C’is Tommy Lee, the legendary drummer of Mötley Crüe, who tells. In 1984, his group was invited to share the scene with Ozzy in an American tour, Bark at the Moonlooking forAn endless day. Behind the scenes, succession of parties more crazy than the other. The Tour Bus, loaded with cocaine, speed, alcohol and groupies, stops in the most upscale hotels, Four Seasons, Ritz, Carlton, and unload a band of degenerate dressed like transvestites out of a zoo, peroxidized hair and outrageous makeup. Nikki Sixx opens the ball by the hotel swimming pool. In the midst of the good families who monitor their offspring who jump into the water, the bassist of Mötley Crüe urine on the ground and is preparing to lick the yellowish liquid. Ozzy OSBOURNE tumbles down, double and crouchs to do so in its place.
The clientele, scandalized, takes refuge in the hall, security gives off everyone. Tommy Lee takes care of accompanying Ozzy in his room, so that he rests. The 36 -year -old rock star, stuffed with cocaine and amphetamines, does not hear it, dispeling and staggering on the carpet of the room, before spreading his excrement on the walls with the gestures of an abstract painter in full creative trance. For Tommy, whose madness is no longer to prove, it is too much, he slams the door. “It’s another level of bullshit, I don’t play in the same category,” he said later in front of the documentary cameras God Bless Ozzy Osbournereleased in 2011.
For a long time, anecdotes like this fed the legend of Ozzy Osbourne, which died on Tuesday, July 22. If they had the merit of filling the stadiums during his delusional concerts throughout the decade of the 1980s when he landed as a cape, disguised as a vampire escaped from a boutique of pranks and catches, threatening to behead cats or bats with his teeth, they also helped to forget the immense inventor that he was, earlier in his career, and the major influence that his first five albums Sabbath, his first group, was on the history of rock.
“For a fucking gold watch?” »»
At the start, there is a young man, born in Aston in 1948, in the poor suburbs of a city which is already as much, Birmingham. It is in the last rank of the social scale. His father works at night at the factory to feed a family of six children who have nothing to put on, play on Lodge Road in the rubble left by the German Luftwaffe. At home, no hot water, even fewer toilets. Ozzy zone in this hopeless environment, predestined to follow in the footsteps of his father. Make the three-eight and beat the pavement in Birmingham while waiting to die, and what is still?
The young man tries his hand at the Little Larcins and has a short stay in Winson Green prison, before hearing “She Loves You” of the Beatles on the radio. Like thousands of other kids, he thinks he was dreaming of another life. At the factory, where he found a job, a colleague tells him about the happiness he feels to imagine taking his retirement after 45 years of work, a gold watch on the wrist. Ozzy said to himself: “Is that going to be that all my life for a fucking watch? He slams the door.
Industry, very little for him; The kid has his own definition of metallurgy. This is the end of the sixties, the idols are already piling up at the Saint-Pierre counter; Already the Dope is running (Brian Jones, of the Stones, in 1969, soon followed by Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix in 1970, and Jim Morrison in 1971). The CIA as well as British royalty have several agitators of this type in the crosshairs since a bunch of smashed hippies, the Manson Family, sowed terror in Laurel Canyon. The wave of a flower dream has made up its reflux, and music changes. Ozzy takes an ad in a music store, Jones and Crossland. Three types disembark at home to hear him, Geezer, Bill and Tony. The latter recognizes the troublemaker of the college. “Let’s forget, not him. Except that Ozzy has a major argument: a brand new amplifier, paid by his poor father who hopes for a return on investment. And how!
