Ozzy Osbourne, Oasis of Heavy Metal

The Guardian obituary of Ozzy Osbourne (1948-2025) opens with the following words:

If a single individual could be said to embody the attributes of heavy metal, it would be Ozzy Osbourne.

Nice words, as if in praise. But, in fact, he was one of the least interesting exponents of heavy metal. I suppose “embody the attributes” means what King Lear called the “addition of a king”. Not being a king, as such, but having the robes. And Ozzy Osbourne, judging by all the photographs, spent his life grimacing and staring in Trick or Treat manner, wearing what became the usual uniform of clothes, variously tight and loose, eyeliner and long hair, and singing something or other over an obligatory soundtrack of what the Guardian calls a “dense sludge of drums, bass and fuzz-toned guitar.” (Fuzz-toned guitar? Laughter. Is it still 1964? “Here they are, Pop-Pickers, Black Sabbath with their fuzz-toned guitar!”)

What is heavy metal? Well, it is 1. music, of a sort, 2. a lifestyle choice. I know about it, a bit, as I rather liked some of the music, and refused the lifestyle choice. I learnt to play the guitar when I was about 11, and my struggles left me with some sort of ability as I learnt to play melodies – I liked the Shadows. At school, a few years later, I fell in with a few friends, who were learning to play: I was ahead of them, so I was acclaimed lead guitarist. But they liked Iron Maiden, so I was initiated into something of the cult of heavy metal. We formed a band, originally named (by me) Aeolian, and then renamed (by the singer) The Rhetorik. As time went on, the singer, who had some charisma, which I had not, became more influential, and I diffidently chewed out guitar solos over our noise, which became noisier as amps became bigger, and distortion pedals and high gain became a must. By the time I was 16 our noise was one-part feedback to one-part distortion to one-part hacking bass to one-part chaotic drums: with vocal and any other melodic effects left to do their best to be heard through the noise. Listening to our Siren song Odysseus would have had to free himself from the mast, hop over the side of his boat and swim over to us to lipread the singer and study the fingers of this guitarist.

We had a few original songs, as everyone does, but, as everyone did, we played ‘covers’. We played ‘Infinite Dreams’ by Iron Maiden, which I thought was alright; we played ‘Rock’n’Roll’ by Led Zeppelin, which was mostly a mess: the least good song on Led Zeppelin IV; we played a few other things occasionally (‘Ace of Spades’ etc.) – and we played, yes, indeed, ‘Warpigs’. My friends would come round to my house, and stick a cassette into my father’s Amstrad, and say “There” and “This is it”. I learnt the songs less by listening to them and more by playing them, so that now what astounds me is how odd and inaccurate my playing was, compared to the originals, as if I could hardly hear at all. For years we played ‘Warpigs’, and I am not sure I ever listened to it properly. I just played it. Here’s a hint as to where I am going with this: perhaps with ‘Warpigs’, it did not matter.

‘Warpigs‘ is a song by Black Sabbath, and it is may be one of their best. I don’t know, as I barely know any other Sabbath except for ‘Paranoid’, which is rubbish, as daft as ‘Born to be Wild’, and a lot less effective. I think my friends chose ‘Warpigs’ more because a favoured 1980s band Faith No More had covered it, than because it was a Sabbath song, but probably also because it was a Sabbath song. It had lineage. First, Sabbath did it; then Faith No More did it; and now The Rhetorik doodled it, I mean, did it.

“Generals gathered in their mass-es!”

As a tribute to Osbourne, I listened again to ‘Warpigs’ in its original form five or six times last night. Not bad. It starts in grandiose 6/8, a swinging, great careless Viking of an opening, with big chords, before suddenly, with two accented guitar fifths, we are thrust into a silence punctuated only by a hi-hat chipping away (jazz-style, all in the left foot), now in 4/4. The 4/4 always strikes me as too slow: but then, back in the 1980s, we probably played it too fast. Then the two fifths again (Da-Da!) and then we have Osbourne’s voice rising over the hi-hat as it rish-a-tishets away, “Generals gathered in their masses…” and off we go. “Oh Lord, yeah!” Riff, another riff, a bit of chromaticism, a bridge (“Politicians hide themselves away…”). It is not bad. It is sometimes good. But even now I wish it were better. I wish they had a better drummer, crisper, abler. I wish they had a better recording. I wish they had – a better singer. I cannot decide whether his performance is brilliant or disastrous: I’d swear that he is pitching his rising notes slightly too high, but, if so, this brilliantly adds to the tension at moments: though, on the other hands, some of his elisions lack the grace almost any good singer of the era would have given them. He has a habit of aspirating his melismas: i.e., he sings “construct-sha-hun,” “mi-hi-hinds” etc.

