Remembering Ozzy Osbourne, with Kory Grow and Rob Harvilla

Rob Harvilla and Rolling Stone senior writer Kory Grow join Yasi to discuss Ozzy Osbourne’s bodies of work with Black Sabbath as well as solo, his incredible impact on not just music but pop culture at large, and his enduring legacy. Read Kory’s piece ‘Ozzy and Me: How I Got to Know the Real Ozzy Osbourne’, ⁠HERE⁠ CREDITS: Host: Yasi Salek Guest: Kory Grow, Rob Harvilla Producer: Rob Sundermann Audio Editor: Adrian Bridges Additional Production Supervision: Justin Sayles Theme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  If you had to pick just one album to define the 21st century so far, what would it be? I'm Cole Kushner from Dissect.

• 0:06Speaker 01

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• 0:15Speaker 00

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• 1:00Speaker 01

  Got that right.

• 1:03Speaker 03

  What's with this band, anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like, Bandplain? Never heard this band in my life. Oh, you haven't? I'd love that. Really? Why? Yeah, I love this song. Oh, I don't know that one. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. I really like this band! Whatever, I'm their biggest fan. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. Bandplain!

• 1:43Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Bandplain. I am your host, Yasi Salek. This is usually a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist. But today's episode is in memory of the one and only Ozzy Osbourne. And before you guys get excited, no, I did not learn the entire history of Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne solo in three days to give you a Bandplain. I'm so sorry. I'm only one woman, struggling against all odds to deliver. To you the best podcasting possible, but we are going to take some time because we thought it was really important to commemorate the loss of one of the greatest musicians of our time. And my guest today, you guys, I'm joined by senior writer at Rolling Stone and

• 2:24Yasi Salek?

  metal expert, honestly, Corey Groh, new father and metal expert, and also the prince, not of darkness, but the prince of winds, Robert Harvilla.

• 2:37Speaker 05

  How you doing? Corey, we need to say a few things out loud about Corey. First of all, Corey's baby is a month old or less, actually. This is the most, this is the most metal podcast appearance in podcast history. And also, I, not to be corny, I need to implore everyone listening to this to read Corey's Rolling Stone piece about interviewing Ozzy Osbourne. It's like 20 times, 20, 25 times. There are photos of Corey and Ozzy together through the years. It links to Corey's various pieces about Ozzy, about Black Sabbath. It is a genuinely heartwarming and incredible body of work, both Ozzy's and Corey's. Like, go check that out, please, everyone.

• 3:22Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 3:23Yasi Salek?

  We'll drop it in the show notes, so you guys can make sure to check it out. It is quite good.

• 3:28Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 3:29Yasi Salek?

  Okay, before we jump into the conversation, I'm just gonna do a non-band spleen style, quick TLDR bullet point history of John Michael Osborne, born December 3rd, 1948, in Birmingham, heard the Beatles at age 14, became a massive fan of the band, credits the 1963 song She Loves You with inspiring him to become a musician. He was a rascal, got into a lot of trouble, robbed a clothing store at 17. His father would not bail him out, so he spent six weeks in prison, but his father did buy him a P A system so he could pursue his dream of being a rock singer once he was let out of the huskow. And that system is in conjunction with a flyer that said Ozzy Zig Needs Gig, got him to a band with three young

• 4:14Yasi Salek?

  Birmingham musicians, bassist Geezer Butler, the drummer Bill Ward, and the guitarist Tony Iommi. That was of course Black Sabbath. Around 1978 or '9, he gets kicked out of Black Sabbath for too much drinking and drugs. He releases his first solo album a year later and then starts a very successful solo career. In 1996, he started Ozfest a year after being denied to play Lollapalooza because they said he was a dinosaur. Also won a Grammy in 1994 for the track "I Don't Want to Change the World." In 2002, the reality show The Osbournes debuts on MTV.

• 4:55Yasi Salek?

  And in 2006, Black Sabbath was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I guess I'll just start like off by asking you, Corey, like what, I mean, people can read the piece, but what were your first reactions? You know, we heard the news that Ozzy Osbourne passed away on July 22. He was 76 years old? Yeah, almost 76 and a half. How did that hit you? How did that news hit you?

• 5:22Speaker 06

  It was shock. It was a surprise. I mean, he has not been well. And I mean, everyone knew that. And I had watched the whole 10 hour livestream of the final concert.

• 5:34Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 5:35Speaker 06

  I watched it for fun. I mean, I wasn't working. I'm on paternity leave. We were still a day in the hospital then with the baby. And my wife and the baby and I all sat around our iPad and watched 10 hours of heavy metal.

• 5:48Yasi Salek?

  I need to point out to you guys that this was also on UK time, which means it was like the middle of the night.

• 5:55Speaker 05

  Doesn't matter to babies, dude. It's perfect for baby time.

• 5:58Speaker 06

  There's no, yeah, time, time, time doesn't exist anymore.

• 6:01Yasi Salek?

  I think that's a great jumping off point to talk about that incredible concert. I did, I did not stay up and watch all 10 hours. What about you, Rob?

• 6:10Speaker 05

  I did not know. I am no longer on baby time. I'm on toddler time, which is slightly different. Am I correct in saying that that's not, that's going to end up streaming like on demand, but it is not currently streaming? Like you had to watch it in real time or it's, it doesn't exist yet otherwise? Okay, that's what I thought.

• 6:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was, they're, they're going to be releasing, I think, a condensed version of it in theaters. It's not going to be 10 hours.

• 6:34Speaker 05

  It's going to be the brutalist, but Ozzy Osbourne instead in 10 hours.

• 6:40Yasi Salek?

  Make it 10 hours, you cowards.

• 6:41Speaker 05

  I say make it 10 hours. Exactly. Desecrating his legacy. That's, that's right. The Snyder cut of the Ozzy concert. Perfect.

• 6:50Yasi Salek?

