Black Sabbath fired Ozzy in 1979. I didn’t know Black Sabbath at the time. I heard the song “Iron Man” but that was it.
I liked ABBA and Journey.
1980 rolls around and Ozzy Osbourne wants revenge. They search for a guitarist and settle on Randy Rhoads, which is funny because Ozzy was completely drunk when he hired him. He had no idea he just hired a prodigy.
1980, they release Blizzard of Ozz and the next year, Diary of a Madman.
Unarguably 2 of the greatest albums ever written. Blizzard of Ozz goes 5x platinum and Diary of a Madman goes 3x platinum.
I bought both vinyl records and Ozzy Osbourne becomes my favorite band.
Unfortunately, March 26, 1982, Randy Rhoads gets in an airplane with a coked up asshole. The pilot sees his ex-wife and tries to murder her with the plane. Randy’s final moments were fighting for the controls of the plane with the pilot, saving the lives of everyone in the Ozzy Osbourne tour bus.
I didn’t appreciate Rhoads’s greatness until I picked up a guitar years later. Randy Rhoads became my favorite guitarist (it was formerly Yngwie Malmsteen) and remains my favorite guitarist to this day.
Suicide Solution
Yesterday, I listened to both Ozzy albums with Randy Rhoads in my car. The song Suicide Solution popped up and I remembered the lawsuit.
In 1985, the parents of a 19-year-old fan of Ozzy who committed suicide sued Ozzy for their son’s death. They claimed the song Suicide Solution prompted him to kill himself.
Now, I’m a Freedom of Speech absolutist. So I would have thrown this out immediately.
But let’s humor them for a moment here.
If anyone actually read the words, it’s obvious that the song is about Ozzy’s alcohol addiction. “Wine is fine but whiskey’s quicker. Suicide is slow with liquor. Take a bottle, drown your sorrows. Then it floods away tomorrows.”
That’s as clear as daylight. A lot of alcoholics are killing themselves slowly. Some knowingly. Some unknowingly (but more than likely their subconscious knows what’s happening).
It’s a warning. It’s not at all suggesting suicide.
This was the beginning of blaming music for everything. Around the same time, Tipper Gore and a bunch of other useless political wives went after some of my favorite music – Prince, Judas Priest, WASP, John Denver, Cyndi Lauper. It became silly.
Then after the whole bullshit backfired, Tipper Gore tried to gaslight us into believing that they never wanted to censor music.
I’m bringing this up because it’s important to know this stuff. I tend to hate politicians to begin with but of the ones I hate the most – the ones who want to ban things I own.