“Really horrible”: the 1980 song that saved Ozzy Osbourne’s career
It is hard to imagine a time in which Ozzy Osbourne wasn’t a bona fide rock legend, beloved by all and with a discography of enduring classics.
Towards the tail-end of the 1970s, though, the Black Sabbath frontman was at risk of becoming a washed-up has-been, drowning in his own addictions. It was only the success of one track that pulled him back from the brink.
When Sabbath first emerged from the industrial gloom of 1960s Birmingham, they were the harbingers of an entirely new form of rock music, and their first handful of records ushered in the entirety of the hard rock and metal scene. Providing the antidote to the comparatively tranquil rock of ‘peace and love’ hippiedom, Osbourne and the gang were more abrasive, more anarchic, and much louder than anything that had come before.
In the grand scheme of things, though, those glory days didn’t last very long. A number of miss-hits and forgettable records like Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die painted a picture of Black Sabbath as a sinking ship, being dragged down by the hedonistic lifestyle of its band members. After all, their material might have been nosediving, but that didn’t stop the group from embracing all the fruits of a rock and roll lifestyle – namely, copious amounts of drink and every drug under the sun.
Eventually, Osbourne’s substance-fuelled lifestyle became a barrier to the band’s future. With the vocalist becoming increasingly unpredictable and, perhaps more importantly, unreliable, Tony Iommi and the rest of the group recognised that he had to go, for the sake of the group’s future. He had already left the band briefly in 1977, but when Iommi sacked Osbourne two years later, there was no mistaking that it was the end of an era.
In terms of his own future, Osbourne seemed destined to become yet another washed-up, overdosing rock star when he left Black Sabbath. He was, after all, in no state to orchestrate a comeback. Nevertheless, the sheer determination of the vocalist managed to produce a solo single, ‘Crazy Train’, which changed the course of his existence forever.
Dragging the performer back from the brink of a self-induced obscurity, ‘Crazy Train’ was the song that firmly established Osbourne’s solo career. Defining the sounds of early 1980s metal, with Randy Rhoads iconic riff forming the backbone of the track, the song wasn’t a major hit upon its release, but it certainly re-established Ozzy as a force of rock excellence outside his time with Black Sabbath.
“I remember the fun we had writing and making ‘Crazy Train’,” Osbourne shared in a 2016 episode of Ozzy And Jack’s World Detour, revisiting a lost mix from the original studio sessions. “Listening to this, it’s like going back to a good time, but a really horrible time at the same time.”
It doesn’t take much to theorise why the song brought up mixed feelings for Ozzy. He was, after all, still deep in the throes of addiction during the Blizzard of Oz era, and the brilliance of the track was tainted when, in 1982, Rhoads, along with Osbourne’s tour bus driver and makeup artist, tragically died in a plane crash.
Although ‘Crazy Train’ wasn’t always a source of joy for Osbourne, even he could not deny the importance of the single in saving him from the obscurity of his post-Sabbath days. Without that pioneering single, the story of the metal progenitor might have been much shorter.
