulldogs at WrestleMania 2. Can’t keep a Brutus the Barber Beefcake fan down.
Ozzy Osbourne is much more likely to be singing, as my mother has always said, with the angels than any of the hypocrites. His life was marked, in the end, by his public confessions, and the tears on the faces of his fans at the last concert tell you all you need to know. Rest easy John Micheal.
‘Though I Know We Must Be Parted
As Sure As Stars Are In The Sky
I'm Gonna See You When It Comes To Glory
And I'll See You, I'll See You On The Other Side
Yes, I'll See You, I'll See You On The Other Side’
John Edward Keough is the president of HollyWooot Film Group, the Executive Producer at Manny Jae Media LLC, the co-host of the This Week in Worcester Podcast and a featured correspondent for This Week in Worcester's online newspaper.