Attack! The Thrill of It All

I figured Bill Ward would be the first member of Black Sabbath to die. And, to be fair, Ronnie James Dio was the first member of Sabbath to pass on.

But that's not who I'm writing about today. Today, I'm writing about Ozzy Osbourne, the Prince of Darkness, a man whose music literally changed my life. To understand how monumental Ozzy was to me, we have to go all the way to 1980. I turned 13 that year, and there were a lot of things going pulling me in multiple directions. First, I was learning how to play guitar. My first guitar was a Yamaha acoustic that belonged to my aunt, and I wore the strings off it.

Urban Cowboy came out right before my birthday in 1980, and the cowboy craze took over the entire world. Everyone was wearing those tight ass jeans with those tight ass cowboy boots, and dreaming about line dancing over at Gilley's. I was caught right smack dab in the middle of that craze, and I hated it. Probably the only thing I liked about it was I was starting to get good enough on guitar to play in bands and my parents got me involved with a country-western band that had a really cute singer about my age who ending up being my first girlfriend.

But I HATED country music. Now, yeah, I liked Hank Williams Jr., and Waylon, and Willie, and the rest of them old rockers, because the records those guys were putting out wasn't really country music. It wasn't like Alabama and Conway Twitty, and to be 100% fucking honest, most of the soundtrack of Urban Cowboy isn't country music anyway. But I was really intrigued by rock, and I needed to figure out a way to get more of it. I'd been listening to KISS since grade school, but this new music I was hearing, groups like AC/DC, Nazareth, Triumph, and Judas Priest, it was really capturing my soul.

Before AC/DC's Back in Black released, one of the local radio stations received the album early and was doing a private listening party. Because of connections with some of the people in the band I was playing with, I got to attend this listening party. I wasn't impressed with the first side upon first listening, but when they flipped it over and "Back in Black" started playing ... oh man.

Oh man.

Hearing that song made me want to quit the country band. I couldn't because of my girlfriend, and the other guitarist was older and better than me and willing to teach me rock songs. We compromised in the band by playing Pat Benatar songs, and those songs rocked, but I longed to play something heavier. You also have to understand that the old Satanic Panic was just starting to rear its ugly head, and we were still a few years from Footloose coming along to show those crackerjack christians that rock wasn't so bad (they didn't get the message, obviously). A lot of people in my neck of the woods weren't too keen on this new rock-n-roll, this "heavy metal" they were hearing about on the news.

I soon became a fan of that radio station, the only local album rock station, which meant they played tracks from whole albums, not beholden to any kind of Top 40 lists. I would do my homework after school, practice my country songs, then listen to the radio and try to learn rock songs by ear. One night I caught a tune with a very striking sound. The lyrics were dark and deep, but this verse caught me like a bone in the throat.

Won't you help me Mr. Jesus, won't you tell me if you can?
When you see this world we live in, do you still believe in Man?
If my songs become my freedom, and my freedom turns to gold
Then I'll ask the final question, if the answer could be sold

The song, 'The Thrill of It All' from the Black Sabbath album Sabotage, shattered my desire to even listen to another country & western song again. I stayed in the band until my girlfriend broke up with me, and then I put those fucking boots in the closet and never wore them again. This was 1980, and Ozzy was already long gone from Sabbath and embarking on his very successful solo career. It would be two years later before Ozzy came to play in Beaumont with Randy Rhoads (who died a month later). But by then, for me, it was all Ozzy. I spent all my allowance money on Ozzy records and the Black Sabbath backlist. (Imagine my mom's face when I came home from the local record tour and put We Sold Our Souls For Rock and Roll on the turntable!)

I loved Ozzy because he was what every heavy metal head wanted to be: A true rock-n-roll rebel. Champion to the outcasts, the misfits, the headbangers. Even when the rednecks at school got angry because he pissed on the Alamo, I just laughed and wondered if Ozzy even knew what he had done. The rednecks wanted to string him up, but then again, these are the same mouthbreathers who don't read books, think AC/DC is a good old American band, and voted for a moron to "own the libs", whatever the fuck that means. They were definitely the people Ozzy was telling us to rebel against.

If stranded on a desert island and I could take only one band's entire catalogue with me, it would be Black Sabbath, full stop. And yeah, there's a lot there with the Dio Sabbath albums, the Ian Gillan project album, the albums with Glenn Hughes and Tony Martin on vocals, but none of them compare to Ozzy's singing. Even when his heart wasn't in it, like on the Never Say Die album, he was still better than anyone else.

The Sabotage album is especially near and dear to me. I've often said that album is the soundtrack to my life because it's so damn angry. The band was in heavy times making that record, being sued by former management and getting screwed by the record label, the only place they could vent was in the studio, and vent they did.

Just this morning, July 22, 2025, while drinking my coffee looking through social media, I thought: yep, we still have all original members of Black Sabbath. Not many bands can say that, and now Sabbath can't say it at all. I knew it wouldn't be long, but to say Ozzy's passing hit me hard is an understatement. I was at work when I found out, on my lunch break, and I had to check multiple news sources before I would even believe it was true. When I exhausted all my sources and the finality of his death was before me, I damn near broke down.

The only time I was close to Ozzy was behind a venue waiting with some friends in a band. Somehow, they'd talked the drummer of the opening band (it was Queensrÿche) to get their cassette tape demo into Ozzy's hands. Just as we decided to go grab our seats for the show, a man walked out, looked around, then motioned for Ozzy to come outside. He was wearing a bathrobe and slippers, and 100% completely sober. He told the guys in the band the music was good, but there wasn't anything he could do for them other than to tell them whoever mixed the demo needed to stay away from mixing demos. (The guy who mixed their demo rolled his eyes when they told him this, then he said Ozzy had to have been drunk or high. That guy didn't work in music much longer after that.)

I saw Ozzy in concert 4 times, with Randy Rhoads, Jake E. Lee and Zakk Wylde playing on guitar, and once with Black Sabbath, all original members including Bill Ward. Every concert is etched in my memory, especially all the crazy stunts Ozzy would pull on stage, but seeing Black Sabbath, all original members, was one of the best fucking nights of my life.

Someone else online said this one hurts more than Bowie, and damn ... yeah, it fucking hurts.

Rest in Peace Ozzy! You earned it, man!

peace&love