The legend Ozzy Osbourne said “wasn’t one of the greats”
Ozzy Osbourne was not going to settle for having any other guitar player when he went solo.
The idea of moving on from Black Sabbath was already going to be a risky move, but when he brought in Randy Rhoads, there was a possibility that he was going to have one of the greatest second acts that any hard rocker had ever seen. And while ‘The Prince of Darkness’ would continue to bring in many great talents into his band, he knew that it wasn’t about technical prowess whenever someone got behind the fretboard.
Because if we’re being completely honest, it’s not like Osbourne was the model for what good singers were supposed to sound like by any means. He was perfectly serviceable for what he did in Sabbath, but compared to the other belters coming out of the metal scene like Ronnie James Dio and Rob Halford, he was more interested in making a few bluesy vocal lines and maybe the occasional gospel yells here and there.
That suited him fine as long as he had a decent melody to sing, so why not have the rest of the band help him do the heavy lifting? After all, Osbourne’s best records are usually a clinic for any aspiring metal guitarists when listening to Rhoads and Zakk Wylde perform on their respective albums, but for Osbourne, it was all about keeping things incredibly simple just like his heroes did.
He would have told you that he was one of the biggest Beatles fans in the world, but when you look at what he did compared to the Fab Four, everything was a lot more technical. The Beatles’ career was all about taking chances every single time they made a record, and compared to Rhoads running through some classical scales every single time he played, George Harrison wasn’t exactly going to be doing the same thing whenever he tore through one of his solos.
And despite loving his playing, Osbourne felt that Harrison was far from the greatest guitarist in the world, saying, “Let’s face it: George Harrison wasn’t one of the greats of guitar. He came up with great chord structures and came up with some great parts for The Beatles. The one thing about The Beatles was they had melody, and I thought that whatever you do, if you have a melody there, then you have a song.”
Harrison probably wouldn’t have even denied what Osbourne was saying, either. Even in the days when every supergroup was trying to copy what Cream did, Harrison had no time for bands that were looking to solo for as long and hard as they could. He wanted to make songs that made people sing along to the guitar breaks, and every time he brought out the slide, he could make any casual music fan want to openly weep.
Even up until his final days on albums like Brainwashed, Harrison was still trying to do the same thing whenever he picked up the guitar. He had his fair share of technical chops whenever he played, but compared to the likes of Jimmy Page, a song like ‘Marwa Blues’ feels like it’s coming straight from Harrison’s soul rather than being something that he had to think about for too long.
Because while a lot of people think that it’s easier for someone to play a few chords and sing a song, it’s actually a lot harder than anything that the biggest virtuosos of guitar could ever do. They had put in the hours trying to make their fingers fly across the fretboard, but Harrison was more concerned with making a melody that could melt people’s hearts from the first time they heard it.
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