Trivia / Ozzy Osbourne

• Banned in China: He was banned from performing in San Antonio because drunkenly pissing on the Alamo memorial next to the actual house while you're wearing your wife's clothes is ill-advised. Thankfully it only lasted a decade.
• Black Sheep Hit: "Close My Eyes Forever", "Mama, I'm Coming Home" (co-written by Lemmy!) and his duet with his daughter in his version of "Changes", his only #1 single.
• Colbert Bump: "Crazy Train" got a big one when it was used in promos for Infinity Train.
• Creative Differences:
  • By the end, Randy Rhoads was sick of Ozzy's out-of-control drinking and drug usage, mercurial moods, and frequent show cancellations because he was too badly hungover from the night before, and his plan was to fulfill his contract and then leave the band and go back to school to pursue getting a degree in music. Ozzy has expressed great regret and taken full responsibility for his generally poor treatment of Rhoads and has made it clear that he doesn't blame him one bit for wanting out.
  • This happened with Jake E Lee as he was ultimately getting tired of Sharon trying to get him to sign a contract that essentially have singing away any and all royalties of any songwriting credits he had, this eventually resulted in him being let go.
  • He fired Zakk Wylde because he felt that Zakk's songwriting was beginning to make his songs sound like Black Label Society and Ozzy wasn't too happy about that. This prompted him to fire Zakk, albeit on friendly terms.
  • Ozzy's also said this is why he's never worked with Rick Rubin. Rubin wanted to make a heavier, Sabbathy album while Ozzy wants to get away from that. This was also part of the wedge between Ozzy and Sabbath. Ozzy just wanted to make straight-up rock music while Sabbath were experimenting with jazz and strings. Hilariously enough, Rubin is the producer on Black Sabbath's 13, which along with being the first with Ozzy since 1978 was a throwback to the band's debut album. One imagines Ozzy calling Rubin up and going "Today's your lucky day."
• Creator Backlash:
  • Ozzy has expressed regret over how The Ultimate Sin turned out, feeling that his producer at the time (Ron Nevison) was phoning it in, and that the songs on the album wound up sounding too same-y. He has even said that his disappointment with the finished album was part of what led to him going in a heavier direction with its follow-up No Rest For The Wicked.
  • Ozzy has always despised the live album "Speak of the Devil" ("Talk of the Devil" in the UK) as it was only done out of contractual obligation to fulfill the record deal the band had with Don Arden at the time. Ozzy notably refused to put any live performances featuring Randy Rhoads on the album as he didn't want people to think he was cashing in on his death (especially since Rhoads was the one who was most vocally opposed to the idea of doing a live album of Black Sabbath covers, seeing it as a blatant and soulless cash grab).
  • Ozzy doesn't like to talk about his years with Jake E. Lee on guitar, but not because of the music: it was a dark period in his life, due to heavy drug abuse even by his standards, the death of Randy Rhoads, the media circus around him, and an awful haircut.
• Creator Breakdown: Had one coupled with a Heroic BSoD when his heterosexual life partner Randy Rhoads died in a plane crash. He shaved his head to avoid going on stage (his wife/manager made him go on anyway wearing a wig, which he incorporated into the show by rigging it with blood packs to make it appear as if he was tearing out his own hair) and eventually tried to kill himself. Obviously, he failed.
• Creator Recovery: Conversely, Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman were the first time in years that he was having fun doing music, while No More Tears was made when Ozzy was finally able to move past the controversy and personal strife he experienced in the 1980s.
• Creator Couple: Ozzy and his wife Sharon.
• Dye Hard: He used to dye his hair. In the 70s his hair was his natural brown. In the 80s he dyed it blonde. Back to brown for the 90s, then when The Osbournes surfaced in 2002 he'd dyed it black with red streaks. It's brown as of 2010, and the change is visible in the pictures of him on the covers of albums he released since then.
