Stephen King picks his favourite Ozzy Osbourne album: “Slipknot, eat your filthy little heart out”
Stephen King’s relationship with heavy metal music has always been so strong that it’s almost symbiotic. Over the years, King has professed to banging his head to bands like Metallica, Anthrax, and AC/DC, while King’s books have directly inspired countless bands and artists in the genre to create some of their biggest hits. What about the inventors of metal, though? While King has gone on record about Black Sabbath in a not-so-complimentary way, he once revealed his favourite Ozzy Osbourne solo album – and took the opportunity to have a pop at one of modern metal’s biggest acts simultaneously.
Throughout his career, King has always been open about his love of rock and metal music. He was reportedly a member of the Metallica fan club in the 1980s, and loves Anthrax so much that he has included references to the band in a couple of his books. Both of these things are extremely fitting because they’re entirely reciprocal. After all, Kirk Hammett of Metallica named the band’s second album Ride the Lightning after a passage from The Stand, and Scott Ian of Anthrax has long been a King uber-fan who wrote a foreword for an edition of The Stand.
Interestingly, though, King has always been honest about his opinion on Sabbath, the outfit most experts believe invented the entire heavy metal genre in the ’70s. “I never cared for Ozzy very much,” King admitted to The Atlantic Monthly. “Black Sabbath don’t really work for me.”
Therefore, those familiar with King’s tastes could have been forgiven for expressing surprise when King chose to name an Ozzy Osbourne solo album as his favourite metal record of 2007. However, reading between the lines a bit, it mightn’t be quite the compliment it initially appears. You see, King admitted to Entertainment Weekly that he was disappointed in the quality of music across the board in 2007 and could only come up with seven albums he even wanted to spotlight in his yearly ‘Best of’ list.
Still, King wanted to give credit where it was due, and he waxed lyrical about Osbourne’s Black Rain, which hit number three on the Billboard 200. “It’s amazing that Ozzy can do this sort of thing at all anymore, let alone so well,” King wrote with uncharacteristic admiration of Osbourne’s oeuvre. “Finest heavy metal record of the year; a true speaker-buster. Best track is the amazing ‘I Don’t Wanna Stop.'”
Indeed, ‘I Don’t Wanna Stop’ is undoubtedly the tune most people remember from Black Rain. It was nominated for the Grammy Award for ‘Best Hard Rock Performance’ – losing out to Foo Fighters’ barnstorming ‘The Pretender’ – and Osbourne got some great mileage out of performing the track on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Hell, it was also included in video games like Rock Band and Madden NFL ’08, and even provided the theme for WWE’s Judgment Day pay-per-view event.
Amusingly, though, after praising Osbourne, King signed off his list entry by writing, “Slipknot, eat your filthy little heart out.” It’s unclear why everyone’s favourite masked marauders were catching strays from the King of Horror, especially considering they didn’t even release an album in ’07, but it was funny nonetheless.
It mightn’t have sat well with singer Corey Taylor, though. After all, he – just like legions of other metal musicians – is a dedicated King superfan, and once claimed he reads The Stand every two years! Poor Corey.
