Credit: Daniel Zappe
Sat 5 September 2026 19:30, UK
Has there ever been a musician who’s worked with a more stellar array of guitarists than Ozzy Osbourne?
He started out his career playing with Tony Iommi, commonly referred to as one of the greatest wielders of a six-string on the planet; he wasn’t just a great musician but extremely innovative, as, when he lost the tips of his fingers working at a steel mill, rather than give up on his dream of being a guitarist, he decided to fashion new plastic fingertips and loosen his strings, a move that would eventually lead to the creation of heavy metal.
Once he left Black Sabbath and started pursuing a solo career, he wound up working with Randy Rhoads. While a lot of people consider Eddie Van Halen as the only guitarist who pioneered the unique tapping style of guitar playing, Rhoads was also showing music lovers how easily they could dance up and down the fretboard by just changing up their playing style ever so slightly.
However, out of all of these great guitarists, there was one who Ozzy Osbourne truly found himself in awe of. They didn’t perform together a whole lot, but they did team up for a track on Osbourne’s 2005 covers record, Under Cover. This was none other than Mountain guitarist Leslie West, who had a style that the ‘Prince of Darkness’ immediately became obsessed with.
The two go way back. When Black Sabbath first came over to the States in the early ‘70s, while it was clear to everyone that the rockstars from Birmingham were set to do big things, they still needed to earn their stripes. And so, rather than heading out on a headline tour right away, the band opted to support Mountain. While watching in the wings, Osbourne knew that he was witnessing greatness.
“Well, Leslie West and I, and Mountain, go back many years,” said Osbourne, “In fact, the very first American tour that Black Sabbath ever did, way back in, I think, 1971 or 1970, we opened the show [for Mountain]. I’ve had a soft spot for Leslie when he was big, when he was bad, when he was on heroin, when he was not on heroin… Mountain were, were, and still are, one of my favourite bands, and ‘Mississippi Queen’ was always one of my favourite songs.”
It wasn’t just Osbourne who felt the West’s overwhelming presence as a guitar player, either. This was an effect that the musician had on plenty of different artists, as people who would be exposed to the massive sound of Mountain would immediately be swept up in those killer riffs and layered rock.
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Ritchie Blackmore once also recalled walking into a bar in Germany and hearing ‘Mississippi Queen’ playing. He had to sit himself down in order to truly take in what he was hearing, as the guitar work of West was unlike anything else he had come across. It seems it doesn’t matter how good a guitarist you are, or how good those around you might be, there is something embedded within West’s style of playing which is infectious.
“I really loved Leslie West’s playing,” said Blackmore, “I remember being in a place in Germany, and Ian [Paice] and I were out drinking together […] In those days, you could go to a club and listen to the new records in their entirety that had just come out. Paice and I heard, ‘Mississippi Queen’, and we both went white! We were thinking, ‘Who the hell is that?!’ It had such a big sound! For three guys, it was incredibly heavy.”
