Ozzy Osbourne, "Diary of a Madman"

CJ journals with the devil

CJ’s Pitch:

The summer of 1980 marked the last time Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath were on the same planet.

Ozzy was about to step onto a rocket ship that would take him to a stratosphere of multiple platinum records, reality TV stardom, satellite radio immortality and the title of undisputed King of Heavy Metal. (Also Prince of Darkness, a moniker he embraced.)

Black Sabbath, by contrast, were about to sink into an abyss from which they would not emerge until Ozzy rejoined them over thirty years later.

In April of 1980, Black Sabbath released their first album without Ozzy, whom they had fired for his erratic behavior and general drunkenness.. Heaven and Hell was, and is, an excellent record. In fact, I’m proud to say that I convinced the soft rock/jam band voting bloc of EONS to admit it to the Collection back in late 2020.

Ozzy heard H&H when it first came out and, even though he was still bitter about the breakup, he had to admit that it was very good. But he wasn’t worried because he knew he was about to release something special. And boy, did he ever.

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Blizzard of Ozz debuted in September of 1980 and it absolutely changed the entire paradigm of hard rock and heavy metal. Ozzy had replaced the cool, effortless riffs of Sabbath’s Tony Iommi with the acrobatics and histrionics of a young guitarist named Randy Rhoads. Iommi’s sound was dark and watery. Rhoads’ sound was bright and crisp. Tony made everything look easy. Randy made it look fucking impossible. Along with Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads set the tone for the heavy metal explosion of the 1980s.

With Blizzard, Ozzy buried Black Sabbath and re-branded himself in one fell swoop. The album title’s twisted play on a beloved American movie and the occult image on its cover seemed to say, “Sabbath can do dragons and wizards and allegorical hell, but I’ll give you fire and brimstone and actual hell. Stick with me and Satan, kids.”

And we did.

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Despite all that, I chose Ozzy and Randy’s second album, Diary of a Madman, for my pitch. Why? Blizzard has some of metal’s most revered songs in “Crazy Train”, “Mr. Crowley” and “I Don’t Know”. But it also contains some of its dopiest with “No Bone Movies”, “Goodbye to Romance” and a bonus track called “You Lookin’ at Me Lookin’ at You”, which reads and sounds like a rejected Saturday Night Live skit.

Madman lives up to its billing in every way. It’s darker, heavier and evil-er than Blizzard ever hoped to be. The only thing that Blizzard has over Madman is the cover. The Blizzard cover looks like a gothic oil painting. The Madman cover looks like Ozzy’s mom made him a Halloween costume.

Cover art notwithstanding, Madman opens with three straight nuclear bombs. Four, if you count “Believer”, which I do. After the machine gun drum entry, “Over the Mountain” delves immediately into the forbidden. Ozzy talks about traveling through the astral plane which, according to my notes, is a mysterious celestial sphere inhabited by angels or spirits that you can only experience before being born or after you die. Or, if you’re Ozzy, after some heavy-duty chemical reinforcements.

“Flying High Again” is another far out trip courtesy of your garden variety marijuana. As in “Over the Mountain” and pretty much every other song on the album, Randy is absolutely shredding. It’s as if he’s on a maniacal mission to play as hard and fast as possible.

“You Can’t Kill Rock and Roll” has always been my favorite song on this or any other Ozzy album. It uses the deceptively soft start/hammer drop technique for which I am admittedly a sucker. But it’s the lyrics that spoke to pre-teen CJ then and still do now.

Leave me alone, don’t want your promises no more

‘Cause rock and roll is my religion and my love

Won’t ever change, may think it’s strange

I’m forced to rock and roll, I’m here to stay

The more traditional religion continues to disappoint me the more rock and roll delivers on its solemn oath. I loved that Ozzy made it his North Star. When he says that he’s “forced” to rock and roll, it’s because that’s his destiny. It’s how he survives. At times, I’ve felt exactly the same way.

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Unlike Blizzard, Madman’s second half doesn’t suffer a letdown. Any one of “Little Dolls”, “Tonight” and “SATO” would’ve been the best track on a mid-’80s Black Sabbath album. But it’s the last song, the title cut, that delivers the coup de grace.

Randy Rhoads is credited with ushering in a subgenre of heavy metal called Neoclassical Metal. Classically trained guitarists of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s drew from the Baroque period of music and married it to metal chord progressions. With neoclassical architecture, you get the White House. With neoclassical metal, you get Nightwish.

The song “Diary of a Madman” is a neoclassical masterpiece. It opens with strains of classical guitar followed by quickening chords, which eventually crash into a metal riff. The lyrics tell the tale of a descent into paranoia and insanity that the narrator is helpless to stop. In addition to the anxiety-inducing guitar we get a medieval choir of terror as the song draws to a close. It’s a horror story worthy of Edgar Allan Poe and it became a blueprint for heavy metal passion plays.

