The worst musician in Black Sabbath, according to Ozzy Osbourne
When Black Sabbath first got started, no one pictured Ozzy Osbourne being one of the greatest singers on Earth.
He was happy to make the most macabre music that he could, but since the rest of the charts were inundated with artists like Simon and Garfunkel and the early Beatles solo records, the idea of those same charts giving the time of day to songs like ‘NIB’ seemed like the exact opposite of what a hit should be. Then again, whatever dark magic Tony Iommi was working with seemed to pay off by the time the band started working on their first major hits.
But, really, Sabbath seemed to be fighting tooth and nail for any spot on the hit parade when they first began. No one would have given them the time of day even when they were playing blues covers, but if Iommi could manage to carry on with music and play every single gig with thimbles on his fingers after two of them were sliced off in a sheet metal factory, there was no excuse for the rest of his band not to keep pushing as hard as they could to be superstars. At the same time, it felt like success came to them more often than not.
Not a lot of Sabbath songs were cut out to be singles, but when you hear a tune like ‘Iron Man’, there’s a hook every couple of minutes. That kind of eight-minute track should be allergic to the charts in some capacity, but when you hear ‘The Prince of Darkness’ wailing over top of everything, it was impossible not to get sucked into this story about a man turning to steel in a great magnetic field and going back in time to kill his enemies.
No one had heard any lyrics like this before, and even though Osbourne could start the beginnings of songs, Geezer Butler really is the unsung hero of the whole operation. Butler was the one putting together brilliant pieces of prose throughout every one of their albums, and even if Osbourne admitted to not having the faintest idea of what he was singing about, it was a lot more interesting to hear than whatever bluesy cliches everyone else was doing.
Even at their peak, though, Osbourne did have a little bit of an inferiority complex. He had a brilliant voice that gave him an entirely different career once he went solo, but as he was coming up with the greatest melodies in heavy metal history, Osbourne felt that he had opted into the role of a lifetime when he convinced the rest of the band that he could sing half as well as he claimed to during their early gigs.
Towards the end of his life, it didn’t matter what Osbourne sang in many respects, but the metal god claimed that he was the worst musician that the band had, saying, “I don’t play an instrument, I don’t understand music, I can’t even play chords on a guitar. That’s one of my biggest regrets. I can play a little bit of harmonica, and that’s about it. It’s been interesting, because I can’t communicate on a musical level with other musicians.”
But in a strange way, learning an instrument would have made him less perfect whenever he performed. Sure, the band lucked into getting one of the greatest singers of the time in Ronnie James Dio after the fact, but if Osbourne actually bothered to try and learn an instrument, there’s a good chance that he would have lost the kind of charisma that had come naturally whenever he sang some of his classic tunes.
So while anyone else should be proud to learn all of the ins and outs of music theory throughout their journey as a musician, Osbourne is a classic example of what someone can do with a knack for listening to the band and an immaculate ear. He had spent years trying to match what he heard on Beatles recordings, but it was a lot easier for him to start making tunes that had a bit more of an edge to them.
