The Foo Fighters song Ozzy Osbourne rejected
If you haven’t seen the video for Black Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’, I’d recommend watching it. Don’t worry, I’ll wait…. OK, you’ve seen it. So, why did I ask you to do that? That’s the video I show anybody when they begin to question the legacy of Black Sabbath. So many bands owe everything they have, and that little music video represents why perfectly.
Firstly, we have the song itself. It sounds killer, everything from Tony Iommi’s excellent guitar work, the aggressive, hard-hitting drums, the deep textured bass, and Ozzy Osbourne’s lyrics are second to none. You also have the lyrics, those which are unblinkingly honest and touched upon dark themes that a lot of artists would have previously been worried to write about.
“Basically it’s about depression, because I didn’t really know the difference between depression and paranoia,” said Geezer Butler when discussing the track, “It’s a drug thing; when you’re smoking a joint you get totally paranoid about people, you can’t relate to people. There’s that crossover between the paranoia you get when you’re smoking dope and the depression afterwards.”
The main reason that the video highlights the importance of Black Sabbath, though, is because of the aesthetics. They have these four heavy metal rockers dressed as if they’re a glam rock band, with a psychedelic backdrop. The tone of the video doesn’t remotely match the tone of the song, and the reason for that is because Black Sabbath were so ahead of their time, it was impossible to market them.
Nobody made music like Black Sabbath. They represented not just heavy metal but anybody who wanted to make music that didn’t quite fit the mainstream mould. Any musical movement that sounds out of place stems back somehow to Black Sabbath, who showed people that by adjusting to your surroundings and being unrelenting in your approach to music, you can be successful.
Whether Dave Grohl recognises it or not, Nirvana likely wouldn’t have risen to fame in the way they did were it not for bands like Black Sabbath. Grunge was adjacent to rock music, but it was more drawn out and hidden. Nirvana championed this kind of sound, and people were willing to listen because, time and time again, bands who are willing to step outside the conventional norm have proven themselves to be worth listening to.
Grohl continued to carry the torch even after Kurt Cobain passed away and Nirvana disbanded. Fair enough, Foo Fighters leans a lot closer towards rock music, but he still champions the same things that Nirvana did. Subsequently, because of that link to Black Sabbath, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Grohl is a fan of them.
He was given the chance to do what a lot of rock stars would love to do and write a song for Ozzy Osbourne, when Osbourne was working on his solo career. With that connection intact, Grohl gave it his best, but it seems that while he might have been an inspiration, the two weren’t destined to work together. Grohl shouldn’t take it personally; sometimes people who have similar musical values just aren’t made to work together. Plus, Foo Fighters got a pretty great song out of it, as when Osbourne turned it down, Grohl snapped it up for himself.
“’Stacked Actors’,” he said when reflecting on the track, “The first song was originally a riff for Ozzy Osbourne’s album and he passed on it I guess […] I think it’s one of the best riffs Dave’s ever written.”
