The Tapes Archive

Steve Rosen: How did the whole, I mean the concept of “Black Sabbath” derive out of jazz-blues band?

Ozzy Osbourne: You know, it just sort of, you know, just, I used to go to school with Tony, and I used to, I was working in a semi-professional group, and we just sort of met and formed, and we chose Black Sabbath as a name, and that was it, you know.

Steve Rosen: How long had you been playing in the jazz and blues ’cause the first album was certainly not jazz and blues?

Ozzy Osbourne: About a year.

Steve Rosen: But how’d the first album evolve out of that?

Ozzy Osbourne: Well, we just thought that, We tried to put music over in a different angle, and the music sounded, you know, it sort of like it’s an evilly sound, you know? It’s a heavy doomy sound.

Steve Rosen: Why do you think people latched onto that?

Ozzy Osbourne: I haven’t got a clue.

Steve Rosen: An antagonistic type music.

Ozzy Osbourne: I really haven’t got, I haven’t got a clue, no.

Steve Rosen: You just don’t know.

Ozzy Osbourne: I don’t really know because I’m in it, you know? I can’t see to say what it’s like to, as the people because I play it. I don’t listen to it as such, I make the music, I don’t listen to it. They do. They either get off or don’t get off.

Steve Rosen: Do you think, I mean when you first started do you think that people thought offstage you were…

Ozzy Osbourne: Oh yeah we used to all this bullshit thrown.

Steve Rosen: Right. It’s about witches and freaks phoning us asking us to play at Black Masses.

Steve Rosen: That one’s clear. You’re probably one of the few bands that stayed together. I mean, for over two or three years.

Ozzy Osbourne: Yeah, well we started as we are now. We still carry on with us As long as we playing together, we haven’t never had any sort of ego battles in the band, you know? Nobody’s sort of down on anybody else. Sort of band of guys together.

Steve Rosen: Yeah, that’s what’s causing the bands to break up?

Ozzy Osbourne: I think that’s a lot of it, and a lot of it’s over work as well. Like, we’ve just come back now after laying up for almost over a year. But the reason why we needing laying up is because we needed a rest. We’ve never had time to sit back at home and think about things.

Steve Rosen: You find yourself playing any kind of a Pied piper on stage? When I first started working, I think a lot of people were really turned onto Ozzy Osborne once you said and what you did.

Ozzy Osbourne: I don’t really know. All I go at these days, I, I I go and I like to feel that people, I like to try and put over. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m playing an honest gig, you know? I like people, I like people to get loose. I like to see people enjoying themselves and I don’t like to see people get hurt. I, I like people to, it turns me on, you know? And the more they go, the more I feel. I’m like, I’m like, it builds and builds, you know just carry them, you know, going and going.

Steve Rosen: I heard you talking like last night and you were talking about the money aspects of it. I mean, you said you really don’t care about the money.

Ozzy Osbourne: I, I do and I don’t because like, I don’t, I never I never go out and think about the bread we’re making all I wanna see is that all I wanna go and see is the kids there and enjoying what I’m playing to them. I don’t I don’t go on stage thinking, my, I earned $5, $10 you can’t count them as you go along. I don’t wanna know, man. It’s, it’s not, I’m not in it for that. I’m init to turn people on, you know and I’ll do as best, best way I can. You know? for years I was bumming around for fucking nothing man. I got screwed out of a lot of money from time to time in previous other ventures I’ve done before the band, I’d always been ripped off by people in the past and, and I think well fucking hell if that’s where it’s at then I don’t want I don’t want know it. All I wanna do is be able to have a comfortable life feed my kids, feed my wife, and put a roof over their heads and make sure my kids have a good, good upbringing. You know, a good upbringing. Whereas like my parents give me as best one as I could but like I can just give them that a bit more, you know?

Steve Rosen: Do you think of new album that that Sabbath is going in really different direction?

Ozzy Osbourne: I think. Well what you mean in what way?

Steve Rosen: I mean, yeah, I think

Ozzy Osbourne: I think it’s going in a better direction. Yeah. It’s definitely going to a better direction. You never sort of, when you, when you start to record and writing album, you never sort of sit down and say well we’ll put it in this way or we just sort of sit down and sort of, it just happens. It’s just born, you know you never know what it’s gonna turn out like. It’s just, it’s just something. It’s born and it’s there, you know? I think this last album well is the best one we’ve ever done. If this is anything to go by, I’m, I’m I can’t wait to the next album or the next one or the next one, but one, you know, it’s just incredible. I couldn’t, I can’t believe it, man.

Steve Rosen: It’s almost like, it’s almost like the Black Sabbath album, but yet it is.

Ozzy Osbourne: Yeah, I think it’s, it shocked a lot of people. It shocked me. Shocked the shit outta me. Didn’t it.

