A PEICE OF THE OZZY OSBOURNE FAQ SHEET
After being fired from Black Sabbath, Ozzy spent three months staying in his hotel room. It was around this time that his friend Sharon Arden suggested he start a new band. Over in Los Angeles, a 23 year old guitar player named Randy Rhoads was turning heads. Born Dec. 6, 1956 in Santa Monica, Randy was with a band named Quiet Riot. He showed up at Ozzy's audition and reportedly played for just five minutes before Ozzy said he was in. With Bob Daisley on bass and Lee Kerslake on drums, they recorded an album, "Blizzard of Ozz", in England.
Ozzy then decided to tour, with his first solo concert in Glasgow, Scotland on September 12, 1980. The opening day of his first solo concert he and Sharon paced the streets nervously. Since people in Scotland usually showed up at the concert without prepaying for tickets, they had no way of knowing how many people would show up. As it turned out it was a big success. Ozzy played all of his Blizzard of Ozz album and some Sabbath songs. Eventually he broke down and cried because he realized that he could make it on his own without the other three Sabbath members with whom he had paved the road to success.
"I was beginning to feel like a mouse on wheels: Trapped," Ozzy Osbourne admits. "I'd been at it forever, it seemed, recording and touring nearly non-stop. So I took three years off. Bought a new house, spent some time with my kids. But I began to feel antsy--I had to get back."
Ozzmosis--the hard rock superstar's eleventh Epic solo album--marks the return that Ozzy (and his fans) craved. Revitalized, the rock colossus presents the most exciting music of his incendiary career. This is Ozzy, the untamed desperado we've come to know and love--the radical voice who entitled his 1986 autobiography Diary Of A Madman--offering songs that will pulverize the hard rock competition and the horde of Ozzy wannabes. Released October 24, 1995, Ozzmosis crashed into the Billboard chart at #4*--the highest-charting album of Ozzy's entire 25-year recording career.
Recorded in Paris and New York, Ozzmosis is the ultimate showcase for the musical skill of the Grammy Award winner and perennial multi-platinum seller who has fused rock heat and pop melodicism to fashion a sound that has sold nearly 21 million albums in the U.S. alone. Ozzmosis continues the grand Osbourne tradition--with a difference. "I wanted to break out of the Ozzy formula," the singer says. "For a long time, I'd been feeling inner frustrations, musically." Working with fresh writers such as Steve Vai, Mark Hudson, Jim Vallance, and Taylor Rhodes, Ozzy feels, freed him to open doors and explore new avenues.
"There are no unlockable doors/There are now unwinnable wars/There are no unrightable wrongs and no unsingable songs," Ozzy declares on "I Just Want You," the stellar cut that opens Ozzmosis. The lyrics can stand as a statement of purpose for the singer whose stature and longevity are testimony to the power of an artist who's never been afraid to take risks.
Full-out rockers, power ballads, imaginative lyrics, and pristine production by Michael Beinhorn (Soul Asylum, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgar den)--Ozzmosis reflects all sides of Ozzy Osbourne: the high-voltage vocalist who is also a First Amendment champion and an AIDS activist, the master of drama who is also a country squire and a family man, residing happily with his wife and children in an 18th-century manor in Buckinghamshire, England.
Ozzy's bandmates on Ozzmosis are all masters of full-throttle, no-holds-barred rock and roll. Zakk Wilde, the guitarist who has worked with Ozzy since 1988, contributes dazzling riffs and lighting leads. Ace L.A. session drummer Dean Castronovo joins legendary Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler to form a thundering rhythm section. Rick Wakeman, whose work with Yes pioneered progressive rock, adds keyboard elegance and urgency. Check the band's ensemble heat, especially on "Perry Mason," one of Ozzy's wittiest rockers and the new album's premiere radio and video track. Swinging first into a swaggering take on the theme music that identifies TV's most venerable attorney for the defense, the band then cuts loose with a slice of original, unadulterated rock that's as tasty as it gets.
Raw, unexpected, adventurous, Ozzmosis is rock at its most aggressive. "Michael Beinhorn worked me the hardest I've ever been worked in my life," Ozzy admits, "He saw something in me and reached in and got it."
Born December 3, 1948, in Birmingham in the bleak north of England, John "Ozzy" Osbourne was 20 years old when he formed a group called Earth. Touring extensively and developing a solid reputation, the band renamed itself Black Sabbath and released its self-titled debut album. Over the course of eight more albums featuring Ozzy as lead singer-- including Master Of Reality and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath--the band became the unchallenged kings of Seventies heavy metal.
By 1980, Ozzy had gone solo. Believing that Black Sabbath had lost its original fury, Ozzy set out in search of music that probed ever deeper into the heart of darkness. As partner in his search, Ozzy recruit ed Randy Rhoads, a guitar virtuouso who transformed heavy metal into a genre capable of both sonic explosiveness and refined technique. Before the Osbourne/Rhoads partnership, metal had been a diamond in the rough; after, it shone with multifaceted bril- liance. An early collaboration, "Crazy Train," achieved classic status and laid the groundwork for the revolutionary sounds featured on Blizzard Of Oz and Diary Of A Madman.
After Rhoad's tragic death in a 1982 plane crash, Ozzy continued their musical explorations on his own. Bark At The Moon, The Ultimate Sin, Tribute, and No Rest For The Wicked con- firmed Ozzy's pre-eminence on the hard rock scene. World tours on a mammoth scale, videos featuring the star smashing mirrors and transmogrifying into a wolf, bands that served as finishing schools for expert instrumentalists all added luster to the Osbourne legend. Just Say Ozzy, No More Tears, and the deluxe 2-CD set Live & Loud took Ozzy Osbourne into the Nineties unbeaten and unbowed. "It's when my backs against the wall," Ozzy says, "that I come out with both guns blazing."
Ozzy's ten previous solo albums were removed from production in January 1995. Now his entire Epic catalogue has been painstakingly re-mastered, utilizing 22-bit Sony SMB technology. All the original music, art, lyrics, and photos have been restored to each of the CDs.
The October release of Ozzmosis completes Ozzy Osbourne's triumphal return. His eleventh solo album is a treasure house of delights, from the deft assurance of "See You On The Other Side," with Zakk Wilde's elegant, glam-inflected guitar lines and Dean Castronovo's cunning twist on a classic Bo Diddley beat, to the gorgeous "Old L.A. Tonight," featuring Rick Wakeman's lush piano and some of Geezer Butler's most inventive fretwork.. As always, however, it's the masters voice that rules. On the standout "Tomorrow," that voice delivers a key phrase: See you tomorrow. Ozzy turns these words into both a threat and a promis e of the hard rock heaven he creates on Ozzmosis.
"Ultimately, the only thing I've ever done right in my life is make music," says Ozzy Osbourne. "I don't know anything else."
- from the Ozzy FAQ
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