  What, Corey, to your understanding, like, what was, what was the impetus or like occasion for hosting this sort of extravaganza in celebration of Ozzy and Black Sabbath?

• 7:01Speaker 06

  Well, he had, he was kind of forced off the road. He was, he had just, just completed the Black Sabbath farewell tour, which they called The End. And a year later, he started his own farewell tour as a solo artist, cleverly titled No More Tours 2, because he had retired once before and done no more tours in 1991 and 92. And in the middle of that, I was, I was working on a story about him at the time and going to several dates of that tour. And he got a staph infection and had to cancel a bunch of dates. And then he was able to do, like a one-off Ozfest type sort of thing on New Year's Eve of 2018, I want to say. And that was his last full, real concert. He, shortly after that, slipped in the middle

• 7:46Speaker 06

  of the night and fell. And that aggravated an injury that he'd gotten in 2006 when he flipped an ATV. And so then he ended up getting like four different spinal surgeries. And then he revealed to the world that he'd had Parkinson's. And I mean, I'm not entirely sure of the timeline of when the family knew he had Parkinson's or when it became an issue. I can say that when I interviewed him in 2022 in England, he held out his hand in front of me and he says, look, the meds are working. I'm not shaking. There's Parkinson's is not an issue, is what he told me.

• 8:17Yasi Salek?

  Hmm. Wow.

• 8:19Speaker 06

  But all this is to say that they were canceling tour dates and like over and over and over again. They had all these things of, you know, I felt for him and I also felt for Judas Priest, who were the opening band for a lot of the tour dates because they, they weren't on the road because they were supposed to be with them. Anyway.

• 8:36Yasi Salek?

  Sure. Yeah.

• 8:38Speaker 06

  Ozzy couldn't perform. He put out two records that he recorded at home. I don't know. They have a home studio. I don't know if he was, what state he was in, but he sounds great on the records. And I did several interviews with him in those times and all he said over and over again was, I need to get back on stage again. I need to get back on stage. And I would talk to his friends and his bandmates and they would say, he's not ready. He really wants to do this, but we know him and you know, we're ready for you when you're ready Oz. Like, don't push yourself. So I think that they set this goal for this back to the beginning thing and just decided, look, this is, this is gonna be it. We're gonna get everybody together. I think there was a really cool choice that they made it a charity concert. It's become the most successful charity concert of all time.

• 9:22Yasi Salek?

  Take that Bob Geldof.

• 9:24Speaker 06

  That's right. And, and so they, yeah, so they did this and they just gave Ozzy his kind of last hurrah. He had done like a couple of one-off things. One of the ones that I covered in England, you know, he was still in rough shape then. Like, they had to sort of have him belted into this, this stand to stand on because he was on blood thinners at the time. And if he had fallen over, then that would have been a major medical emergency. So they, you know, obviously did the throne. I don't know if you guys watched the Rock Hall induction of Ozzy. He was seated for that too. But, you know, they're just, they're just like, let's just do this right while he sounds good and get everybody together and make it a big celebration. And he did. He sounded great and, you know,

• 10:08Speaker 06

  his voice was, was really strong. It was, it was very moving for me to watch, just not knowing he was gonna die. Nobody knew he was gonna die. But like, just seeing him there and like, you know that it's the sort of farewell. You know, it is the, you know, you can just see it in his face. Just, this is the goodbye.

• 10:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I've, I mean, I don't want to speculate too much because obviously we don't know the behind the scenes details. But like, you know, from my vantage point as a woo-woo lady, I was just really felt so touched by the fact that it almost appeared as if like, okay, like, he was able to like shuffle off this mortal coil, having completed that great show and kind of cementing the legacy and doing his favorite thing in the world one last time in this like really marvelous way. Now, I found that really touching.

• 10:58Speaker 05

  It seems beautiful and it's he sounds great. And it's startling that he sounds great, given everything that he's been through. You know, for his voice to be that preserved is is a beautiful, is a really touching thing.

• 11:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, that was the thing. It was just his, his body was against him. His body was rebelling, but he could sing. He was sharp, you know, like every time I talked to him in the last few years, he's funny. He always had me cracking up, you know, like he's witty, but when your body doesn't work, it's that's, that's depressing.

• 11:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I mean, I think the show is another good talking point to like, ask you the question because like you look at the lineup of bands that were tapped to sort of, you know, pay homage. And obviously there's a lot of metal and but there's, you know, there's also Alice in Chains. There's like various genres of artists. Do you, in your estimation, you know, as our resident metal expert, did Black Sabbath kind of invent heavy metal?

• 11:58Speaker 06

  I, I did write an article a few years ago called Heavy Metal Year One, all about the creation of their first album. There, there are many points and places where you can say that metal was begun, you know, like I remember Lester Bangs used to claim that White Light White Heat by the Velvet Underground was the first metal song, you know, people, some people say Blue Cheer, some people, you can, you can say it, but I would think that most people would agree that when you listen to the song Black Sabbath on the album Black Sabbath by the band Black Sabbath, that that is, that is undeniably heavy metal. And I think that's the one thing that everybody can agree on. So therefore I would say that that is, that is the starting point.

• 12:41Yasi Salek?

  Incredible marketing there. What a, what a mind. Really streamline that.

• 12:46Speaker 06

  The eponymity.

• 12:48Yasi Salek?

  While we're tracing the lineage of Black Sabbath, like, where do you think people would be most surprised that their, the tendrils of Black Sabbath's influence go? I mean, I already mentioned, you know, from my vantage point, and I'm obviously no Ozzy Osbourne or Black Sabbath expert, um, until I have to be for this show, but you know, So much of our grunge season referred back to Tony Iommi's drop detuning, sort of being so influential on grunge and like also so many of the bands directly. I mean, so I'll say it right now. I mean, I this, my whole job is studying bands and their influences. And like nine times out of 10, they're gonna, if they're like a guitar rock based band, they're gonna say Black Sabbath.