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Ozzy Osbourne and Randy Rhoads never made another album together because Randy died shortly after its release in the most metal way possible (read: pointless and stupid). A private plane containing Rhoads, a makeup artist named Rachel Youngblood and a coked up bus driver/amateur pilot named Andrew Ayock clipped the band’s tour bus because Ayock thought that buzzing the bus would be a fun way to wake the people who were sleeping on it. Nobody on the bus was injured, but the plane spun out and crashed killing all three of its passengers.

Who knows where Randy’s career would’ve taken him? Ozzy was destroyed by Randy’s death, but eventually continued his rise to superstardom. Diary of a Madman remains as the last living document we have of the two of them together.

Today, Ozzy’s incoherent mumbling and shuffling gait make him an easy target for ridicule. He’s more of a cartoon character than a person at this point. But in 1981, he helped create something timeless. We’d be crazy not to enshrine this Madman on Newbury St.

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Mitch’s Response:

Sometimes in life you get so deep into a subculture that you don’t realize how far into a rabbit hole you’ve actually fallen. For me, I was so obsessively committed to ashtanga yoga that I spent years convincing myself that doing more yoga would be the cure for my torn meniscus that was clearly caused by yoga. In the end I had two torn meniscuses, both of which were fixed with nano bots and/or lasers, and not more yoga.

Our dear friend CJ has been so deep into the heavy metal scene for so long that he somehow convinced himself that he should pitch Diary of a Madman, a terrible Ozzy album with no hits, instead of Blizzard of Ozz, a terrible Ozzy album that at least has that crazy song about the train they play at football stadiums. A strategic misfire only a true metal madman could make.

In heavy metal circles Ozzy is the Prince of Darkness and the most iconic voice in music. In the outside world, Ozzy is the shambolic reality TV Clown Prince of Darkness, and can barely hold a tune. Among the metalrati, Randy Rhoads was the greatest guitar player ever, who invented the neo-classical style. In the mainstream world Randy Rhoads was a little self-indulgent, and less well known than Ray Parker, Jr.

My favorite thing about this album was listening to it with CJ while we played golf (yes, like Ozzy, we’ve given in to the dark side.) Nearly every song he’d say, “you’ve got to know this one?” and I wouldn’t, because why would I? My personal rabbit hole smells like patchouli and naga champa, not Jack Daniels and sweaty pleather.

• Pitch Failed (More Boz, Less Ozz)

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Ken’s Response:

Funny that one of the words CJ chose to describe Randy Rhoads’ playing was “histrionics”, because I couldn’t agree more…but not about Rhoads.  It’s Ozzy, it’s always Ozzy, and it will continue to always be Ozzy that does dramatic things and acts in such absurd ways that even Samuel Beckett would roll an eye or two.  Ozzy is all about the attention, a petulant, attention-craving child who never matured past age 15 (NOT coincidentally, the same age he dropped out of school).  

Blizzard of Ozz (I just listened to it for the first time in over 25 years) is a decent album with two legitimate smash hits and some not unpleasant stuff in between.  Ozzy seems to have pulled himself together for the studio and Rhoads is phenomenal.  Diary of a Madman is without any hits.  Rhoads is still great, Ozzy is still Ozzy, but there is simply no hook that makes me want to keep listening.  

Aside from the Rhoads solos, which come up in each track as predictably as the 10:47 Acela, there is nothing special or outstanding at all.  What you get are a few pleasant songs (“You Can’t Kill Rock and Roll”), a few clunkers (“Over The Mountain”), and a few that you wish you could unhear (“Little Dolls”).

I’m not sure Blizzard would have made it into Newbury St., but if it did, it would be solely because of Randy Rhoads.  Unfortunately, Randy brings his A-game again for Diary, but Ozzy’s contribution actually lowers the whole value of the album.

Ozzy should serve as a warning to the kids of the world; stay in school or you’ll end up a total shit show.  Sure, he’s got more money than some countries, but look at him, he’s the punch line of a joke that isn’t even close to funny.

• Pitch Failed (you can’t kill rock and roll, but evidently you can beat it into submission)

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CJ’s pitch was not successful and Ozzy Osbourne’s Diary of a Madman has been locked up far, far away from the Newbury St. Collection.

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The ultimate sin would be for you to miss the crazy train to the comments section to let us know whether Ozzy Osbourne’s Diary of a Madman sends you flying high again, or should be buried under the graveyard with Mr. Crowley.

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Please join us next week as Mitch wards off the evil spirits and tries to get us back on hallowed ground with a look at Jonathan Wilson’s Gentle Spirit.

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