The one singer Ozzy Osbourne thought ripped him off: “It was upsetting”
Throughout every era of his career, Ozzy Osbourne was out there to have a good time.
He may have frightened every single parent that didn’t want their children coming home with copies of Blizzard of Ozz, but when looking at his actual track record onstage, he was far from the devil worshiper that the world painted him as. But even with the easygoing demeanour that he had off the stage, he could get more than a little bit heated if he felt that people were stealing from him whenever they went onstage.
Granted, it’s hard to really blame anyone for wanting to get a little bit of what Osbourne had in his Black Sabbath days. Almost every heavy metal band that has come after Sabbath is forever doomed to be compared to them, and even though Osbourne never identified with the metal banner half the time, he was treated like one of the reigning kings of all heavy music for a damn good reason.
Because as much as people like to do a decent impression of him, there are hardly any other musicians on this planet that can manage to sound like Osbourne whenever they sing. His voice was far from the cleanest thing in the world, but when listening to tunes like ‘War Pigs’ and ‘Paranoid’, you can’t really picture any other artist even thinking about singing the song except for him.
But around the late 1970s, Osbourne had his fill of being in Sabbath whenever he performed. Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die didn’t have nearly the same passion from him as the other albums, and looking at the other bands that were coming up around them, it wasn’t like Tony Iommi was going to get anywhere close to capturing the majesty of a band like Queen whenever he started experimenting with guitar effects.
If every other band was leaving Sabbath in the dust, though, Osbourne had zero time for Van Halen when they first started opening up for the band. He wasn’t having a good time as it was, but when he saw David Lee Roth strutting his stuff onstage while Eddie Van Halen shredded his guitar solos, Osbourne thought that all they were doing was mocking the kind of show that Sabbath were used to.
While Osbourne could be diplomatic from time to time, Geezer Butler remembered the frontman being absolutely livid when he saw what Roth did when opening for them, saying, “As the tour went on, Dave Lee Roth started copying, became like an Ozzy clone. It was really upsetting Ozzy at the time, because, whatever Ozzy did one night, Dave Lee Roth had said the same thing the next night. It was upsetting Ozzy.”
Then again, Iommi could see the funny side of things when the band started giving them a run for their money half the time. He knew that Eddie was a once in a generation talent from the first minute that he saw them, and even if they had their fair share of heavy moments that they “borrowed” from Sabbath, it was much easier to appreciate another guitarist who had their own voice on the instrument in the same way that he had found ways to make truly demented licks out of his guitar.
If Osbourne really was that unhappy, though, it had to do with more than a simple parody of what Sabbath did. Because if you really think about it, this was a changing of the guard in many respects, and while Sabbath and Osbourne were going to have their fair share of shakeups, it’s not like Osbourne was going to quietly fade into obscurity once he set out on his own. He wasn’t going to be Van Halen, but he was going to make sure that he became a big enough act to rival any other hard rock band that stood in his way.