• 13:30Speaker 06

  Well, Alice in Chains are a metal band. They just got, where they just wore flannel.

• 13:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they, they listen, you know, they, they like, they tweaked it a bit. They freaked it.

• 13:40Speaker 06

  The Melvins were a metal punk band and Buzz Osborne is a big, big, you know, metal fan. Like it all comes from that. I mean, Kurt Cobain, he was a huge Black Sabbath fan.

• 13:51Yasi Salek?

  Totally, totally.

• 13:52Speaker 06

  I think it all stems from that. I'm reminded of when Sabbath were inducted into the Rock Hall, Lars Ulrich said, let me find the quote, because I actually have it in front of me. He said that on any given day, the heavy metal genre might well be subtitled music derivative of Black Sabbath.

• 14:09Speaker 06

  I think that's true of metal, but you know, we just published a list on Rolling Stone of just their best covers, the most surprising covers of Black Sabbath and Ozzy songs. And you know, there's the Butthole Surfers, that Charles Bradley did this incredible version of Changes, the Cardigans that, you know, the Kiss Me Band.

• 14:25Yasi Salek?

  No, do you don't have to explain cardigans to me?

• 14:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, they did Sabbath, Sabbath.

• 14:30Speaker 05

  It's really good. Iron Man, the Cardigans, Iron Man is really good. It's legit.

• 14:43Speaker 06

  And so, I mean, I think that in a way that they were metal, but they also just transcended metal. You know what I mean? I think that, you know, a lot of that also just comes down to the fact that Ozzy knew what a good melody was. He was inspired by the Beatles and Paul McCartney and, you know, he could write a catchy hook. And so that transcends any kind of genre.

• 15:02Yasi Salek?

  Can you speak a little to like what it was sonically that Black Sabbath did on that first album? That was sort of minting this new sound, or at least like, you know, being one of the pioneers of this new sound that had sort of not really preexisted.

• 15:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's a, there's a kind of a raw directness to the sound of Black Sabbath. Like again, going quoting Lester Bangs again, I remember in the first, when he reviewed the first album, he called them like cream, but worse.

• 15:36Speaker 06

  And that's a great, you know, that's a great way of describing it because it's like Cream, but without all the Claptons, you know.

• 15:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that would make me want to listen to. I'm like, same.

• 15:45Speaker 06

  I know. I know. And, you know, I want to hear a worse Cream because it sounds like.

• 15:51Yasi Salek?

  Because if you think Cream is good, then likely I'll like whatever you're talking about.

• 15:56Speaker 06

  So you take Cream and you kind of reduce some of the things. You take out some of the parts and you get a song like NIB. You know what I mean? NIB, you know, you can compare to it to be like Sunshine of My Love or something like that.

• 16:20Speaker 06

  They made it simpler. They made it more direct. They made it more forceful. They made it darker. They made it heavier. I remember when I wrote the Heavy Metal Year One article, I kept on asking people, why did you all want to be heavy in 1968? What was the whole goal of heaviness? Because it wasn't just Sabbath. It was, you know, it was Cream. It was several bands, Zeppelin, obviously. And it was just this, you know, this deepness to it. Because you know, you look at a word like heavy and it means more than just a musical thing. It just means a gravity to it. And there's a gravity to Black Sabbath that you don't hear in, you know, in other music from the time.

• 16:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, totally.

• 16:58Speaker 05

  I think lyrically, it's important also that Ozzy on the first record is both the guy who sings, "My name is Lucifer, please take my hand." And he's the guy who goes, "Oh, no, no, please help me" on the song Black Sabbath, right? Like, he is both the prince of darkness and the guy victimized by the prince of darkness.

• 17:29Speaker 05

  I think key to what made that record so seismic, so influential, such a year one record is sort of the lyrical darkness, the spiritual darkness, even the cover. You know, it's such a perfect, such an eerie cover, album cover that I just think that the entire package just seemed like a new universe, even if you can point to plenty of things up to it, including the Velvet Underground that sort of fed into it. Like it had just never crystallized in this form before.

• 17:59Speaker 06

  Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And they all wore crosses because they were afraid of Satan.

• 18:04Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 18:05Yasi Salek?

  I just, I do think like something I was always struck by with Ozzy in particular is like, there's such a blend of theater, but also like, like you said, the word raw, like this really naked vulnerability that was in one package. And I think that was really compelling, at least for me, when I first came across Sabbath. Like, I love Kiss, don't get me wrong, but like, I feel like Kiss was sort of doing a more pure theater thing that was like rock and, you know, but I felt a really humanness coming off of Ozzy Osbourne. What did you guys think about that?

• 18:39Speaker 06

  I agree a hundred percent, you know, but I think, I think it's relatability, his relatability, that's what made him so famous just immediately, just the fact that he, I think, you know, I was reading Rob Sheffield's tribute to Ozzy recently, and I think he described him as like, you could just pick it, he sounded like you just picked a man off the street and gave him a microphone and said, sing over this music. And like, you know, he could have been anybody and you just hear it. And, you know, you compare that to Robert Plant, you compare that to Jack Bruce, you compare it to any of the other famous singers of the era and they, you know, sounded much more trained and much more, what's the word, like, like they, they had a plan with what they were going to sound like. Ozzy just opened up his mouth and whatever came out was, was what it was and it was perfect.

• 19:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And it's almost like, I don't want to misuse the word, but like, there was a punk spirit there, right? I mean, obviously the music is not quite, you know, the chaos of punk and we're doing Tony Iommi is, I don't want to, I want to put utmost respect on his guitar playing name, but yeah, that, what you're describing, that sort of like chaos mode, I don't want to say the word authentic is gross, but like, you know, like kind of take, take me as I am, showing up full, just like Oz mode, to me is like, that's kind of the spirit of punk also, like.