It is almost a very good recording, but there is a Cain mark on it, some black stain or bruise: and it is imperfect in a way that means I do not want to listen to it except, now, curiously. It has the attributes of heavy metal, no doubt. It has “the name and all th’addition to a king”; but it seems to lack true kingship. It sounds a bit, er, Rhetorikish. It does not rise above itself. It lacks grace. Whereas, believe it or not, quite a lot of this sort of music possesses grace (as well as “fuzz-toned” gravity).

Consider all the dark side named bands of the late 1960s:

• Black Sabbath: band formed in 1967, named in 1969 (after a Boris Karloff film): best song ‘Warpigs’ (1970). The Trash Can is to the bottom left of your screen.
• Deep Purple: formed and named in 1968 (after a classic song): best song, well, ‘Highway Star’ (1972), but also ‘Smoke on the Water’, even ‘Stormbringer’, etc. A good band. A very good drummer.
• Led Zeppelin: formed and named in 1968 (an adaption of a joke about how they would go down like a lead balloon): best song, ‘Stairway to Heaven’ (1971), but, of course, ‘Since I’ve Been Losing You’, ‘The Song Remains the Same’, ‘No Quarter’, ‘Kashmir’, ‘Achilles Last Stand’, plus the guitar break from ‘Whole Lotta Love’, etc. Aye, a very good band. An exceptional drummer.
• King Crimson: formed and named in 1968 (perhaps alluding to the devil): best song, well, ‘Starless’, but also, ’21st Century Schizoid Man’, ‘Red’, ‘Moonchild’ etc. and even (from the “dissonant Shadows on steroids” period in the 1990s – that’s Bill Bruford) ‘Vrooom’, why not?

King Crimson do not really count, as they were technically more advanced and musically ambitious (Bruford is also an exceptional drummer), and point to the really sublime progressive music of Yes (best song, probably, ‘Close to the Edge’), Genesis (‘Firth of Fifth’) and, I suppose, reluctantly, Emerson, Lake and Palmer (‘Tarkus’). But King Crimson shared the bad habit of Heavy Metal in attempting to evoke the Devil and the Dark Side of music. This was a terrible limitation. Music should be able to embrace both good and evil, God and Devil: and also come off it a bit with frivol and antic, a bit of the old McCartney ‘Bip Bop Link‘. Well, heavy metal is a bit solemn in its devilry: not ironic enough, not humorous enough. The good is a great blank negative in its consciousness. So is the festive.

I have listened to all this music very carefully, and some of it rewards attention. Blackmore and Page are, at times, astounding guitarists: they lack the facility of everyone who learnt to play after 1970: but they get excitement in their solos that one barely hears in anything recorded after 1975. Hell’s bells, even, in my estimation, the Iron Maiden of the first seven albums (culminating in ‘Seventh Son of a Seventh Son’) rewards attention: also bits of Metallica (including, especially, ‘Sanitarium’, and add your own songs, but not ‘Nothing Else Matters’, please). Jeff Beck, Joe Satriani, Allan Holdsworth: it’s all good. But Sabbath Bloody Sabbath? Mere compost. No uplift. Their zeppelin does not fly. Their king is always blackson. Their purple is not deep.

‘Warpigs’ lacks that mad element of music: the turbulent excitement of, say, the middle bit of ’21st Century Schizoid Man’ or the opening of ‘Highway Star’ (and the guitar solo), or the remarkable drumming of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ (which takes a good song and makes it sonically great). The greatest music of our time achieved take-off: and I never heard any of this in Sabbath. They are the Oasis of Metal.

Osbourne has died. Others will soon die. And there is a strange significance in all this death, as the devil-worshipping bourgeois long-haired grimacers come within inches of the scythe of the Grim Reaper, as the ageless wonder and defiance of metal actually meets it maker. ‘The song remains the same,’ I suppose, courtesy of LP, CD, YouTube and Spotify: but how will all this sound when only the music remains and the lifestyle choice is wholly committed to the cultural dustheap?

