“I respect the man”: the only Ozzy Osbourne album Kurt Cobain actually liked
When Kurt Cobain was coming up, every single definition of rock and roll went back to hair metal. As much as he wanted to bring something authentic to the masses, it didn’t seem ike the best idea for him to make something like ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ at a time when Winger and Faster Pussycat were some of the biggest names in rock and roll. Even though Nirvana single-handedly put an end to every hair metal band that came before them, that didn’t mean there weren’t some heavy bands that got Cobain’s seal of approval.
After all, many of the best riffs in Nirvana’s catalogue are indebted to the golden age of metal music. As much as Bleach is remembered today for being one of their most important records, if only for the pop song ‘About A Girl’, a song like ‘Mr Moustache’ has the kind of badass riff that’s somewhere between garage rock and the tamer sounds of Slayer. Even when mixing Nevermind, Cobain wanted to get Slayer’s mixer, Andy Wallace, to make sure everything hit the listener like a slap in the face.
But no casual metal fan could ignore a band like Black Sabbath. Despite Cobain tuning insanely low for some of his early songs like ‘Blew’, Tony Iommi was already doing the same thing when the metal trailblazers released albums like Master of Reality. Iommi was the mastermind, but Ozzy Osbourne was the madman who made everyone go crazy the minute he took to the stage.
People might sometimes treat him like a punchline due to his participation on The Osbournes, but looking back on his solo career, it’s not like ‘The Prince of Darkness’ needed to justify that moniker. He was the embodiment of darkness to a lot of people, and when looking at his contribution to metal music, his influence is only one notch below The Beatles in terms of how many people he inspired to pick up guitars and write riffs of their own.
When Cobain was growing up, though, he wasn’t always the biggest fan of what Osbourne had to offer. Sure, the Black Sabbath era was untouchable in many people’s eyes, but when Osbourne went solo, the grunge icon admitted that he never really cared for much of what the frontman had to write about outside of one album. And what’s even crazier is that the album didn’t even feature Randy Rhoads on it.
Right after the guitar genius met his tragic end, Cobain said he always had a soft spot for Osbourne’s third album with Jake E Lee, saying, “I respect the man. I have always loved his music except for his last five albums or whatever. I didn’t pay attention to most of his solo stuff besides Bark At The Moon, whenever that one was. Ozzy was also in the same mixing studio that we were in for our last record. We met each other in the hall sometimes.”
While Cobain made it a habit of being somewhat of a contrarian to the mainstream, it’s not like he didn’t have a point here. Jake E Lee was a fantastic substitute for Rhoads on this track, and since Osbourne had a more tuneful edge to his voice on his first few solo records, this was the moment where he could channel that sinister persona one more time, even if the cover of the record is more than a little goofy to look at today.
Nirvana may have been coming from a totally different world than Sabbath, but that didn’t mean that Cobain had to dismiss them on principle. He had grown up itching to play something heavy, and anyone who wanted something a little bit heavier than bands like The Stooges or Ramones will always find themselves drawn to the riffs of Iommi and Osbourne’s wail sooner or later.
