RONNIE JAMES DIO: We had a blockbuster hit with “Heaven and Hell” and we suddenly went from “Black Sabbath that is no more” to “Black Sabbath, whoa, check this out!” I think attitudes started to change within the band a little and we went astray. [Our next album,] The Mob Rules, is great, but some of us were living a bit more high on the hog, and it was a lot easier not to be together than it was to be together, perhaps.
TONY IOMMI: We found that it was easier to write with just two of us there. It had its ups and downs, but I quite liked that album.
With Dio commanding the band through two albums, Black Sabbath appeared to be back in peak form. However, behind closed doors, egos were growing and tensions were mounting. During mixing sessions for the concert album Live Evil, the members of Sabbath reached an impasse.
TONY IOMMI: In my mind, it wasn’t recorded right. We had tracks leaking all over the place and we had a lot of problems within the band.
RONNIE JAMES DIO: That was a nightmare. There was so much dissatisfaction and I don’t know exactly why. But I do know the engineer told Geezer and Tony that Vinny and I would go in early to the studio and turn up the drums and the vocal, which wasn’t true and didn’t make sense because we weren’t mixing it. Word got back to them and they started not showing up. Then they turned up when we didn’t to work on it, and we turned up when they didn’t, and that spelled the end of it. So that was a miserable album for me, and at the end I got fired.
Back in 1979, when Black Sabbath was scrambling to get started with Dio, the band’s original vocalist had pretty much given up on life. Ozzy Osbourne was broke and living in a hotel, having forfeited all his possessions to ex-wife Thelma Mayfair in a divorce settlement. He felt betrayed by the rest of Sabbath and lost his desire to create, as well as the confidence that came from being part of a successful band. He might have slid into oblivion had his tough-as-nails future wife, Sharon Arden, not picked him up and set him back on the path to rock stardom.
SHARON OSBOURNE: My father [Don Arden] was an extremely successful band manager, but a very violent, very extreme personality. So I had a rollercoaster ride as a kid. I was raised with people who were extreme and outrageous. People would be toting guns, and our door would be broken down at four in the morning and [rockabilly pioneer] Gene Vincent would be lying there on the floor. It was like, “Well, this is the way life is.” I hadn’t known anything else. So Ozzy didn’t frighten me. I had known him in 1970. Then when he was out of Black Sabbath, he was living in a hotel down the road from where I lived. A friend of mine who owed me some money left it with Ozzy. So I went up to see Ozzy, and we struck up a real friendship. He was very down, and I could see that he needed someone to talk to. Over the next year we got together as a couple.
OZZY OSBOURNE: It was love at first sight. She was managing me for a while. She was working for her father. She came in to collect some money and I had spent it on coke.
SHARON OSBOURNE: Ozzy was so lovable. He was so endearing and he had this quality of just being so real. So many times you go out with guys in this industry and they’re like Austin Powers. Half of them are wannabes and half of them have made it for five minutes, but they’ve all got attitudes and they’re all full of shit. Ozzy was so honest. I loved that. And he’s got a great sense of humor. He’s very quick-witted. It was instant love. When we first got together everybody thought, “What could they possibly have in common? He’s so outrageous and she’s so normal.” It’s really totally the other way around because I was brought up with such chaos in my life.
OZZY OSBOURNE: When I met Sharon and decided to start making music again, we had nothing. I was broke and an alcoholic and a drug addict. But she made me feel better about myself. That’s when her father basically fucked off. He didn’t want her to manage me, but she was the only one who could do it.
SHARON OSBOURNE: It was very, very tough for me because I was used to getting up in the morning and picking which car I was going to drive to work and which style of bracelet I was going to put on. I was basically a spoiled, Jewish brat who’d had too much. To suddenly have nothing—not a credit card, not a car—nothing. It was tough. But it made me want to get it back again and it made me fight more.