Steve Rosen: Was there something that I mean that just, that caused it?

Ozzy Osbourne: I just don’t know. I haven’t got a clue.

Steve Rosen: That’s what I was gonna ask you about that. What happened?

Ozzy Osbourne: We just got stoned all the time We couldn’t sort of, we couldn’t think ’cause we’d got Vol.4 together out in LA and we thought that, but being away from home made us work more and get into it more but it was just like a party each time. It kept getting harder, just crazy all the time.

Steve Rosen: Whose idea was to, I mean, to add the strings and bagpipes?

Ozzy Osbourne: Well, we just, we just try, try. Well fuck it. I’m gonna try everything. We, we try anything and everything. If it’s good, it’s good. If it’s not good, it’s bad. You won’t use it. Try try anything once because not with a record. I’ll believe that you’re putting out a product. A product, you know.

Steve Rosen: Was any of the band, I mean, did they, any of them ever study or read about Black Magic that at all?

Ozzy Osbourne: No. No.

Steve Rosen: I mean it was just, it was just a concept.

Ozzy Osbourne: Yeah. That it’s like anything. It’s like we got sick and tired of hearing all the bullshit you love your brother and flower power forever and mating with a chick on the corner you’re hung up on it all which is all a fallacy in a dream We, we brought things down to reality, you know we brought our songs real, a real a real thing behind it, you know, which I think people want at the time people must have been wanting to hear something real for a change. A lot of people were probably said our music’s probably the most easiest music in the world to understand. But we don’t, we don’t go out to say that we’re the best musical or you know technical band in the world. You know? Just sort of ordinary backstreet guys who learn to play couple learn to play guitars and sung them and drums and we’re just making a, a sound, which, which is just free sort of suburban rock if you like, slum Rock, you know I dunno what you can call it. There’s been so many different bags of been put into, you know, and instead like parts of our environment evolved, our minds, you know? It was always sort of beg and borrow, sort of trip all your life, you know, always, you know you always wanted something fulfillment. You always really wanted something badly. You always was in need of something you feel

Steve Rosen: Do you feel fulfilled with Black Sabbath at this point?

Ozzy Osbourne: I think it’s tremendous right now. I love this, I know I’ve got no desires. There’s a rumor going on that the band was splitting. I don’t know anything about that rumor, but it’s, it’s a fraud, because the band nows stronger and more together than ever. You know? I love the guys, you know, I’d do anything for them.

Steve Rosen: you’re making your own solo album?

Ozzy Osbourne: I I’m, I’m not, it’s not definite. I I I have it in mind. I wrote a few things. I, I wrote the basis to track of “Who are you” on this synthesizer on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and, it was a heavy trip and and we decided to put it on the album. But it is gonna be similar to that trip. You know?

Steve Rosen: Rick Wakeman kind of? 

Ozzy Osbourne: No, no, I just did that myself. He didn’t, it didn’t do that. “Who are you” he did “Sabbra Cadabra” We did it on “Who are you?” 

Steve Rosen: I I think that’s in the album also. the fact like you produce yourself and I guess, well, recording quality of it.

Ozzy Osbourne: We, we never, we never had, we never had the chance to get into the technical side of it before, you know because we were working all the time.

Steve Rosen: Are you, are you satisfied with the result? It is a long process when you produce your own album.

Ozzy Osbourne: Oh, it’s a drag, it is at the end of it, you’re thinking, fuck it man, let’s go home.

Steve Rosen: Is it hard?

Ozzy Osbourne: Oh, it’s really hard.

Steve Rosen: Why not just bring in a producer?

Ozzy Osbourne: I don’t see how anyone can listen to my music and put it down. Tell me how my music should sound or our music should sound when he hasn’t been with the band for more than a day or so.

Steve Rosen: Do you think there’s a new emphasis on lyrics in the band or in the vocals?

Ozzy Osbourne: What you mean?

Steve Rosen: I mean, the words are now as important as the music.

Ozzy Osbourne: They always have been. Always have been. And the words, and even right back to the beginning were really heavy words and they were very intense words, very personal words.

Steve Rosen: Have you found that during certain times that the band is more popular than others. Like if there’s, if if if the, if the if the country itself is kind of down I mean you kind the music, I mean to

Ozzy Osbourne: I mean to be honest with you, I I mean people are always asking me sort of really deep questions like what you’re just asking me. I honestly don’t know because I don’t sort of read the newspaper. I don’t sort of watch the news and sum up the way of the big depression cloud that’s hanging over the world today and write to it. It happens, just comes out. What can say, I don’t know.

Steve Rosen: Is the correct concern that that Sabbath has been kind of slagged by the press.

Ozzy Osbourne: Oh, you bet.

Steve Rosen: Yeah.

Ozzy Osbourne: That’s understatement of the year there. Fucking hell When have you guys ever said any good about us?

