The 1991 song Ozzy Osbourne always had “a soft spot for”
Ozzy Osbourne didn’t really believe that some songs were better than others in his catalogue.
He never set out to make records that didn’t sound great, and even if he had some albums that didn’t resonate as they should have, he was willing to pick himself up and keep moving forward with every single album that he made. Nothing was going to be the same without people like Randy Rhoads, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t have some songs that stuck to him like glue every time he sang them.
Because ‘The Prince of Darkness’ lived and breathed every bit of his music. Everyone may have preferred listening to him as the bumbling father that spouted gibberish on The Osbournes, but underneath all of that was a genuine rock fan who only wanted to play a few shows and have some fun jamming with his friends. But with an industry like this, that’s easier said than done.
And especially after Rhoads passed away, Osbourne wasn’t in the right headspace to be making a new album. He had lost his musical soulmate in lots of ways, and he needed the chance to recuperate a little bit. And while he did have the right man for the job to replace him once Jake E Lee joined him on Bark at the Moon, nothing truly fell into place until Zakk Wylde was brought into the band.
Wylde was his partner in crime every time they performed, and while they did like to party more than a little bit, it all came back to the music at the end of the day. They were cut from the same cloth on No Rest for the Wicked, but when listening to some of the biggest songs that he created with Wylde, not all of them needed to be the darkest things in the world to really reach people.
If anything, Osbourne was responsible for playing one of his greatest ballads with Wylde behind the fretboard. Although he wasn’t the type to make the most stirring ballad in the world, Osbourne was beside himself when he heard what Lemmy did with the concept for the song ‘Mama I’m Coming Home’. It was the kind of letter everyone would have wanted to write if they were on tour, and Osbourne was more than happy to sing the song for the rest of his days if he had to.
Even though Osbourne never claimed to be one to pick out favourite songs all the time, he knew that there was always room in his heart for this tune, saying, “I’ve got a real soft spot for ‘Mama, I’m Coming Home.’ I didn’t write the lyrics – Lemmy did – but I told him exactly what I wanted to say. But I tell you what, I don’t really have a personal favourite. They are records of fun, chaos or when I’ve been having a miserable fucking time. Each one is a reflection of me at the time.”
But the power of that song only grew more pertinent as the years went on. The entire concept of him playing the Back to the Beginning concert was already tearjerking more than a few times, but he had no idea that his performance of the song would have been one of the final times he got to sing. He would be gone within weeks of that concert, so to see him singing that song is downright angelic when listening to it afterwards.
‘The Ozzman’ almost seemed indestructible half the time that he was up to his old tricks, but when looking through his albums, but there was hardly a minute that went by where ‘Mama I’m Coming Home’ didn’t hit like a sledgehammer. All of his songs were meant to get a strong response from people, but even if he was known as the antichrist for many people, not many of his songs could bring people to their knees like this.
