The man and the myth


December 1948 Born John Michael Osbourne in Birmingham, England.

June 1956 Sees footage of Elvis Presley on TV and thinks, "I want to be just like him, only more satanic."

Winter 1969 Forms Black Sabbath with Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward. They start out playing something called "jazz blues."

October 1978 Ozzy fired after Never Say Die comes out. It's unclear why, because Iommi was the one responsible for "Breakout."

September 1980 Ozzy saves Randy Rhoades from certain baldness in Quiet Riot. Together they produce the seminal Blizzard of Ozz.

March 1981 Fan throws bat on stage. In confusion Ozzy bites its head off.

March 19, 1981 The plane Rhoades is riding in hits the band's tour bus, rousing a sleeping Ozzy and other band members, clips a tree, and crashes into a house, killing all three passengers. Ozzy is forced to put out Speak of the Devil.

Fall 1982 Ozzy signs a fat deal with Epic Records. In confusion he bites the head off a dove.

198? Not to be outdone by his friends who are doing huge lines of cocaine, Ozzy silences a room by snorting a huge line of carpenter ants.

2000 Amid Ozzy's frequent appearances on the Howard Stern Show, it becomes apparent that Stern is not really that funny anymore.

Sept. 11, 2001 Rhoades's death starts to look a bit suspicious. What's up with that spelling anyway? Sounds kind of ... foreign. Taliban maybe?

Feb. 3 2002 Ozzy defeats the 14-point favorite St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI. No, that was the New England Patriots, sorry. Ozzy put out Down to Earth, which is a good record for somebody who's 200 years old.

March 5, 2002 The Osbournes, MTV's highest-rated show ever, debuts. Ozzy solidifies his reputation as the coolest aging rock star in history.

Mike McGuirk The madman reissues

'Blizzard of Ozz' (1980) It's tough to write about a seminal record like this. The fact is, anyone who's interested in metal has it, and if you're not interested in metal, why would you be reading this? Anyone who's got this record already knows that Randy Rhoades plays like some kind of elemental source of power (like a lightning bolt or ... fire) and that the language of '80s metal was in large part dictated by the two big tunes on here ("Crazy Train" and "Mr. Crowley"). But that doesn't even approach the way "Revelation" explodes into "Steal Away" with a shift of gears so brutally fantastic that it effectively plasters your brain against the inside of your skull and leaves Sabbath's entry of the same year, Heaven and Hell, in the dust. Then there's "Suicide Solution." Forget it.

'Diary of a Madman' (1981) Randy Rhoades continues to play with his guitar set on "stun," and Ozzy sings as if his daily routine looks like a scene out of Bad Lieutenant. Nobody sings like they're insane quite the way Ozzy does. He makes you feel kind of worried for him, like if he's not more careful, he'll get caught with the gore-covered axe in his hand. "Flying High Again" is easily the greatest song ever written about how fun it is to be high on cocaine 24 hours a day – "I can see through mountains / Watch me disappear ... It's something that I enjoy." Who doesn't wanna see through mountains, or at least think they can? Diary of a Madman is pound for pound as great as Blizzard of Ozz, with maybe a little less crunch in the production, but that just means you have to turn it up louder. Just listen to Rhoades during the middle section of "Little Dolls."

'Tribute' (1987) Rhoades's utterly pointless death in 1982 is mourned with taste and feeling in this collection of live material culled from the group's initial tours. There are some moments of flabbiness (why the drum solo?), but all is forgiven during the first 10 seconds of "Suicide Solution," which is about the heaviest sound a live band has ever produced. Ozzy is in good form, encouraging the crowd to "smoke those joints!" and generally giving the impression that he is totally unhinged. A couple of Sabbath covers and studio outtakes of Rhoades's instrumental "Dee" round out the release, but the real draw is the packaging, with tons of photos of Rhoades, liner notes written by Ozzy, and a truly moving letter from Rhoades's mother talking about how happy her son would be to know that he is remembered as a great guitarist. In the end, the reason you have this record is to have it.

'No More Tears' (1991) With No More Tears, Ozzy emerged from the "I did what?" debacle of attempting to choke his wife to death while in a blackout, and he did so with big brass balls firmly in place, evidenced by the admittedly silly return to form that is "Mr. Tinkertrain." Helped out a bit songwriting-wise by Lemmy, Ozzy delivers a lean, muscular record. The sound is effectively muddy, heavier than even Bark at the Moon (1983), and not so far from what all the flannel kids were listening to in '91, if you try to ignore Zakk Wylde's constant, shilly-shallying leads. The fact that a record this deep in his catalog is not "for acolytes only" is a testament to Ozzy's talent.