With virtually no money and only their reputations to rely on, Ozzy and Sharon assembled a band featuring bassist Bob Daisley (ex-Rainbow), drummer Lee Kerslake (ex–Uriah Heep), keyboardist Don Airey (who had played on Black Sabbath’s 1978 album, Never Say Die) and practically unknown Quiet Riot guitarist Randy Rhoads, who also taught guitar at his mother’s music school, Musonia, in North Hollywood. Osbourne’s debut solo album, 1980’s Blizzard of Ozz, kick-started his solo career, peaking at number 21 on the Billboard album chart with help from the hits “Crazy Train,” “I Don’t Know” and “Mr. Crowley.” Blizzard of Ozz and its 1981 follow-up, Diary of a Madman, put Osbourne’s career back on track. But he was still drinking, drugging, and raging out of control—as evidenced by a series of now legendary and well-documented antics. The first took place during a seemingly innocuous photo op at his new label, Jet, owned by Don Arden and distributed by CBS in the United States.
OZZY OSBOURNE: I was at the CBS Records Building for a meeting in 1981. I was very drunk and very stoned, and my wife told me to go in the room and throw these two fucking doves in the air as a peace offering. I was very out of control, and I threw one up and bit the other one’s head off and threw it on the table. Before the day was out, it was on the press lines all over the world, and I was the asshole of the fucking year. My wife went fucking nuts when she got home. I was banned from my own record company’s building.
SHARON OSBOURNE: That’s just an example of how Ozzy’s not like other people. He didn’t have a normal upbringing; he had to work in a slaughterhouse killing cows. He would shoot five thousand cows in a day in the middle of the head. So for him to take a bird and spit its head out and laugh is nothing. But for people like us, it was, “How could you do that?” It was nothing to him.
In 1982, Ozzy caught more public flack, first in January for biting the head off a live bat in Des Moines, Iowa, and the following month in San Antonio, Texas, where he was arrested for lifting a dress he was wearing that belonged to his wife and urinating on a shrine to the fallen heroes of the Alamo. He was banned from performing in the city for a decade. The bat-related punishment was even more severe.
OZZY OSBOURNE: [Biting the head off the bat] wasn’t planned at all. We were touring for Diary of a Madman and people would bring meat and throw it onstage. As the tour progressed, it jumped from meat to dead animals and cats. On top of it, I had these Halloween rubber bats on the stage. Unbeknownst to me, I picked one up and I put it in my mouth and it turned out to be a real bat. I bit on the fucking thing and heard a crunch. I had to go to the fucking hospital and get precautionary rabies shots. If you’re gonna do something as stupid as me, be warned that these rabies shots are not fucking worth it. It fucking hurts like a son of a bitch. It feels like someone’s injected sixty fucking golf balls in your ass. It was nothing short of agony. I made the front page everywhere and I couldn’t even get out of the fucking bed to read it.
SHARON OSBOURNE: Ozzy and I were lying in bed watching the news and we were cracking up laughing thinking, “Why would anybody in their right mind find that newsworthy?” It’s pathetic and it was on the national news. Somebody at the hospital informed the press because Ozzy went to have rabies shots. There were major events happening in the world, and suddenly Ozzy Osbourne is there with the head of the bat. We were hysterical. To think that it had gone that far and we’d had nothing to do with it.
OZZY OSBOURNE: I do some crazy things, some stupid things. But what right does anyone have to say I’ve lived a demonic existence? I don’t sleep upside down on rafters. I don’t nail myself to a cross in my room. I don’t burn the first-born child of the person in the next room. I’m not a bloody Satanist. If you listen to [my song] “Mr. Crowley,” that’s a question [I’m asking]. It’s not about [idolizing] Aleis
ter Crowley. It was asking, “Who were you, what were you about, what the fuck were you thinking? I don’t know anything about you. Please, somebody tell me.” Then it wasn’t too long before I started getting letters from the Crowley Society. I got really told off one time by somebody who said the name is not pronounced “Krow-ley,” it’s “Kroh-ley.”
