Posts Tagged ‘ozzy osbourne’

Ozzy Osbourne, The Madman

The life of John Michael Osbourne, better known as Ozzy, stands also for the many urban legends that gravitated around his myth. Among these, probably the most famous took place in January 1982 when, right in the middle of a live exibition in Des Moines (Iowa), a spectator threw on stage a  bat, stunned but still alive: The Madman picked it up, probably thinking that it was a rubber toyand cut off its head biting.

In the following days spread the news of the death of the singer: the funerals were held, which attended by over 10,000 fans, and the function ended in a live concert to the delight and the surprise of the onlookers.

The gloomy incident served as inspiration for the cover of Speak of the Devil, released the same year, the first live album of his acclaimed solo career, which portrays the singer with his mouth bloodied and a bat over his head.

After that episode that helped to strengthen his more than eccentric image, Ozzy was the protagonist of a similar gesture during a meeting with CBS. On that occasion the sacrificial victim was a dove that the singer would have to leave in the air as a sign of peace, but instead beheaded with a bite.

The trademark has remained indelible so that the title of the tribute album dedicated to him in 2000 was “Bat Head Soup”.

Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath, 1970

They have always refused to be satanists but the way these four guys from Birmingham presented themselves to the public in 1970 branded them with a label that still survives after 40 years. Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Bill Ward and Geezer Butler, owe their name to the intuition of the latter, who was passionate about black magic and horror, and realized how people were attracted by the theme of the occult.

Black Sabbath, the opening track of the debut album, Black Sabbath, by the eponymous band: formally it’s a curious and macabre triad strengthened in these aspects by a text focusing on a mysterious “chosen one” that during the Apocalypse remains completely paralyzed in front of the vision of Satan, but especially enhanced by the guitar riff that takes the “Devil’s Triad,” a tritone very famous and widely known since the times of the Middle Ages as the “diabolus in musica”. The sequence of notes (MI – F # – DO) with which Tony Iommi introduces the song was considered very difficult to perform and for this reason it was thought that those who had been able to reproduce it, they would evoke the devil. In addition to the technical problems that  the performance involves, satanic aura that surrounds is reinforced by the fact that the “diabolus in musica” is one of the most famous hearing illusions: the cyclical repetition of two fundamental notes separated by a tritone (equivalent to half an octave), causes confusion also in the skilled players as it becomes impossible to determine whether the sequence is ascending or descending order.

Black Sabbath riff