The reason why Jimmy Page refused to work with Ozzy Osbourne
Read More
Credit: Alamy
Ozzy Osbourne is related to two iconic royals
The world would be a very different place without Ozzy Osbourne, and it is safe to say that it would be much worse. He’s one of the most iconic rock and metal frontmen of all time, and his other-worldly wail was the sharp tip of Black Sabbath’s obsidian spear.
Osbourne’s vocals allowed the band to make their form of rock a truly ominous one, setting a precedent for all the different forms of metal that were to come over the following years. From stoner to black metal, various genres owe a lot to Ozzy and Sabbath, which is a testament to just how pioneering they were upon their breakthrough.
Notably, Osbourne was fired from Sabbath in 1979, and he would quickly react to being booted out by embarking on a solo career that saw him go from strength to strength and confirm to everyone that he wasn’t just a one-trick pony.
Later that year, under the management of Don and Sharon Arden, Osbourne formed his new band. It was called The Blizzard of Ozz, comprised of guitarist Randy Rhoads of Quiet Riot, bassist and lyricist Bob Daisley of Rainbow, keyboardist Don Airey of Rainbow, and drummer Lee Kerslake of Uriah Heep.
In 1980, they released their eponymous debut album, which featured cuts such as ‘Crazy Train’ and ‘Mr. Crowley and Osbourne and Rhoads formed a formidable partnership that gave even the Osbourne-Iommi partnership of Black Sabbath a run for its money.
With Blizzard of Ozz, Ozzy got more metal than ever before. It was here that he started to come into his own as ‘The Prince of Darkness’. He invariably backed his music up with insane antics, such as notoriously biting the head off a live bat onstage in 1982 and publicly urinating on the ultimate symbol of Texan freedom, The Alamo.
It transpires that the title ‘The Prince of Darkness’ is an apt one. In 2010, Osbourne spent £12,000 by taking a state-of-the-art test where scientists took a sample of his blood at his home in Buckinghamshire and sent it to their lab in New Jersey, America. Through this test, they unlocked his genetic code, and what they found was miraculous, reflecting that royalty is in his blood.
The research found that Osborne is a distant relative of the notorious last Russian Tsar Nicholas II, the father of the mysterious Anastasia, as well as the German King George I of England. Added to these regal connections, Osbourne is also distantly related to the iconic outlaw Jesse James, which accounts for his natural propensity to raise hell. He even shares genes with ancient Romans. Specifically those who died in Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD.
“That means I’m also probably related to some of the survivors, which makes a lot of sense,” Osbourne told the Sunday Times in 2010. “If any of the Roman Osbournes drank nearly as much as I used to, they wouldn’t have even felt the lava. They could have just walked it off”.