• 19:53Speaker 06

  Yeah. Paranoid's a punk song.

• 19:55Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 19:59Yasi Salek?

  Again, as someone who's not like deeply as familiar with the entire catalog, did you know Ozzy had 13 platinum albums? You know that, Corey, but did you know that, Rob? Across Sabbath and Solo? 13!

• 20:10Speaker 05

  And yet Crazy Train didn't chart. I think it was you who put down that his only, like his biggest record is the Lita Ford duet. Like Crazy Train didn't chart at all. I cannot process that information. Like, I believe you that he has 13 platinum albums, but that still undersells the ubiquity of Ozzy Osbourne. You know what I mean? Like, for such a mainstream, for such a foundational human, you know, the charts don't reflect that, even with 13 platinum albums.

• 20:47Speaker 06

  I think that says more about the mundanity of 1980 than anything else.

• 20:51Yasi Salek?

  Totally. The why people were like, "We hate it here."

• 20:57Speaker 06

  People just wanted generic music, then.

• 20:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they wanted like The Captain and Tenille. Is this sort of like a Morrissey Smith situation? In terms of the catalog of Black Sabbath and the catalog of Ozzy Solo, where like, some people are like diehard Ozzy Solo guys? And, or does everyone sort of uniformly agree that Black Sabbath is fucking Black Sabbath up here, up here, and Ozzy Solo is fantastic? But like, we defer to Black Sabbath?

• 21:24Speaker 06

  I think that the Venn diagram crosses over pretty well there. I think that Ozzy Solo was a different sound than Black Sabbath. Black Sabbath were still playing kind of slow, heavy music when Dio joined the band in 1980 with the Heaven and Hell album. Whereas Ozzy got a guitar player, Randy Rhoads, who was an absolute genius and had studied classical music and came a little bit more from the Eddie Van Halen flashy school of music.

• 21:53Yasi Salek?

  Wasn't he like, wasn't he in Rat for two seconds before he got picked up?

• 21:57Speaker 06

  He was the guitar player after Randy Rhoads. He was in Rat. I think he was in Mickey Rat, the Ooh Rat.

• 22:05Yasi Salek?

  Yes, yes. But Randy Rhoads was also in...

• 22:08Speaker 06

  The original Rat.

• 22:09Yasi Salek?

  So Randy Rhoads was also in an original...

• 22:12Speaker 06

  Randy Rhoads was in Quiet Riot.

• 22:13Yasi Salek?

  Quiet Riot, sorry. I'm sorry. Absolutely apologies to Quiet Riot and Rat, two totally different bands that I have conflated here.

• 22:21Speaker 05

  They're gonna be so mad. They're gonna be super pissed at you. Yeah, that's you'll be hearing from both of them.

• 22:27Yasi Salek?

  Okay, sorry to cut you off. Corey, please continue.

• 22:29Speaker 06

  That's okay. So, so, you know, there was a new generation of fans that discovered Ozzy because his music was slightly different and sounded more current and more in line with Van Halen and the music that Iron Maiden and Judas Priest were doing at the time, the bands that Sabbath had inspired as heavy metal bands to play faster and like, you know, more punk inspired type stuff. So he fit in with that. But I, you know, he listened to the bootlegs and the live recordings of Ozzy in the early 80s and he always played Iron Man. He always performed Children of the Grave. He always performed Paranoid. That's what he knew that that's what his fans wanted. So there is a, I think there's a big crossover there.

• 23:06Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so he was fired from Black Sabbath, right, in 1979 and then released Blizzard of Oz, which was his first solo album, just one year later. I guess I wanted to get your thoughts and Rob you too, since, you know, you're a metal man as well. Where do you guys, where do you, where, like, speculation corner, fan fiction, where do you feel like Ozzy's career could have or might have gone if he's never fired from Black Sabbath? Let's say Black Sabbath continues to march on.

• 23:35Speaker 06

  With Ozzy, you mean?

• 23:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like, do you, do you feel like he, he would have created as big of an impact on culture staying in Sabbath and that Sabbath had continued? Do you feel that they would have evolved?

• 23:50Speaker 06

  I think they already did create an impact on culture.

• 23:53Yasi Salek?

  Sure, of course.

• 23:54Speaker 06

  He's, he's a guy that's had like three, four different acts in this weird way. Sabbath's solo, Ozfest.

• 24:01Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 24:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, Osborne's TV show. He's, I don't know, I don't think there would have been Osborne's TV show if he'd stayed in Black Sabbath.

• 24:08Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 24:09Speaker 06

  But they would have continued making good records.

• 24:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but it might not have been, because, because, okay, I'm glad you brought up Ozfest, because I do think another major role that Ozzy has played, I mean, aside from just being in the band that influenced all these bands, he also like took an active role in like reaching out a hand and helping them grow, right? I mean, he took Van Halen on tour while while he was still in Black Sabbath, Motley Crue, when he went Ozzy solo, Metallica, Pantera, like, these are bands that, you know, he plucked up and and showed to an audience that worshipped him and kind of gave them a leg up in that way, right? And then Ozfest, of course, 1996 is when that launches, being put on Ozfest was a huge deal.

• 24:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, and it was a reaction to Lollapalooza rejecting him and saying he was a dinosaur. And so he says, Well, I will foster my own community. He and Sharon, obviously, we've got to give credit to Sharon Osborne, too, because she

• 25:07Yasi Salek?

  At most.

• 25:08Speaker 06

  You know, she, yeah, she led that. And she's like, You know what? We're going to make our own Ozfest. And, you know, we're going to, you know, I went to Ozfest 97. I was 16 years old. And that's still one of the greatest things I've ever been to because the lineup was just absolutely bonkers.

