Friday, May 31, 2019

Ozzy Osbourne - No More Tears



I have seen Ozzy Osbourne live three times; once with Black Sabbath, once with Gus G., and once with Zakk Wylde. Additionally, I have seen Zakk Wylde live five times; three times with Black Label Society, once as a solo act, and once with Ozzy Osbourne. Both men have done some great work with other artists, but the first time I ever saw either of them live was together; and that meant something significant to me. Also, when I was a young man and discovering Ozzy Osbournce’s music for the first time, I was listening to albums like “Ozzmosis” and “No More Tears,” both of which feature Zakk Wylde, and that meant a lot to me as well.

I have always held “No More Tears” and “Ozzmosis” as two of Osbourne’s greatest albums. These two albums entered my life at a perfect time, young and rebellious Colin Kelly took in every word, and cord and thought these are the masterpieces of Ozzy and Zakk’s work together.

Recently I heard that Ozzy and Zakk are back together, which is great news for me, maybe I will get to see them perform live together again. Also, maybe this review is a little more topical because of this.

Like most people my age, I discovered Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne’s solo music at the same time. When I was getting my first copy of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” I was also picking up of Ozzy Osbourne’s “No More Tears.” Those were the first two albums with Ozzy on vocals that I ever owned.

Ozzy has had the privilege of working with several amazing guitarists, but I think I have made my favoritism towards Wylde rather clear, and when it comes to the solo era of Ozzy’s career, it is Wylde’s albums and songs that I tend to appreciate uppermost. Obviously, the works of Rhodes and Lee are fantastic, and I have nothing but the highest praise for both of those two men, but Zakk is my main man so that is where my bias rests.

So here is a challenging question; what is Ozzy Osbourne’s greatest solo song?

When tackling a such a question, it makes sense to think about things like the guitarists, and how best do we answer that subjective question with our own subjective tastes? Well, I like Wylde, and my subjective tastes push me towards “No More Tears.” That is one approach that one can take, and so I shall take it.

“No More Tears” the song was one of the very first solo Ozzy songs I ever heard, and I remember being so impressed that I concluded right there and then that this must be Ozzy’s best song. I held that belief for a long time, and now pressing my thoughts on the matter, I discover that my opinion has not altered much over the expanse of time that has passed.

There are many angles from which to argue the finality that “No More Tears” as the single greatest Ozzy song. As I earlier embellished, the mere involvement of Zakk Wylde, is a supportive reasoning for the greatness of “No More Tears.” However, that is a stance to take only if someone’s loyalty to Wylde is as true as my own. There are other reasons to conclude the case of “No More Tears” championship status.

At seven minutes and twenty-three seconds “No More Tears” is the longest on the album. The opening bass rift is iconic, it hits rapidly little a hard series of fast peaks and valleys. Equally memorable is the keyboard adding the accompaniment. Best of all the opening lead guitar intro. The guitar on the whole album is fantastic, presumably that is super obvious, I spent half of this review talking about how great Zakk is. Zakk’s involvement on this album cannot be understated. Obviously, his guitar work, good god, what a man, what a legend, I am not wise enough in the ways of electric guitar to say much of anything informative about how great Zakk Wylde is on “No More Tears,” however his contributions go far beyond that.

Ozzy Osbourne was, and probably still is, a massive alcoholic; so is Zakk Wylde. Osbourne more or less lost entire years of his life being blackout drunk, which is impressive, but terrifying. Whilst creating the album “No More Tears” Ozzy was attempting to clean himself up and go sober and this greatly affected his confidence. Seeing the world through the lens of reality was a frightful experience for Ozzy after being so long intoxicated. Luckily for Ozzy, Zakk Wylde took control of the situation and cowrote nearly the entire album with him. To the best of my knowledge this is the first time Zakk took on song writing on such a grand scale, and he hit a home run. This may have been the moment where Zakk ascending from badass guitar hero to rock god.

Ozzy has always been fortunate in that he has had the privilege and advantage of working with other great musicians to help him create his music, so much so, many harsher music critics discredit him as a song writer, which is going too far the in the other direction. Nonetheless it is true that from Black Sabbath working with Toni and Geezer, to his solo career working with the likes of Rhodes and Lee, Ozzy has made great allies and friends along the way. In this story Wylde is the friend and ally that made the difference, and a huge difference at that.

Back to “No More Tears” the album and the song are very dark. The song is about a serial killer targeting female victims in the red-light district. The line “No More Tears” signifies the death of the murderer’s victims, as in, they stop crying when they are dead. So yes, very dark. We should not be surprised though, this is coming to us from the same two men who wrote songs like “Suicide Solution” and “Suicide Messiah;” and now that I think about those two songs might make a good two part music review.

The album and song “No More Tears” was a huge success, though the song “Mama I’m Coming Home” was the breakout song of the album, the title track is the song I love the most from Ozzy’s entire repertoire. Taking some negative and making it a positive has been how I have navigated my entire life, and I feel like Ozzy has done the same. He took all his pain and suffering from his alcoholism and elsewhere and he put it into a very dark album, and that album, and all it’s negativity trapped within created an enormous event of positivity. Ozzy fans had more great music to enjoy. Zakk Wylde became a great song writer. Ozzy Osbourne found some success at being happy and functional while sober, and by doing so renewed his confidence and comfort level with by himself. A song about a man murdering woman is about as unsettling a topic as could be discussed, yet a amazing piece of art has come from it, and an unquantifiable amount of joy surrounds it. For all reasons, my vote for best Ozzy Osbourne song goes to “No More Tears.”

That is just me thought.

Until next month keep on rocking in the free world.

- King of Braves

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