Ozzy Osbourne

Blizzard Of Ozz (40th Anniversary Expanded Digital Edition) SONY/LEGACY

After the Sabbath came the resurrection.

Ozzy felt he’d been betrayed, hung by a jury of murderers, when he was kicked out of Black Sabbath in 1979 for being out of his mind on booze and drugs. But this unexpected career change didn’t turn out so bad for him – nor, in the short term, for his former bandmates. With Ronnie James Dio, arguably the greatest heavy metal singer of them all, in place of Ozzy, Sabbath were a band reborn on Heaven And Hell, released in April 1980. And just five months later, with Blizzard Of Ozz – its title a less-thansubtle reference to one of his many drugs of choice – Ozzy came back from the dead.

Heaven And Hell was a hard act to follow, not least for a troubled soul who thought he was finished and had acted accordingly in the months after his sacking, numbing his senses in an LA hotel room, alone and depressed. But for Ozzy, salvation arrived in the formidable shape of Sharon Arden, who became his manager and later his wife. With her guidance, a new group was put together, featuring Randy Rhoads, a young American guitarist poached from LA band Quiet Riot, and two veterans in ex-Rainbow bassist Bob Daisley and ex-Uriah Heep drummer Lee Kerslake. And what they created together was the album that silenced all doubters, setting Ozzy on the path to mega-stardom.

Blizzard Of Ozz framed that unique voice in a modern, post-Sabbath context, in which Rhoads’s melodic riffing and Van Halen-inspired pyrotechnics were pivotal. In three songs that would become cornerstones of Ozzy’s career, his public image was defined: the lunatic in Crazy Train, the alcoholic in Suicide Solution, and the Prince Of Darkness in the occultreferencing Mr. Crowley. There was even room for a little sensitivity, in the brokenhearted ballad Goodbye To Romance, and Rhoads’s sweet instrumental Dee.

Marking its fortieth anniversary, the album has now been reissued on suitably garish black/red swirl vinyl, with the expanded digital version adding bonus (but previously released) material, including live tracks from the Blizzard tour and the fast-fingered Rhoads solo RR – his answer to Eddie Van Halen’s Eruption.

Sadly, Blizzard Of Ozz and the following year’s follow-up, Diary Of A Madman (both multi-platinum sellers) were all that came from this band, with its powerful chemistry, before Daisley and Kerslake were dismissed in 1981, and Rhoads was killed in a plane crash a year later. They remain the best albums that Ozzy ever made outside of Black Sabbath. ■■■■■■■■■■