Steve Rosen: Why is that?

Ozzy Osbourne: I have, well, everybody’s got everybody’s got a scapegoat haven’t they?

Steve Rosen: Are are you working on new album?

Ozzy Osbourne: Oh yeah, we got a dynamite album at the end of the year. I, I tell you it’s a good time. It’s a really like to do a lot more mellower stuff on record, but I, I dig rockin’ on stage. I get bored on stage singing a ballad. “Fluff” And people going… Play “Iron Man” fucking hell, play Iron Man That’s all they wanna hear “Iron Man”,”Paranoid”, “War Pigs”. “Snowblind” “Sweet Leaf” and that’s it, unless they don’t.

Steve Rosen: That one album seems to have all those songs on it.

Ozzy Osbourne: I listen to that album for the first time in in a long time in the week. I thought fucking hell mate it wasn’t half bad. Was it?

Steve Rosen: You said that you’d like to get into like that, you know, mellower, stuff like that

Ozzy Osbourne: but I’m do the on my own, no, sorry, I’m do that on my own because I dig singing spacey thing, with electronics. I like to, I think it’s emptiness thing. Synthesizers, get empty, empty feeling out of it. Depth, and distance. Its like forever. You know what I mean? It’s like looking into the void and then I hear that, um, mean like that “Who are you” I wrote that in the kitchen fucking wife cooking some food, with the synthesizer on the table. third thing I’ve ever written on my own. I never played an instrument. I don’t even know what the fuck I’ve played you know Really don’t know what, what what key or chord or what what notes I’ve played a sound that’s the best of it. That’s the best of where I get it. I can sort of make a sound something other people will like, without getting into musical bits, teenager Then they start talking about we’ll play this one in F sharp or What the fuck does that mean? That means nothing to me.

Steve Rosen: Do you think that’s too much whole band?

Ozzy Osbourne: Man was born and the first thing make a sound out of something. And he liked that sound and he thought that he was good. All the rest of us went out from there. And then he started to put numbers to and that was a bit of a freak on me. So like, I need to stone wall. If I come rough, we just go make, Then you go into the jungle and hear some incredible sounds. You know? Gorillas eating people. Now seriously though you know they don’t even know what the fuck they’re saying some of the rhythms they come out with your mind’s blown Would you like to play, like, any synthesizer on stage? I do occasionally. I do occasionally. I don’t, I don’t profess to be a musician you know? I don’t know what the fuck I’m playing when I’m playing it. I, I can’t, I can’t play a piano. You only use one finger on a synthesizer. That’s my , that’s my fucking Put it on that way. One finger fucking Liberace one finger The album. If I do record an album I’m gonna call it “Am I going Insane.” I’ve written a track called “Am I going Insane”. And I, they’re always I’m always questioning me. Fucking hell man. They’re gonna lock you up one day

Steve Rosen: What is is the reason for making your album because stuff not suitable for the band? Yes. No, Really?

Ozzy Osbourne: I’m into electronics. to the electronic sound. I, you know, we, we discovered that. I like the heavy stuff. Tony loves mellow stuff. Personally playing. Geezer loves heavy but mellow combined. And Bill loves lonely stuff. He loves playing very lonely and and very sort of sad stuff, you know? And combined it must fucking clash fucking weird freak thing, you know, really heavy. I mean, it’s a really fucking weird, weird, stuff to be in, you know Tony Piano and a Mellotron It sounded like a fucking symphony. I said “fucking hell man, what’s this?”

Ozzy Osbourne: I believe like this Volume, Vol.4 was like the beginning of a new trip for us. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is like say stage two init. and we got stage three and four Vol.4 really opened their eyes you know. What, what, what, what what, what we can do what we can sort of venture into. Right. It’s like opening another door. I I could say to myself one day we’re gonna make written make the brick wall and, and like the last album I think fucking hell. The next album is going to be that much some people. It just happens if you’re writing a song there iting it

Steve Rosen: How come there aren’t I mean like more vocal with the band. Like I heard like Geezer and Bill kind of singing, you know around the table today and it sounded like they can both sing.

Ozzy Osbourne: Yeah. But you know, this one probably never really I’d love to play guitar.

Steve Rosen: You would?

Ozzy Osbourne: I’d love to play the guitar.

Steve Rosen: Have you, you taken any lessons or anything?

