And it is true that although I haven't listened to Sabbath for, oh, about half a century and I've never heard any of Ozzie's solo stuff - ever - and I haven't seen even a few seconds of The Osbournes... Black Sabbath was my first favorite band.
Weird but true. For about five minutes (Okay, a year.) when I was in my very early teens, my best friend and I thought Sabbath were the best band we'd ever heard. Of course, we didn't exactly have the breadth or depth of musical experience we'd have by the time were fifteen...
Anyway, I bought Masters of Reality when it came out in 1971 (Meaning I must have been thirteen...) and then backfilled the first two albums, Paranoid and Black Sabbath, which turned out to be very easy to find in my favorite used record store. My pal bought Sabbath IV the following year but by then I'd already moved on to kneel at the feet of the Velvet Underground and the rest of their art-house ilk so heavy metal just wasn't pretentious enough for me any more.
There was no second coming for metal for me, either. I still don't much like any of it. My fling with the heavy stuff was brief and left little impression. While I retain a nostalgic affection for some of the prog bands I liked around the same time (Well, Yes mostly. The rest I can do without.) I can't say I've ever felt the urge to go back and listen to my old Sabbath albums. Which I still have, of course.
There is one song of theirs that I do still listen to, though. It's hard to beat in its field and it seems to stand a little to one side of most of the rest of the Sabs catalog. What's more, it's the only Black Sabbath song I'm likely to hear coming at me down the street from the bunch of buskers who "perform" on weekends, fifty yards from the doorway of the bookshop where I work. (That said, they did take a run at War Pigs once. I bet that didn't put much in the bucket.)
Obviously I'm talking about Paranoid. Let's hear it one more time.
Paranoid - Black Sabbath
There they are on Top of the Pops in 1970. I don't remember seeing them. It might be very slightly before I started watching the show or maybe I was out that evening. Kicking a ball against a wall, probably.
I didn't actually realise Paranoid was a Top 40 hit. (Top 30 then, I think, actually... Top 40 came later.) Again, I think it just predates my obsession with the weekly chart rundown. I'm slightly too young to have been there for the start of Ozzie's career and I'm only ten years younger than he was when he died.
There are many covers of Paranoid on YouTube and most of them are like you'd expect. Not all of them, though.
Paranoid - Lonely Sock
Paranoid - Harp Twins
Paranoid - Cindy Und Bert
Paranoid (That She Mighteth Be A Witch)
Starshine Audio
Something there for everyone, I think.
Ozzie famously had a great sense of humor. I hope he'd be amused by at least a couple of those.
Rest easy, Prince of Darkness and thanks for starting me on a lifetime of listening to great music. Even if very little of it was yours.
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And it is true that although I haven't listened to Sabbath for, oh, about half a century and I've never heard any of Ozzie's solo stuff - ever - and I haven't seen even a few seconds of The Osbournes... Black Sabbath was my first favorite band.
ReplyDeleteHow is that possible? Even today it is very hard to not hear Ozzy's solo stuff in the States if you're listening to rock on the radio. As for The Osbournes, they were on MTV when that station had pretty much abandoned music videos, so I never saw it.
I watched that Top of the Pops video of Paranoid mainly to see if Pan's People were going to try to do a choreographed dance to it. They didn't, thank goodness, but that there were a bunch of people trying to dance to it shows how new Heavy Metal really was as the producers tried to turn it into a dance number. It'd be like trying to dance to Heart of the Sunrise. (And please don't tell me that people tried.)
I suppose I ought to make some scans of old Bloom County comic strips I have that featured Ozzy on them. Now to find them...