(Credits: Far Out / Sony Music Entertainment)
Tue 19 August 2025 18:30, UK
Rock and roll isn’t really known for having the most cordial friendships between colleagues. There have always been bands that are trying to stomp out every other musician in their path, and while Black Sabbath were once that band, Ozzy Osbourne had a more personal vendetta against his fellow musical oddities.
Then again, Sabbath were justified in having a little bit of a chip on their shoulder in their early days. No one really understood what they were listening to when the heavy metal icons’ first album came out, and since the term “metal” wasn’t widespread, it was easy to write them off as a bunch of punks looking to scare people with disturbing music. But this was far from a dark joke that the band were trying to pull on everyone.
They had tried their hand at being a traditional blues band, but once they dropped some sinister pieces into their music, that’s when they started to find their identity. Osbourne already had a tortured spirit inside him whenever he sang, but whenever he bellowed on tracks like ‘War Pigs’ or ‘Iron Man’, people got to hear the sounds of a man that was screaming out for help from the demons that were on his trail.
But while the mainstream media were running scared from Osbourne whenever he got behind the microphone, he was far from the first person to cause a stir in the press. David Bowie was already bending gender and running into trouble, and The Velvet Underground were so taboo that they were panned during their prime, but in terms of raw weirdness, Frank Zappa was one of the few people that were almost too odd for people to properly shun.
Looking through his entire catalogue, it’s clear that Zappa had the power to make beautiful music, but his determination not to take himself that seriously was always what made him so endearing. And for as cynical as he could come off every single time he got in front of a camera, he was more than welcoming whenever he found other resident weirdos finding space on the album charts.
Zappa even considered Sabbath friends, saying that songs like ‘Supernaut’ were among his favourites, but when he welcomed the band to a party while they were on tour, Osbourne wasn’t convinced, and was willing to use brute force on him. After being invited to the party, Osbourne was ready to square up, saying, “I was going to beat him up when we got there. I thought he was taking the piss. We went up to his hotel room and he was so welcoming. He really meant it.”
None of that trademark Zappa weirdness had gone away, but there was at least a mutual respect there between the groups. Even Geezer Butler considered Zappa to be a heavy inspiration on his writing, and listening to some of the later records that he made in the 1970s, it’s hard to think that he would have come up with a riff as heavy as ‘Muffin Man’ were it not for Tony Iommi’s thunderous riffs coming first.
Then again, if there’s one thing to learn from both Sabbath and Zappa, it’s that no one really needs permission to make something that’s a little bit stranger than what ends up on the radio. The number one thing is being true to yourself, and given which Sabbath albums rose to the top, fans could always recognise when the band were making music for the sole purpose of making the greatest riffs they knew how to make.
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