Farewell, Ozzy Osbourne: The Dark Will Remember
When my mother first caught me listening to Black Sabbath's Master Of Reality in class nine, she was shocked enough not to say anything for a while. When she did find her voice, though, the neighbours could hear every word of what she said. A year later, Sabbath's final album, 13, was released, but I did not get my hands on it until 2022, when I built a hi-fi system at home (one of the first things I did with my earnings). Inaugurating the system with Paranoid seemed only fair.
Still, when I moved on to the CD of 13, and the second track, "God Is Dead?" burst into my yellow-painted, aqua-scented room, my mother came running down the hall to put an end to the misery her ears were going through. She sat down on my bed long enough to catch the gut-wrenching, soul-crushing lyrics before stomping off in disgust. By then, I was 23, and she had little, if any, control over my taste in music. Later that night, I heard her tell my father that my upbringing had been a failure, and that every penny spent on my private-school education an utter waste.
Sabbath, to my mother and people like her, were the antithesis of what my generation was supposed to act and behave like. Taught to be gentlemanly in my manners and courteous in my upbringing in school, Ma could scarcely believe that I had been almost worshipping a band who openly declared themselves to be against God, against society, against rules and against decrees of any kind.
What was worse was the fact that Sabbath often - and unwillingly - proclaimed themselves to be worshippers of Satan. Their frontman, Ozzy Osbourne, who passed away this week at the ripe age of 76, was the manifestation of everything every parent in India would not want their child to grow up into: suicide-advocating, devil-invoking, hatred-spewing and darkness-idolising. What hurt Ma the most was the latter - in her eyes, darkness was not just the opposite of light, but also the true embodiment of anarchy. Who would tell her that anarchy was the ultimate goal that everyone in this world, including Sabbath, was striving towards?
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Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die were albums I thoroughly enjoyed, not merely for the guttural howls that seemed to emanate from Ozzy's mic, but for the doom-themed accompaniments that chaperoned his words, thanks largely to the expertise of Tony Iommi on guitar, Bill Ward on drums and Geezer Butler on bass. Paranoid, to many, remains the best work of the band, and it is hard to disagree.
While "War Pigs" inspired many of several generations to stand up to authority and take a stance against injustice, corruption, and testosterone-filled toxic patriotism that war inevitably brings ("Generals gathered in their masses, just like witches at black masses"), "Iron Man" was exactly where the growl of the modern-day heavy metal vocalist took birth ("Vengeance from the grave, kills the people he once saved"). The title track "Paranoid" ran the risk of being mocked for being extremely lightweight in its depiction of mental health, but, in time, became the most listened-to song of the band. The band also ran into trouble for Ozzy's Brummie mispronunciation of the final lyrics: "I tell you to enjoy (end your) life; I wish I could, but it's too late."
It promptly went on to become the greatest mondegreen in the history of music.
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Now that Ozzy is gone, I feel a massive absence of light, whereas Ma would have imagined darkness to have engulfed me. On Wednesday, July 23, when we heard the news, she was kind enough to commiserate with me on my loss, knowing well that although this 'devil-incarnate' may have taken her son away from the godly ways she must have envisioned for me, it was a loss only she could relate to.
Several heavy metal bands across the world have opened up on how Sabbath - and Ozzy, in particular - played a big role in shaping them, and how they single-handedly gave birth to this genre, but the significance of these once-obscure men from Aston in Warwickshire, England, is much more to me. Ozzy, in his true essence, was a child who never grew up and who retained his originality and child-like nature in the face of the most fickle-natured whining that the world could throw at him.
Kicked out of Sabbath after Never Say Die, Ozzy proceeded to win hearts over with an extraordinary solo career, beginning with Blizzard Of Ozz and culminating with The Memoirs Of A Madman. While the world already saw him as being the 'Prince of Darkness', he helped breed the myth even further with his choice of black clothes, black eyeliner, long and straight hair and a cross around his neck.
The black tortoiseshell glasses that he adorned himself with on so many occasions seemed to hug him and give him a gentle tug of recognition whenever he growled on stage; some moments remained in public memory long after they had taken place, such as him biting the head of a live bat during a concert in 1982 in the USA. And who can forget him urinating on the Alamo the same year, wearing his wife Sharon's clothes? These antics propagated the myth that Ozzy Osbourne was even further, guaranteeing that when the time came for him to embark from his earthly duties and return to the hell he so coveted, he would enter as a legend.
My father, once sitting at my desk while "Age Of Reason" from 13 was spinning quietly, remarked at the depth of the lyrics he could only understand too well: "In the age of reason, how do we survive?"
Ozzy ensured that reason bowed to his wishes. Even rationality paid homage to his persona.
Journalist
1moGreat one, Mohul!