ZAKK WYLDE (Black Label Society, ex–Ozzy Osbourne): When we were recording the Ozzmosis album [in 1995], we did a batch of it in New York. There was this occult bookstore called the Magickal Childe, and they had everything in there about Wicca, Catholicism, Satanism, the whole nine yards. I was getting some Aleister Crowley stuff because Jimmy Page owned the castle [Crowley’s former home, Boleskine House] and other guys were into him. I’m like, “What’s the skinny on this guy?” I’m buying books as if I was doing a book report. I go to get this poster of Aleister Crowley that they had in there. I go, “How much for the poster?” The guy looks at me deadpan and says, “$6.66.” I put seven bucks down and say, “Keep the goddamn change. I can’t take it, dude.” So I hang up the poster and the boss man walks in and he goes, “Zakk, who’s the guy up on the wall?” I’m crying laughing and he goes, “Zakk, who the fuck is he?” I said, “Ozz, you don’t know who that is?” He goes, “I don’t fuckin’ know. Who is it?” I go, “You’ve been singing about him for the last twenty years.” He goes, “Well, who the fuck is it?” I said, “Ozz, it’s Aleister Crowley, bro.” He goes, “Oh, is that what that bald-headed cunt looks like?”
While a growing number of British metal bands were finding their foothold in America, Australia’s AC/DC was at Compass Point studios in the Bahamas preparing to make the most important—and successful—album of their career. But first they needed a new singer to replace the late Bon Scott. After numerous auditions, they tried out Geordie vocalist Brian Johnson. His easygoing personality and hell-raising vocals injected new life into the band at the same time that guitarist Angus Young was writing his strongest material to date. The landmark Back in Black, which featured pounding, anthemic chart-toppers—including “You Shook Me All Night Long,” “Hell’s Bells,” and the title track—sold more than twenty-two million copies in the United States by 2012.
BRIAN JOHNSON: I auditioned for AC/DC on [Tina Turner’s] “Nutbush City Limits.” That got their attention. They didn’t know it, but Malcolm said, “Thank God for that, everybody else that’s been in here wanted to do ‘Smoke on the Water.’ If we have to play that one more time, I’m going to die.” The band [Geordie] I was in was playing the pubs and clubs. We had a big following, and it was a good wage packet every week—not massive, but good. We did “Whole Lotta Rosie” to finish off the set, which we’d just learned a couple months before because AC/DC then had a cult status. So when I joined AC/DC, the lads just said, “Listen, we’ll put you on a wage for six months, and if it doesn’t work out, then nobody’s hurt.” I said, “These guys are straight shooters. There’s no bullshit.” Of course, after three months, Back in Black went to number one, and their manager came and said, “I think we’d better talk.” I didn’t have a contract. I was still on a wage. I signed and they were great. The first thing I noticed about these guys was how straight they were. They wasn’t two-faced at all.
DAVID FRICKE (Rolling Stone): Back in Black is the apex of heavy-metal art. . . . Much of the credit must go to Brian Johnson, a savage screamer who combines the breast-beating machismo of Led Zep’s Robert Plant, the operatic howl of Ian Gillan (ex–Deep Purple) and the tubercular rasp of Slade’s Noddy Holder into singular, nerve-racking, Tarzan-type shouts.
BRIAN JOHNSON: The cover art for Back in Black was a tribute to Bon. The boys didn’t want anything mawkish or overbearingly sobby. They said, “Bon’s memory must be kept in rock and roll, not as some sort of hymn or dirge. That’s not what we want.” One day about six songs in, me head was down, and I was spent. Mutt Lange, the producer, came down and he said, “Are you all right, Brian?” I said, “Mutt, I think I’m just dried up on this song.” He said, “Well, which song?” I said, “I just got this from the boys and they want to title it ‘Hell’s Bells.’” I said, “What the fuck? I’ve already done ‘Back in Black.’ And that was, like, devilish.” Just then there was the mother of all thunderstorms coming in. And it looked nasty out ’cause we were right at the sea [in Nassau, the Bahamas]. I said, “Jesus, the noise of the thunder is coming in.” Mutt said, “There you go, there’s a start, Brian, the rolling thunder,” and I went, “It’s fuckin’ pouring rain, look at the wind, it’s comin’ on like a hurricane. And look at that lightning flashin’ . . .” Honestly, I was like a reporter: “Across the sky, you’re only young, but you’re gonna die.” I was going on, there was an alarm bell ringin,’ so I went, “Got my bell, gonna take you to hell, gonna get ya, Satan get ya, hell’s bells.” That was it. It was ten minutes. I said, “Mutt, thank you.”