• 25:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and it was really great because like, I do feel like he never, I mean, he, Sharon, everyone involved in Ozfest, like, never turned their backs on these, like, like, new metal and all these things that kind of can't come in the way because you can see artists, and I won't name names, but that, like, we're like, Well, that's not metal or that's, you know, what's that wax show? You have a DJ? Get out of here. And Ozzy was always kind of like, I feel like finger on the pulse in a way.

• 25:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, they were, they were right time, right place for all of that. Absolutely. They wanted to foster the community and communities change and grow. And, you know, there's always somebody younger coming in and with a different idea. And Ozzy was open to that. Ozzy wasn't like, there's only one way, there's only one way to rock, like Sammy Hagar might say, there's no Sammy Hagar Fest.

• 26:08Yasi Salek?

  I don't think there ever will be a, I don't think there ever will be a Sammy Hagar fest respectfully.

• 26:13Speaker 05

  Cabo wabo tequila. Yeah, let's not, let's not, I don't want to go there. No disrespect to Sammy, but no.

• 26:21Speaker 06

  Love Sam.

• 26:22Yasi Salek?

  Corey, how much do you think, I mean, this is me growing up knowing about Ozzy, right? Obviously I didn't, I wasn't born with Black Sabbath record in my hand on my Walkman. The controversies, right? Like the biting the head off the bat, peeing on the Alamo. One of my faves that I just read in the dirt, the Motley Crue book, snorting ants, licking up puddles of his own urine. Like, how much of this do you feel, I don't want to say helped his fame, but like, just went above and beyond in creating this like larger than life character that went beyond the music?

• 27:04Speaker 06

  It definitely gave him a dangerous appeal that the teenage boys love. You know, it's the whole thing about, you, you put an explicit lyrics sticker on a CD and people are going to want it more, no matter how bad the actual music is.

• 27:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. You're like, that guy bit a head off a bat? I need to see what that's all about.

• 27:22Speaker 06

  Well, he bit of a head off a bat and he did it and he was, he thought it was a toy and he thought he was drunk and how cool is this guy that he doesn't even care and he did it. And it was within the middle of him throwing meat back at the audience. Like, like, wow, this guy's crazy. But let's check out and see what the crazy thing he's going to do next is, you know?

• 27:36Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Rob, was that, was that a motivating factor for young Rob Harvilla to become interested in Ozzy Osbourne?

• 27:44Speaker 05

  Oh, totally. And I think the thing that's fascinating about him is the contrast between like, everyone knows about the Alamo, everyone knows about the bat, but then like the two clips of him that I've seen most often, you know, just in the last week or so, is the clip of him in Decline of Western Civilization, Part Two, where he's making breakfast and like he's pouring orange juice and they don't like pouring orange juice all over the table. And then the clip of him meeting Paul McCartney and like basically like doing the full like Chris Farley like freak out, oh my God, it's Paul McCartney thing. Like to Paul McCartney's face, like the contrast between Ozzy Osbourne, the wild man,

• 28:24Speaker 05

  like the ur wild man, like even Motley Crue are scared of this person versus how like cuddly and delightful he was, you know, even this is pre Osbournes, like just that dichotomy, I think was so crucial. Like when he died, I thought immediately about Snoop Dogg.

• 28:41Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 28:42Speaker 05

  I was trying to think of another figure who was fundamental in their genre and who was legitimately scary to people, dangerous. You know, you think about Snoop and like, you know, Shug Knight, death row, murder was the case era, like Snoop Doggy Dogg. And you think about Snoop now, like hanging out with Martha Stewart, you know, and in every commercial and just like never losing, you know, his foundational appeal and his the edge, right? Like the, the list of people like that, the list of people who have been around so long and have been so true to themselves that they can hold on to both sides, that they can be like America's,

• 29:23Speaker 05

  like, you know, honorary, like uncle, but also still like the scary wild man, you know, from 50 years ago. Like it's, it's just, there are very few people, you know, who can do what Ozzy did. There are very few people who could start a blank fest, metal festival that like defined an entire generation of heavy music. Like who's going to do that if Ozzy doesn't do it? Like just that, all these dichotomies between how scary he legitimately was and how always like cuddly and delightful and hilarious he was. Like I just, he's just one of one in the ability to be all of those things to everyone the whole time.

• 30:02Yasi Salek?

  Okay. But be honest, when you were, you were a kid, you were afraid of him and his music and he was on the list of, of CDs that you were afraid to buy.

• 30:10Speaker 05

  He was a little frightening, but like I, something that I really appreciate about him is like Black Sabbath is 1970. You know Blizzard of Oz is 1980 and in 1990, you know, the early 90s, you know, as in the midst of Smells Like Teen Spirit, grunge everything. Like this is where he's having his biggest, you know, chart successes, you know, this is no more tears. This is close my eyes forever, running parallel to grunge to alternative rock. But being as heavy, heavier than any of that and being respected, even though he was ostensibly coming from like the hair metal universe in part that, you know, grunge supposedly wiped out.

• 30:50Speaker 05

  Like just his ability to sort of define each decade he was in from the seventies to the eighties to the nineties, two thousands, it's the Osbournes, right? Like he revolutionizes, you know, the idea of reality TV, just, just the way he moved the culture with him, you know, not in a calculated way. Or it didn't feel like that, like as you guys are saying, just by being himself, just by opening his mouth, you know, whether he's singing or talking.

• 31:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I mean, I do think you make a great point where like, I think about that a lot, whereas like many of the spawn that he yielded directly or indirectly from Black Sabbath were supplanted each decade. Like you said, the nineties came along and like all of those bands we were just talking about, Quiet Riot, Rap, Motley Crue were really shoved right over to the side. But you know, even Pavement listened to Black Sabbath, right? So like what, it's true. So like whatever, whatever he was doing, he was never lumped in. You know, I guess except by Perry Farrell and Lollapalooza, I said he was a dinosaur, but then who turned around and had Metallica play the last year and, you know, received an uproar that way.

• 32:01Yasi Salek?