But to do what. Pop? There are already the Beatles. Rhythm’n’blues? The Rolling Stones. Hard rock? Led Zeppelin. The group repeats in a small premises of Otis Redding – what an idea – until the day when Tony is surprised to see all these people queuing in front of a horror cinema during a projection of the film The three faces of fear (Mario Bava, 1963), translated for the British public by Black Sabbath. More than a stage name, the group finds its identity here; If the public likes to be afraid in pictures so much, you might as well give them to music. Geezer Butler, the bass player, falls in black magic, readings of Dennis Wheatley and Aleister Crowley. A first composition emerges from this passion for occultism, entitled “Black Sabbath”, like the name of the group, born from a vision of Geezer of a black silhouette at the foot of his bed. At the microphone, Ozzy sings: “What stands in front of me?” A black silhouette that designates me / I quickly turn around and I start running / I discover that I am the elected official / Oh no, please, God, help me. »»
“The devil in the music»
On guitar, Tony Iommi is disabled by two fingers, like Django Reinhardt. Still the factory: the accident dates back to its years of metallurgist worker. From this constraint is born a heavy sound, rid of acute strings, only based on the most serious strings which he relaxes half aon. The chain of the three agreements follows a harmonic logic in reduced fifth called “Diabolus in Musica”; An interval of three tones which, according to a legend, was prohibited in the Middle Ages for its Satanic connotations. It is enough to extend the ear, the evocation is obvious. In the bottom, the bell tower of a church sounds, a rain then falls.
The first title of the album, also called Black Sabbath (To pronounce three times if we look for the name of the group, the album and the title), lays the foundations of a new kind, the Heavy Metal. The public already knew Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and a whole bunch of powerful training under the Hard Rock label. Black Sabbath’s first album goes further. It’s about beating an anvil with a hammer and making music. A bit as if Béla Lugosi – Count Dracula in the 1931 film – came out of her grave on a full moon evening. Nothing comparable to the music of operetta and vaudeville at the Alice Cooper. No, the eight songs are deeply tinged with black. A black outlet, a catharsis of the evils which gnawed the youth of this early 1970s.
The success is immediate. Without the help of the specialized press, which sulks these poorly fagured lugs, with less advantageous physics than the androgyny of Mick Jagger and other Robert Plant which the photographers love.
Sharon, bubbles? But I am the fucking prince of darkness, me!Ozzy Osbourne
In eight albums, Black Sabbath rose to the top of the hit-parades that they will only leave at the end of a decade loaded with scandals that it is not necessary to tell here. In 1978, after the release of a very disappointing Never Say Die“The worst album of my career, I’m ashamed,” said Ozzy, the latter gets fired from the group. His excesses were right for their creativity … of their finances. The four members of Black Sabbath being too busy with the nose in the powder, they did not notice that their managator was overwhelming in the cashier than reason.
Of course, the group continued without him. With Ronnie Dio, Glenn Hughes then Tony Martin. But it was no longer the same. Ozzy Osbourne in solo no longer, if not the deep nihilism of his texts, his definitive sentences, which have drew fifty years of career, a philosophy in which the whole contemporary metal scene has drawn: obsession with death, corneal choices and questions about God, good and evil, pleasure in pain, the choice of a more intense life.
The dark side of rock
During this flamboyant decade, what Black Sabbath initiated is a new way of composing. The classic rock patterns (couplets / choruses / verse / chorus / solo / chorus) shattered, to make way for ascending and descending phases, juxtapositions of variations that neither Beethoven nor Bach would have denied. It is not the guitarist Van Halen nor the singer of Skid Row, Sebastian Bach, who will say the opposite. Since then, heavy metal has transferred to endless sub-genres, most representative (Black Metal, Death Metal) with the most improbable (Celtic Metal, Viking Metal, etc.).
To discover
The kangaroo of the day
Answer
What would Metallica, Iron Maiden, Megadeth be, without the original darkness of Black Sabbath? It is the grace of this music that sends you to take a little tour in darkness and from which you go out more alive than ever. It is well known; See death opposite, ask the bullfighters. If rock’n’roll is a mountain, the highest peak in the world it will say it, then Led Zeppelin is the Adret – its sunniest slope – and Black Sabbath, the Ubac – the most shaded side that the rays of the star never reach. On this side, Ozzy Osbourne paved the way. May the gods of the summits be grateful to him.
Of course, there are so many escapades to tell. But there is no need to frighten children and sensitive souls. To future generations, remember that a rock singer born in a disadvantaged suburb, one day, exclaimed in front of his wife who thought to do well by dressing his scene of bright bubbles full of soap: “Sharon, bubbles? But I am the fucking prince of darkness, me! »»
