The best metal albums of the 1970s, according to Ozzy Osbourne
When Black Sabbath began in 1968, there was no blueprint. It was still the era of rock and roll, still the hippie days of peace and love. So, where did the ‘Prince of Darkness’ fit in?
Emerging in Birmingham just before the turn of the decade, the launch of Ozzy Osbourne’s band is an interesting one. It wasn’t that they were completely and utterly alone doing something absolutely unheard of before. Things gradually got heavier and heavier, punctuated by moments like the emergence of Led Zeppelin and even Bob Dylan’s electric journey. But still, that was rock and roll; Black Sabbath were always going to be something else.
Hence, their liftoff was the launch of that. They were taking the guitars of the big rock umbrella, smashing them up and reshaping them into something more jagged as they stood on the precipice of the birth of metal as pioneers. When their debut album came out in 1970, especially when ‘Paranoid’ hit the radio, landing at number four on the charts, it was clear that a new era had begun. The sunshining days were over; something darker was here.
It would be very simple to claim the band to be an island. It’s easy to isolate pioneers to these singular things, untouched, unmoved and uninfluenced by anything else—but it’s not true. Even before there were other bands beginning to lean into their same sort of sound, all of the members brought influences to the table from their favourite records. Osbourne especially loved The Beatles, so he definitely wasn’t immune to enjoying more light, pop-leaning rock.
As the 1970s rolled on, though, while his own band got bigger and bigger, more and more acts began to join them on the dark side. Other artists might have been annoyed about that, calling copycats on the rest. But instead, Osbourne was merely happy to have more to listen to, becoming a vocal fan of a bunch of different bands and albums that were joining the early charge for heavy metal.
His choices were interesting as well, opening up the age-old debate about what constitutes genres and how a record qualifies. For plenty of metal heads, Led Zepp wouldn’t count, but for Osbourne, they did as he picked out Led Zeppelin IV as one of his all-time favourite metal records.
“I’ve always been a huge Led Zeppelin fan. All of their studio albums are classics, but this is one of my all-time favourites,” he said. With huge tracks like ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and ‘Black Dog’, Osbourne clearly sees it as being heavy enough to count.
His other pick stands more safely in that realm as another band that helped lead the charge from the other side of the world. It was proof of how quickly the sound was spreading and how uniting it was as Osbourne not only loved AC/DC but also became good friends with the band, united across continents by the love of the tunes.
“I love Brian Johnson, but to me, my good friend, the late Bon Scott, was the best singer AC/DC ever had,” he said, adding, “This album was like an addiction to me” when he picked out Highway to Hell.
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