  So, you know, you can't win, I guess, but I don't think he was ever lumped in with like these things that became cheesy or not in my experience anyway.

• 32:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, you mentioned, he just was relatable. He was always, he would always make a joke about himself. He was never above himself. He never was full of himself. You know, like you mentioned, the decline of Western civilization scene, you know, I know that was staged. He was in on it. He thought it was funny, you know. He stayed true to who he was, you know, that he never got lost in it. Like, I remember even talking to him a couple of years ago, and he was talking about how he thought he embarrassed himself around Eric Clapton, how Eric Clapton thought he was a jackass. And so when Eric Clapton finally agreed to play on his last record, he's like, oh, you really like me? Like Ozzy had this humility about him that kept him fresh. Like, he never, he never, he never got too big for himself.

• 32:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 32:53Speaker 06

  Meanwhile, he just got bigger and bigger.

• 32:55Yasi Salek?

  He did get fat. He did get fat.

• 32:56Speaker 06

  No. I don't think that's what he meant.

• 32:59Yasi Salek?

  I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

• 33:08Yasi Salek?

  Corey, do you feel like Ozzy's, like, solo career being sort of in conjunction with music videos becoming a thing, right? Because that's the 80s, had a great deal to do with his solo stuff taking off? I mean, you mentioned, like, you know, some other artists like Sammy Hagar. I'm not really sure that would have benefited in the same way.

• 33:31Speaker 06

  I mean, I think that they made more of a concerted effort to write singles with the music videos. You know, you look at a song like "Bark at the Moon," "Shot in the Dark," you know, "I Don't Want to Change the World." Those, those were pop singles, but they were filtered through a metal lens. So I think that that definitely helped him as a musician.

• 33:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Let me ask you, what, I know this is going to be hard, but what are your top five Ozzy records? You could include "Solo" and "Sabbath."

• 34:00Speaker 06

  Yikes. Okay, my number one Sabbath record is volume four.

• 34:07Yasi Salek?

  Sure, that's the, I believe, the correct answer, from my humble opinion, as a metal expert myself.

• 34:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, I, I, I think I saw a T-shirt once, said something to the effect of, trust the first six Black Sabbath records and nothing else. That's more than five. But we'll go with volume four. We'll go with Diary of a Madman. I have a soft spot for No More Tears, so we'll throw that in there. We'll go back to Sabbath and go with Paranoid. I mean, that's undeniable. And, well, let's do six, because I want to do three for Sabbath and three for Ozzy.

• 34:43Speaker 06

  We'll do Sabotage for Sabbath. That's sort of an underrated one. And with Ozzy, Solo. Yep, I didn't say Blizzard of Oz. We need to go with Blizzard of Oz.

• 34:54Yasi Salek?

  So that's seven?

• 34:55Speaker 05

  It's solid. It's alright.

• 34:57Yasi Salek?

  Okay, six. I'm gonna allow it. I'm gonna allow the six. That's perfect. What about you, Rob? Do you concur? Or would you like to do your own?

• 35:04Speaker 05

  I concur. I, Master of Reality, the third Black Sabbath record, I, partially, my affection for that is tied. If you haven't read the John Darniel Thirty-Three and a Third book, that is...

• 35:17Yasi Salek?

  Maybe the best one in the series.

• 35:19Speaker 05

  I think, I think it's way up there. I, I don't actually, it's weird to say, I don't want to like spoil it, like it is a fictional book, you know, which is not the norm for Thirty-Three and a Third. It's like a, it's exactly, and I, that's, I, on that, on the strength of that alone, and sort of the tenderness that John shows toward Ozzy as a whole. But I, the rest of it, yeah, I mean, Blizzard Diary, I, I, I concur with, with, with Corey otherwise, and I defer to Corey in all things.

• 35:49Yasi Salek?

  You know, in all things, in all things metal. It's Corey.

• 35:53Speaker 06

  Thank you. I appreciate that.

• 35:55Yasi Salek?

  I don't wanna flatten or minimize, you know, this like massive career into just a one hour podcast, because that's not really what we're trying to do. It just immediately struck me that on this show in particular, there would be basically, if we had to erase bands that were inspired by Black Sabbath, we'd have like three episodes left, you know?

• 36:18Speaker 05

  The Smiths would probably still be there.

• 36:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, The Smiths, Joni Mitchell, you know, like, I don't, I don't know if it's gonna be. So I was just, I just couldn't stop thinking about, like, I'm researching Motley Crue right now, and that that's placed so heavily in. And then we had done the grunge season. And like I said, you know, even indie rock bands, I think were at one time, young boys in the seventies and eighties who were like, this shit is fucking rips. Who is immune to the charms of Black Sabbath?

• 36:50Speaker 06

  This person is not immune to the charms, but I got a kick out of recently that people were, were mad at Lady Gaga for wearing an Ozzy shirt. So I'm like, how do you do that? And I'm just like, Lady Gaga's a fan. Like, like Lady Gaga knows her Ozzy and knows her Sabbath. So like, I can't, I can't think of a genre that has, you know, Dolly Parton was, was, wrote this really, that made this really nice tribute video to Ozzy at the whole thing. Like, everybody, everybody loves Ozzy.

• 37:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I'm really tired of the people being like, you can't wear that shirt. You don't know enough about it. Like, go away.

• 37:21Speaker 05

  Name three songs.

• 37:22Speaker 06

  Gaga knows.

• 37:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 37:24Yasi Salek?

  Lady Gaga knows.

• 37:26Speaker 05

  I have, I have always wondered, and maybe Corey, you can answer this. Were you at all concerned when the Osbournes premiered, that it would flatten, you know, or sort of make a caricature of Ozzy? I don't get the impression that people, you know, huge fans even were really worried about that. But like, how did you feel when that show premiered and sort of blew up to become this huge, completely separate thing from his musical legacy?