While Ozzy and his ex–Black Sabbath bandmates were both undergoing career-changing transitions, Judas Priest was working the formula they built on Sad Wings of Destiny into more concise, arena-ready songs. They were also revamping their presentation, cementing their now-iconic biker look. Encouraged by rabid fan response, the danger and drama became more important than ever, and the farther they ventured, the more risks they took.
ROB HALFORD: We played a gig at the Birmingham Odium, and afterwards we said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could bring an actual bike onstage when we do ‘Hell Bent for Leather’?” We didn’t have our own bikes back then, but bikers would come to our gigs and we would say, “Hey, we’ll buy you a couple of drinks if we can bring your bike onstage.” We would use whatever bikes were in the venue if “Hell Bent for Leather” was on the set list. I would literally come roaring out onstage on this borrowed bike and the crowd would think, “What the fuck is this? This is crazy!”
GLENN TIPTON: Rob has fallen off his bike or driven it off the stage, but fortunately he usually wasn’t hurt. As the productions got bigger, the secret was knowing where not to be at a particular point during the show, when a bomb went off or flamethrowers came out.
IAN HILL: A piece of the lighting rig broke off on the Hell Bent for Leather tour. The front hinge broke and missed [drummer] Dave Holland by inches. It started the whole truss rocking. If that had fallen into the audience it would have been terrible. Sometimes you’re at the mercy of your equipment. On the Turbo tour we had a robot onstage that used to pick up Ken and Glenn. There were a couple of occasions where one of them almost fell out or they got stranded in midair when the hydraulics broke.
In 1980, after touring the United States, Europe, and Japan, Judas Priest headed into Tittenhurst Park, the UK house formerly owned by John Lennon, to work on British Steel, the album that would cement their reputation as self-proclaimed metal gods. Perhaps most impressively, they wrote and recorded all the songs in less than a month, including the classics “Living after Midnight” and “Breaking the Law,” in conditions that could euphemistically be described as hectic.
ROB HALFORD: We were moving at the speed of light, making a record every year, working very, very hard to get all of the music ready in time for release. I suppose as a result of that, we put together a very uncomplicated, uncluttered, very minimally produced bunch of songs that really got the music and the message across in a very quick forty-minute blast. There were some really cool moments on British Steel, like “Rapid Fire” and “Steeler,” which some people attest to being the early rumblings of thrash metal.
GLENN TIPTON: I was bashing a riff out late one night and Rob was in the bedroom above and came down all disheveled and said, “Hey guys, it’s after midnight,” and we said, “Yeah, we’re living after midnight.” And we just went with it. “Living After Midnight” became one of our most popular songs. British Steel was a very immediate album like that. But we had a surplus amount of energy and enthusiasm at that time, and I suppose there’s a certain argument to be made that if you give yourself a deadline, you’ve got to come up with the goods, and we actuall
y did. It was done and dusted in twenty-eight days.
ROB HALFORD: I don’t recall feeling that much pressure, and it was really cool being in the house where John Lennon used to live. It looked as if John and Yoko had just recently vacated, and there were touches of them all through the house. Glenn’s room was where John and Yoko used to sleep, and in the bathroom were two toilets next to each other and each had little plaques with their names on it. You can imagine them sitting there holding hands when they used the loo in the morning. I mean, how far are you prepared to love each other? “I still love you while I’m taking a dump.”
GLENN TIPTON: One night [our producer] Tom [Allom] was practically passed out behind the bar and he was playing “When the Saints Go Marching In” on a big hunting horn. We were pouring large vodkas down it and that’s the only thing that interrupted his melody. He’d guzzle up and then start again. Most nights, we’d be in the pub and then straggle back to the studio and play in a drunken stupor, and Tom couldn’t have been too bad off because he managed to put all that stuff together quite nicely.
VINNIE PAUL ABBOTT (Pantera, Damageplan, Hellyeah): That album was huge for us. My brother [late Pantera guitarist] Dimebag [Darrell Abbott] wore the Judas Priest [British Steel] razor blade around his neck his whole life. It meant everything to him. We were fucking crazy about that album. At the time, we thought, “That’s the band we want to model ourselves after.”
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