Expelled from Black Sabbath in April 1979, Ozzy Osbourne had everything to prove as a solo artist. MOJO’s James McNair, then a teenage metal fan, was there to witness his first official solo show with new band Blizzard Of Ozz...
September 12, 1980 and Carl Orff’s demonic O Fortuna rings out across the Glasgow Apollo. It’s Ozzy Osbourne’s intro tape, musical shorthand for 'Enter, Prince Of Darkness…'
It hasn’t been that long since Ozzy holed up at West Hollywood’s Le Parc Hotel for a debauched three-month bender trollleyed on cocaine, Guinness and Cointreau to obliterate the pain of being kicked out of Black Sabbath. His career appeared to be toast and his first marriage was kaput, but now his new manager and girlfriend Sharon Osbourne – and a Californian guitar wunderkind named Randy Rhoads – have brought him back from the brink.
“Go fucking crazy!”, Ozzy roars as he and his new band launch into I Don’t Know. This not-yet-writer and 3,499 other Glaswegian metallers respond accordingly.
All flashes of teeth and manic hand-clapping, the singer cavorts in a white shirt with fringing under its arms. For £3.50 we’re witnessing The Second Coming Of Ozzy; his first official gig with Blizzard Of Ozz. Save for two Sabbath songs – Iron Man and Children of The Grave – Blizzard’s relatively short set is drawn from their self-titled debut, released that same day.
Thanks to hard-rock oracle Tommy Vance’s BBC Radio 1 slot The Friday Rock Show, we’ve heard flagship single Crazy Train, and now we’re heeding Ozzy’s deranged-sounding “All Aboard!” invite. He is nothing if not inclusive.
Randy Rhoads, it transpires, knows exactly how to take the harmonic seeds and inherent doom of Tony Iommi’s playing and make them his own via hyper-melodic, neo-classical shredding. Ozzy loves what Rhoads is bringing, covets him, and at the Apollo he easily lifts the petite, handsome kid with the Mick Ronson feather-cut as though he were a trophy – which, in fact, he is.
Drummer Lee Kerslake (Uriah Heep) and bassist Bob Daisley (Rainbow) are the seasoned rhythm section pros, the foundation upon which Osbourne and Rhoads’ bravura performance builds a bridge between Ozzy’s legacy with Sabbath and the post-Van Halen world of heavy metal fireworks. Sabbath’s erstwhile frontman is shedding skins, embracing the ‘80s.
Even if Ozzy succeeds in getting inked Scots bikers to sway to it, Blizzard…’s dud, momentum-sapping ballad Goodbye To Romance doesn’t fly. After that, though, we see Ozzy’s confidence grow song by song. His critique of magick, Mr. Crowley, and his epic anti-war anthem (Revelation) Mother Earth prove particularly powerful live. Although we don’t yet know it, Rhoads and Daisley’s masterful arrangements will provide a blueprint for Ozzy’s solo career which will last another 45 years.
The bat. The dove. Pissing on The Alamo. Rhoads’s tragic death aged 25. The Osbournes, Ozzfest, and Ozzy’s status as a magnet and petri dish for successive generations of guitar talent. Like his quad bike crash and the final cruel ambush of Parkinson’s, all of these things were still ahead of Ozzy that night in Glasgow. He was 31, still more singer than caricature, and it was wonderful to see him perform before the static of so much accrued incident obscured his gift.
“Do you remember Ozzy kissing The Apollo stage?”, Sharon Osbourne asked me years later when I told her I was there. I didn’t remember it and still don’t, but the idea of Ozzy doing so rings true. Given his difficult upbringing, Ozzy’s treasured relationship with his audience was perhaps about acceptance, about coming home and finding his place in the world. From the Glasgow Apollo to his final show Villa Park in Aston, Birmingham, he did so with great stoicism and energy, his thirst for performance unquenchable to the end.
Photo: Watal Asanuma/Shinko Music/Getty Images