• 37:53Speaker 06

  For me, it was weird. It was, it just, you know, I enjoyed watching it. You know, I remember like the Osbournes Cribs when, when before the Osbournes was on. And I thought that was interesting and cool. And I mean, I of course was as a fan was curious to see about the family, but it was strange to see, you know, like supermarket, like, like moms in supermarkets looking at Osbournes like on the covers.

• 38:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like my mom, my mom knows who Ozzy Osbourne is. Like my mother shouldn't know.

• 38:21Speaker 06

  My mom loves Ozzy.

• 38:22Yasi Salek?

  She loves him. My mom loves him too. My mom loves Sharon. And I'm like, Mom, name three songs. And she's like, no, go away. Go to your room.

• 38:30Speaker 06

  But it's the notion, I mean, the very idea, just celebrity outside of what he was famous for is just the notion of celebrity in general is weird. So it was just weird to see them become celebrities. But at the same time, I was happy for him and hoped that he, I hope that people actually listen to the music and don't just see him as a kind of cartoon kind of guy. Cause he played into that. That was all played up.

• 38:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it was, again, obviously they were all in on it. It wasn't against anyone's will. But like, you know, sometimes you watch old clips of that and you're kind of like, I don't love seeing like a titan of music, not just heavy metal music, music in general, reduced to sort of like a doddering, you know, like.

• 39:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 39:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Or like, kind of stuttering, you know, like, and it's, I, again, reality TV is like evil in so many ways. But you know, you're just like, oh, but again, I didn't know the man, Corey, you obviously know him the best out of the three of us. You spent enough time with him. It doesn't strike me as he's a person who gave a fuck.

• 39:36Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 39:37Yasi Salek?

  What like the people at home thought about him. But do you think he might have? Like, was there, do you think there might have been a part of him that was like?

• 39:45Speaker 06

  The only thing that he cared about was the lack of privacy and the, the, the Beatlemania style fame where he couldn't do anything anymore. I think that was a bit much for him. And that's why they put a pause on it. And he always talked about how when they started wanting to put cameras in their bathrooms, he was just like, that's it.

• 40:05Speaker 05

  Good time to get out.

• 40:06Yasi Salek?

  I think people forget that it was like the peak of celebrity culture. It was like peak paparazzi, Us Weekly, selling on at Britney. Like that was that all was in the same timeframe. And then like, you know, the poor kids got it so bad. We don't have to get into it, but like, you know, you look at that and you're like, damn, like you don't, you don't sign up for being like harassed by people about your appearance and everything when you're like a teenager that's on TV with your family.

• 40:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's hard. You know, he's got another daughter, Amy, who says she wasn't gonna do it.

• 40:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 40:41Speaker 06

  That was pretty, uh, pretty bold and smart of her.

• 40:44Yasi Salek?

  Good for her, honestly. Who can resist the charms of fame? Not I.

• 40:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, but it's just crazy that the Osbournes, you know, paved the way for the Kardashians and Gene Simmons' family jewels and all that stuff, you know?

• 40:59Yasi Salek?

  Gene Simmons' family jewels.

• 41:02Speaker 05

  That title just rolled off your tongue so beautifully. That's

• 41:07Speaker 06

  Sadly, yeah.

• 41:08Speaker 05

  Oh, Gene. Poor Gene.

• 41:11Yasi Salek?

  I think, and this is like, maybe I'm just putting on my feminist hat, but like another part of Ozzy's legacy, at least to me as a woman who has repeatedly studied metal bands and hair metal bands at this point, it's like, oh, you were just a wife guy twice, you know, like, and again, I don't know, I don't know what he got up to in his free time, and that's none of my business. But you know, like, you see all these other examples and it's like, they got really famous and partied and had like 20 Playboy model girlfriends or married one after another.

• 41:49Yasi Salek?

  And it was just like a different vibe. And, you know, Ozzy seemed kind of like built different. Again, this is just for my, nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors, but like, that always endeared me to him as well. Cause like, you know, you're the prince of darkness. You're one of the most famous men in rock. You can do whatever you want. And like, what he wanted was to be married to his first wife and then to be married to Sharon Osbourne until he died.

• 42:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, you read the first interview that he did in Rolling Stone in like 1970 and they're talking about how he just can't bear to be away from Thelma, his first wife. I was just mad about her. Like Bill Ward was talking about that and how, you know, deeply in love he was. And obviously then, you know, that didn't work out for many reasons. And then he met Sharon and, you know, even in recent years, you know, just speaking with both of them, you you felt a real love between the two of them. There was the deep understanding between the two of them. It's great. And it's it's heartwarming, you know. And I think they were both determined to make it work.

• 42:51Yasi Salek?

  I can't believe we didn't even talk about WrestleMania.

• 42:56Speaker 06

  Captain Lou Albana.

• 42:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, as we're, there's just, there's so much. There's so much to talk about. Okay, this is an impossible question that I think we can wrap up the episode with. Also, I didn't even mention he has a Grammy, whatever. We don't need to, we don't, there's too many things. We're, I think I have my idea of this, but like, what do you think Ozzy Osbourne, both of you, Rob and Corey, what do you think his like final defining legacy is? Like, both that, like, what do you think it is in the culture? And then maybe how do you feel if it were up to him, he would want his legacy to be remembered?

• 43:38Speaker 06

  Do you want to go first, Rob?

• 43:40Speaker 05

  I think we gotta let Corey back clean up here. So yes, I will try to go first. I just, I'm interested, reading your piece, Corey, about like, he didn't like, he wanted to call it depression rock. Do I have that right? That's what he, that's how he preferred to think.

• 43:55Speaker 06

  That's what he did call it, yeah.