• False Credit: On Diary of a Madman, then-current bassist and drummer Rudy Sarzo and Tommy Aldridge were credited in place of Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake, who had departed the band by that point. Later releases credit Daisley and Kerslake.
• Important Haircut: After Randy Rhoads’ passing, in 1983 Ozzy had decided to cut his long locks and had dramatically short hair that looked like a long haired military buzzcut.
• I Was Quite a Looker: He was an example of the trope during his 20’s when he worked with Black Sabbath.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The original version of The Ultimate Sin has been out of print since 1995. No official reason for this has been given, but it's widely believed that it's due to an unresolved legal struggle between Ozzy Osburne and songwriter Phil Soussan over the rights to the song "Shot in the Dark"(and Soussan had apparently stolen the song himself from his former band without their permission further complicating things) The song and album were later made available for both digital download and on streaming services, though physical copies are still scarce.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Ozzy made a special cameo appearance in the heavy metal horror movie Trick or Treat as a prim and proper crusading reverend decrying the horrors of rock music.
  • He also contributed lead vocals to the dance-pop song "Shake Your Head" by Was (Not Was) alongside Kim Basinger.
• The Red Stapler: Randy Rhoads' use of a 1974 white (which aged to a creamy yellow) Gibson Les Paul Custom has resulted in prices for said instruments being higher than most other Les Pauls of the era, which are generally looked down on as inferior instruments to earlier and later eras.
• Throw It In!: "No More Tears" spawned from a bass riff that Mike Inez would play during practice sessions.
• Short-Lived, Big Impact: Randy Rhoads was definitely this during his time with Ozzy. Despite only two albums with Ozzy before his plane crash death in 1982, he has been a huge influence on subsequent generations of guitarists.
• So My Kids Can Watch: Specifically for a role in Nick Jr.'s Bubble Guppies.
• Troubled Production: He suggested in a 1983 interview that "S.A.T.O." from Diary of a Madman, fit this trope. Late in the sessions, he and his band were given, he says, two weeks to get that song in shape, "or else it's going out as is", implying that it was in no condition for release at that time. "We did what we could to fix it," he says, and judging from the lack of negative reaction to it he believed that they had succeeded, "although there's a point about halfway through where the track level drops noticeably. Nobody else seems to notice, but I always cringe every time I hear it."
• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally the lineup on his first solo record was gonna be a new band named "The Blizzard of Ozz". Label interference changed those plans however, and it ended up becoming the first album's title (minus the article).
    • "You Know..." from Down to Earth was only shown one part, but a second part was probably done during the recording process, but might’ve been left unfinished, or not done due to time constraints, or other reasons. The only part of the song had a depressing tone, and a sad acoustic guitar, with lyrics like “Tried to be your father, things just made it harder, sorry if I made you cry”, but the second part might’ve explained how the depressing acoustic guitars and static TV noises’ appearance.
    • Down to Earth was also to have collaborations with Dave Grohl, but given his demos earned no response, he instead repurposed them to his project Probot, sending them to King Diamond and Eric Wagner.
    • Weezer's Rivers Cuomo was also asked for song ideas for Down To Earth and offered Ozzy "Hash Pipe", a song that had been performed live by Weezer but hadn't been officially released yet. He too got no response, so Weezer ended up recording the song after all and making it the lead single for Weezer (The Green Album).
  • Prior to Osbourne's appearances in World of Warcraft and Guitar Hero, he was slated to appear in the Dark Fantasy combat flight sim Ozzy's Dark Skies by one-time developer iROCK Interactive, which was to feature his likeness and music both from his stint with Black Sabbath and his solo career. However, licensing issues and other related complications such as the impact of 9/11 on the entertainment industry according to an article forced the developer to drop the tie-in with Ozzy and release the game as Savage Skies.
  • Ozzy wanted to include a Cover Version of Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" on Under Cover, citing it as his favorite song of all time - he was advised against it because Zakk Wylde's Black Label Society had just covered the same song a year earlier.

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