It is a compliment to the formative power of Black Sabbath, rather than a degradation of its golden-era frontman, to note that Ozzy Osbourne was arguably the least significant part of the band’s sound. After all, the band’s sonic innovation was first and foremost the product of Tony Iommi’s detuned guitar riffage and Bill Ward’s evolutionary step from the violent, powerful drumming of Ginger Baker or Carmine Appice, and the band’s lyrics, which provided the template for the next fifty-five years of heavy metal, came primarily from bassist Geezer Butler.
Ozzy Osbourne delivered some powerhouse vocal performances, from the terrified wail of “War Pigs” to his haunted solo comeback single “No More Tears”, though his range was somewhat limited. But dismissing Ozzy on pure technical merit would completely miss out on the things that made him a genuine rock legend. There is a reason that the eight Black Sabbath albums from Ozzy’s original run with the band produced a considerably more robust musical legacy than those performed with Ronnie James Dio—a heavy metal legend in his own right, or any of the various Deep Purple-adjacent temporary vocalists that filled in during an era where Sabbath was irrelevant and Osbourne remained an MTV star. There is a reason it was Ozzy—not Robert Plant, not Ian Gillan, not even David Lee Roth—who commanded an early-aughts cultural comeback that made the fifty-something metal legend a genuinely topical reference point when I was in middle school.
Ozzy had a nearly unprecedented eye and ear for elite musical talent and he surrounded himself with that talent. In sports parlance, he was a glue guy—the kind of team player who could be the star but was also perfectly content to acquiesce when it was time for others to shine. Consider that after a decade sharing the spotlight with Tony Iommi, Osbourne finally got a chance to capture the spotlight for himself, and instead, his first (and most famous) solo single, “Crazy Train”, is a tour-de-force for guitarist Randy Rhoads. Following Rhoads’s tragic passing, he brought the likes of Jake E. Lee and Zakk Wylde into the fold. Rock music, particularly rock music as anthemic and often swaggering as the kind that Ozzy made a career of producing, is not exactly a genre renowned for its humility, but it was his willingness that allowed him to become the biggest star in the genre.
More than anything, though, Ozzy Osbourne was the kind of rock star that people wanted to root for. In his early years, while Led Zeppelin and The Who marketed the bombast of Robert Plant and Roger Daltrey, Ozzy’s trademark style was straightforward and authoritative, and during their prime, Sabbath were essentially just a group of four regular-looking dudes. Even in the early 1990s, when the “rock star” archetype had fallen significantly out of fashion, iconic grunge bands like Nirvana and especially Soundgarden and Alice in Chains still loved Black Sabbath. In the mid-1990s, during a relatively thin period for commercial success, he still commanded such respect in the heavy metal community that Ozzfest, formed after Lollapalooza made the likely shortsighted decision to eschew inviting Ozzy along on their alternative rock-laden tour, became a metal mainstay. Ozzy remained in the public eye wellbeyond the age at which most rock stars of yesteryear settle for being exclusively legacy acts—“I Don’t Wanna Stop” was a legitimate rock hit at nearly sixty, and he was making guest appearances on Top 10 Post Malone hits (“Take What You Want”) in his seventies.
There are few examples of artists who are initially dismissed by critics as universally as Ozzy Osbourne who live long enough to see their reputations completely invert. You can still find reviews in Rolling Stone or NME dismissing early Black Sabbath albums as juvenile, a criticism that seems downright silly in a modern era when rock fandom is defined largely by older audiences. But the critics were wrong. Virtually any band in the rock genre owes a massive debt of gratitude to particularly the Black Sabbath era of Ozzy’s career—not only does any self-identified, self-respecting metal band to this day speak glowingly, but groups like Queens of the Stone Age are arguably still adhering to the Sabbath formula but with better equipment. And this is by no means a dig at Queens, whom I adore—this is a compliment that Josh Homme and Co. are smart enough to realize that, over a half-century later, the Black Sabbath formula still works.
Unlike, say, Gene Simmons, who has always been antagonistic towards critics who (especially early) dismissed Kiss music, Ozzy Osbourne largely existed independently of this criticism—even before he became the household name he would eventually become, Ozzy always had a rabid collection of supporters that adored him, but just as importantly, that he adored right back. When Black Sabbath was inducted, long overdue, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he did not shove it in the faces of his detractors, but rather smiled and called it an honor; I suspect he did not personally care all that much about whether some museum in Cleveland gave him a nod of approval, but he knew that this validation meant a lot of lot of his fans, and therefore it mattered to him.
Ozzy Osbourne was not heavy metal’s greatest singer; on a purely technical level, Ozzy Osbourne was not a top three Black Sabbath singer. But through his warmth and charisma, but with an honesty that kept him from ever being accused of selling out, he was, and will forever remain, the genre’s greatest and most important frontman.