• 43:56Speaker 05

  That's what he did call it. I just, the idea that Ozzy became synonymous is the word mononymous, like just Ozzy means so many different things. It, you know, it means heavy metal. It means very arguably the single record that defined, that created heavy metal. You move to the 80s and it creates, you know, part of the hair metal template, you know, you Ozfest, like again, just the idea that just saying Ozzy, you have an entire universe in your head immediately. You have all this music, you have all these, these different genres, you have all these movements, plus you have the Alamo, plus you have the bat, plus you have the TV show, just the idea that he became a genre unto himself.

• 44:40Speaker 05

  You know, and anything he did, any music he made with whoever at any stage of his career, you hear his voice and it's, it's him, it's, it's Ozzy, you're listening to Ozzy. Everybody loves Ozzy, you know, any phase of Ozzy, just I, there are so few people, you know, who can sustain that for any length of time, let alone for 50 years, 55 years, you know, from the first Black Sabbath record forward, like just the idea that you can be such a singular personality that, you know, that, that just you're, you know, he's, he's not, he's Ozzy, that's it. Anything he does is Ozzy and everyone knows what that is.

• 45:22Speaker 05

  And the vast majority of people at this point love it. Like I just, I don't think there's more than 10 people like that in the history of the world.

• 45:31Speaker 06

  I think that's great. I look at his legacy as the guy who just kept on trying, you know, like he, I've seen his house in Birmingham and Aston. It's this tiny little row house in the middle of a block. He had so many siblings. They were, you know, a working class family. He failed several jobs and then he found this band and he kept going with that. And then he got kicked out of that band and then he went solo. And then he had myriad substance abuse problems and he, he worked on those his entire life. And he got these health issues and like through it all, he had this immense success. And he never let himself get totally kicked down. And I think just on a truly personal level, he's the ultimate comeback king.

• 46:16Speaker 06

  Like there's no stopping him. As far as your question about how he would view his own legacy, you know, he didn't, he wasn't concerned with that. He, he just, he was just living his life in the present. I don't think he had any thought about it, you know, he, he leaves that up to people like you and me and the three of us here. But yeah, he, he just wanted to, he just wanted to live and survive. I mean, I, I wrote a quote he gave me one time that I was thinking about yesterday. It was just, I'm like anybody else. I just refuse to die.

• 46:48Speaker 06

  So, yeah, it's, uh, yeah, he has an incredible legacy. And I also just want to point out that he has a legacy unlike anybody I can think of as pop stars. You know, we were talking earlier about how he went through all these different phases and adapted to the times. And, you know, David Bowie popped in my head, but yeah, but David Bowie never had an Ozfest. David Bowie, you know, didn't have these giant career segments that he had. You know what I mean? You could Madonna, incredible, but she didn't, she didn't have an Ozfest either. She hasn't, you know, she could, she's still got time.

• 47:21Speaker 05

  Don't give her any ideas.

• 47:24Speaker 06

  I'd go.

• 47:25Yasi Salek?

  I would 100% go. Sign me up.

• 47:28Speaker 06

  But yeah, I mean, her last tour was incredible. But yeah, so like, uh, he's, he accomplished so much, just like even the way you were talking about it, Rob, just going through each bit, like he has so many legacies. He did so much that I can't think of another artist that achieved as much as he did within a time span in the same, you know, the same time, a time span in so many different ways.

• 47:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I'm like struck by how he was so influential, but also, because often people like that are sort of just that, right? It's like, I don't know how to say it, like, you know, like, we just talked about David Bowie, so influential, right? But it had all these phases, but kind of just occupied that space of music and changing, but influencing future generations, Velvet Underground, Kurt Cobain, we have all these examples of this. But not only was Ozzy so influential to music and culture, he's one of those people that has a different legacy depending on who you ask, right? He's left behind 10 legacies. And if you ask 10 different people, they'll say 10 different things. One kid will say, he introduced

• 48:31Yasi Salek?

  me to music and metal, and I've never been different. One kid's like, oh, I started a band because of him. One person like my mom will be like, he was so funny and I loved his show. Don't know dick about his music, you know? He has a million of these kind of tiny little versions of how he touched people's lives. And I think that's, like you were saying, Rob, there's only a handful of people like that in this world. And it's, you know, it's a damn shame that he's gone. Although, as much My mom tried to point out that he had done tons of drugs because she loves to point that out about people. Where she's like, but he did so many drugs. And I was like, Mom, he was 76. Like, he lived a good, long life. I mean, Mr. Keith Richards is still out there fucking, you know, terrorizing the town.

• 49:15Yasi Salek?

  Maybe drugs are good for you, actually. Don't do drugs, kids at home, don't listen to me. I'm not a medical professional.

• 49:21Yasi Salek?

  Corey, Rob, thank you so much for jumping on this emergency Celebration of Life Ozzy Osbourne Bandsplaine podcast. I really appreciated both your insights, especially you, Corey. I mean, you, you knew the man, you know his career inside out. You literally have a tiny baby at home. You are more metal than anyone.

• 49:43Speaker 05

  Extremely metal.

• 49:44Speaker 06

  Thank you very much for having me. It's great. It's great to speak with both of you and thank you for having me.

• 49:50Yasi Salek?

  Of course. And you guys, go read Corey's article, Rolling Stone, Ozzy and Me, How I Got to Know the Real Ozzy Osbourne. And come back, not next week. This was an emergency episode. Don't get excited. We'll be back in the fall with a new season of Bandsplaine.

• 50:09Yasi Salek?

  If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bandsplaine. Our guests today were Corey Groh and Rob Harvilla. This episode was produced by Rob Sunderman and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sales. Executive producers for Bandsplaine are Gina Dalvak and me, Yasi Salek. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Clavon and graciously recorded by Carlos de la Garza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, producer Dylan, AKA Dylan Tupper Rupert, and also Sean Fennessey, Michael Hardman, Casey Simonson, Robert Adler, Leah Edwards, David McTenna, Jessica Hopper, and Creation Organic Juicery.

• 50:50Yasi Salek?

  Come back in a Thursday in the fall for a new episode of Bandsplaine on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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