Ozzy Osbourne: Oh yeah, I ended up fucking busting the guy over the head with the fucking guitar. Put your right finger on the, you know. I had this one guy teaching me, he’s very good at. He told me I wonder how I can pick up the guitar and play but don’t have to go through the bullshit of learning it. You know, I, I, I want I I’m a run before I can walk, you know? Like I’m Eric Clapton before around guitar up, you know, and I’m, and I’m disappointed 

Rick Wakeman is, he’s incredible man. I love that guy. I love him. I really do. Any other guy in a world. And and it would never happen. That I hope the band never splits. But if the band ever did split. And it’s very, very fucking remote. Very remote. It never will be, you know? And it did. And I choose another guy to work with. I think I’d choose Rick. Really? He can blow anyone off the fucking stage. I think he’d wipe the floor with Keith Emerson as far as I think. Really? You think so? Oh right man. you know, he’s good naturally but he doesn’t go around broadcasting everything, you know I don’t, I mean, Keith Emerson, is a good keyboard player. I’m not disputing that fact, They’re both… It’s beyond the keyboard player Rick Wakeman the guy is just incredibly.. I, I, you know, I’m recording, he recording the same studio. He just have a drink together, chat, and be social. You forget what you, you know, he you know what he is and you are what you are you down to earth people drinking and chatting, playing darts in a bar. Love him, I do. Really, really We did a gig in Birmingham. And he was gonna come up and do a jam with us on the stage. when we did “Sabbra Cadabra”. He’d been in Tommy in London and he sent me a really nice telegram. Look most guys wouldn’t give you the time of fucking day with this stuff.

Steve Rosen: Would you like to have him on your album?

Ozzy Osbourne: I really would, yeah. I feel that it wouldn’t be me. You know? Ozzy Osborne and Rick Wakeman and it would probably go anyway on the strength of Rick Wakeman’s success on his own anyway. I digged to work with the guy I really would. But I can’t see that’s gonna happen because we both could of sort of committed to our own record companies. It’s got a big bullshit to trip get it together. [Interviewer] You mentioning down in the cafe that I mean you were on the road for so long that, I mean your little daughter didn’t, didn’t know you and stuff.

Ozzy Osbourne: It’s fucking terrible. I never want to go through that shit again

Steve Rosen: It’s not that bad now?

Ozzy Osbourne: Oh no. Me and my my kids are really together now.

Steve Rosen: and you’d never go through that again.

Ozzy Osbourne: Well, if I, if I had to, I would. I suppose I would, but I wouldn’t like it. You, you, you, you, you sort of lose complete sort of communication with everybody. You go home like a stranger. It’s like a a a distant uncle coming back from Australia make every 10 years, you know, you know what’s something , what’s that over there? You know? There’s something there and built up around you. Like while your eyes have been shut for six weeks.

Steve Rosen: Is it hard to tour the States Aside from the fact that’s its farther away

Ozzy Osbourne: the states, you can’t when this is touring America this is why I call it, the band on the road, you know? ’cause in England you can tour it in two weeks, you know, and and to do two weeks tour or three week tour in England. Like you, you’ve done everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. There’s nowhere else you can go back to.

Steve Rosen: I mean, and when you first started I mean you didn’t it was the press and, and the media that blew up Black Sabbath bigger than they were?

Ozzy Osbourne: what you mean?

Steve Rosen: I mean now that, I mean I’m I’m with you. I can see that, I mean, do this four musicians when when Black Sabbath first started, I think that people felt that Black Sabbath was something far greater than that. That it was, that it was a whole aura.

Ozzy Osbourne: I don’t understand. You mean like evil, black magic?

Steve Rosen: Yeah, I mean that, that it, it saying that music which is the vehicle of, of, of conveying all this

Ozzy Osbourne: well all music’s a vehicle to convey anything. You know, we just conveyed a different sort of, of a trip out to people. which is happening, which has happening. You know, like I would really have dug to to do the soundtrack for The Exorcist, you know I really would of got high on doing it. If ever the chance comes again to do something like that. I really would love to do it. You know? When you’re in yourself you can’t sort of, you can’t relate to it yourself. You can’t sit down and say well that’s good, that’s bad, that’s good, that’s bad. Because like some of the things I’ve thought were bad kids will go nuts over and some of the things I thought was good kids aren’t really go after. That’s you just gonna wait. You just make it, you produce it, you know

Steve Rosen: just to kind of sum it up. The impressions that I get from you is that that people have the wrong impression of Black Sabbath then.

Ozzy Osbourne: People are digging it, you know it’s getting people off, Why condemn people’s enjoyment? If we weren’t, if people weren’t buying our records and if people boo’ed us every night and if people just didn’t want know, man, then I could understand it. You know, I really could understand it. Well, eventually it might happen, you know especially everybody has their day, you know it might happen eventually. But… today now people are digging it. In the past four years, they’ve been really getting into it and it’s been helping them. I feel that I’ve helped them, somewhat, by my music. You know? If I die now… I can say, well for five years I turn people on and they enjoyed my music. If it was one or a 1 million, 2 million, 5 million I’ve made those people get enjoyment and I’ve given them something to, to to live for and get into. You know? It sounds a bit philosophical I suppose but this is the way I feel about it.