There was a strange significance in Metal at the time. I mean, on the lifestyle side. My friends went through stages of metallification, or metallurgy perhaps: first they wore Iron Maiden t-shirts, neatly ironed by the obliging mothers, and very black, then they ripped the knees of their trousers, then they let their hair grow. I remained a bit ironic, at a distance, and nothing happened to my hair. I realised at around this time that I never wanted to wear a t-shirt again, and so wore a sort of retro long-sleeved shirt I bought in Linthorpe Road for £16 or so. My manners, quite possibly, improved; while their manners, cultivated by the lifestyle choice became subtly but consciously worse, as they aped the lingo of Kerrang! and sat around the Eagle pub as if they were off-duty rockstars, assembling the first of many mousy groupies. Soon I went to university, discovered the Socratic or Shakespearian force of conversation, and my guitar was relegated to become a sort of ornament. I want to write, not simply play.

What was it all about, this metal? Leather, chains, long hair: so far it was average rock ‘n’ roll of circa 1972, but somehow it was fixed. It acquired skulls and spandex. But the spandex was never supposed to be shed. The skulls were supposed to stay adolescent. Bruce Dickinson sheared his long hair off to become an airline pilot, and got away with it, having a positive reason, but all the other Irons still insist on looking as if it is still 1982. And Ozzy Osbourne went to the Paranoid Warpig in the Sky looking like a cross between the old Dickens character (I cannot remember the name) who has to be pressed and pushed like a cushion because he keeps losing his shape in his armchair and, well, Ozzy Osbourne – in 1972. Good teeth, full hair, bat-staring hearse-chair – now being timely RIPed, three weeks after scraping out an old man version of ‘Warpigs’ for the last time.

Final proof that ‘Warpigs’ is not so good? Well, consider the ending: they didn’t know what to do, and, as if they were the Goons compiling a comedy record, they sped up the ending of the song as a sort of joke. But the song is not at all a joke: it is in solemn earnest. All very odd. No courage of their conviction. Still, that line is good, the rising line. “Generals gathered in their masses…” Ignore the fact that generals never ever, in the entire history of the world, gathered in their masses. Ignore the rest of the song: just play that line over and over, “Generals gathered in their masses…”

Heavy Metal is obviously something to do with the confused masculinity of young men in the NHS age: somehow having to survive increased female articulacy and survive their own inarticulacy, and channel their will-to-power in unpromising conditions. No one ever knows what to do with young men. They need new comitates, new warrior bands, to join. Well, after 1970, heavy metal was one answer: give the dull head-dropped mumbling boys a cult of their own, a daft cult of devilry, with a bit of Tolkien thrown in (that’s Zeppelin) or English literature (that’s Genesis) or Eastern emptiness (that’s Yes) or eventually British patriotic simplicity of the St George’s Cross sort (that’s Iron Maiden). Oh, and in down-the-line metal a lot of death and sex and swaggering boastfulness: we are all Zeus or Hercules, raping swans and whatnot, then going down to the underworld. Funny. Long hair: there’s a bit of cock-of-the-walk about it too. But also mirroring, narcissistic: feminised, so we don’t need women: we’ll wear the tight trousers, mate, and the long hair; listening to music women could never like, unless there is something wrong with them; members of an enthusiastic cult of hand gestures and arcane bits of knowledge about what David Coverdale did with Jimmy Page (answer: an album, oddly, and one that no one listens to).

It’s an odd way to grow old. I feel a bit sorry for Page, Plant, Blackmore, Gillan and all the rest of them, especially the less intellectual ones, the ones who have to stay on the bewildered level of reality where it is still 1972. Why do they all die wearing a young man’s hair: why did Jeff Beck in 2022 look like Yorick blessed with 1972 coiffure?

I say that Osbourne’s photographs show him grimacing: well, half of them do. The other half reveal him a bit bewildered, as if he actually was a plumber (his original aspiration) somewhat out of his depth. I think half of our memory of Osbourne is bewilderment: on the reality television show The Osbournes, but also, probably, after biting the head off a bat. It sounds like heavy metal grimace, that episode, but was probably more Brummie bewilderment (“It’s not plastic!” said the plumber as he chawed through batspine for the first time), plus the rabies jab. Otherwise the whole story is a bit like that of Brian Wilson: a five-hit wonder hits the drugs, and becomes a nostalgia act of himself, down to that oddly pre-sepulchral concert they had three weeks ago in Aston, where assembled Heavy Metal royalty came, like the plebeians in Coriolanus, and grimaced and looked bewildered for the sake of the Temple of Rock ‘n’ Roll and its Most Holy, the Hallowed Hall of Heavy Metal.

James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.