The hated Billy Joel song Ozzy Osbourne wanted to steal from
Ozzy Osbourne never claimed to have metal as a part of his diet all the time. He may have been dubbed ‘The Prince of Darkness’, but there was nothing wrong with him dancing to James Brown or throwing on some ABBA. However, there would always be limits on how much he could do on his own.
Osbourne is a man of many talents, but the one thing that connects all of his records together is the bluesiness of his voice. As much as some people think he invented the idea of heavy metal singing, ‘The Ozzman’ had always relied on his bluesy background to get him to iconic status today, always bending his notes on his classic tracks and even using those signature bluesman ad-libs when he was singing songs like ‘War Pigs’ back in the day.
Right as his solo career began, though, he knew that there was a lot more that rock had to offer than a bluesy filter. Randy Rhoads had studied the kind of classical music that made Blizzard of Ozz sound so regal, and with every new guitarist that Osbourne drafted in, there was something new to offer, like Jake E Lee’s intense chops on albums like Bark at the Moon or Zakk Wylde bringing back some of that old-school rock and roll guitar playing when he joined at the end of the 1980s.
But after Wylde left to form Black Label Society, Osbourne had started to settle into a groove. He knew he didn’t want his music to sound too much like Wylde’s solo outfit, and somewhere around Ozzmosis, he had fully settled into his signature vocal cadence, to the point where every one of his tunes had that same kind of tortured bluesman screech behind it whenever he started singing.
Of all the artists Osbourne was pulling from, though, Billy Joel seemed like he should have been one of the last on the list. No offence meant to the ‘Piano Man’, but Joel’s music is the kind of thing that can be enjoyed by everyone from music nerds to classical snobs to the casual music fan that wants something playing in the background, but none of it exactly screams ‘OZZY OSBOURNE’ by any stretch.
That didn’t stop ‘The Prince of Darkness’ from referencing ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ when he made the song ‘Let It Die’ off the album Scream, saying, “I quite like it. The lyrics are very repetitive. You know that Billy Joel song? [‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’] The play with words is really clever on it. We wanted to do a song like that. The way it picks up, speeds up, I can really hear Sabbath in it towards the end.”
Although the Joel song has its place in history, it isn’t exactly the most loved song of all time. Joel himself has gone on record saying that it’s one of his least favourite songs he ever wrote, but what Osbourne does with it is much more clever than anything he was making on his 2009 album, often fiddling around with the words in an age when his typical vocal style had begun to get a little bit stale.
This song probably wasn’t enough for Joel to bring back his old metal band Attila by any means, but it was always nice to hear Osbourne continue to take chances up until his later albums. Anyone could have been relying on their influx of classics, but Osbourne was still interested in trying a nutty idea every once in a while and seeing where it goes.
