No artist can claim to have a spotless track record. There are always going to be blemishes among the classics, and even if some of the lesser albums are far from bad, there are always questions about what could have been had they got it right in the studio. Although Ozzy Osbourne has made more than his fair share of classics in Black Sabbath and solo, he claimed that Pink Floyd was one of the only bands who had never released a bad album.
For most of Pink Floyd’s career, there were ample opportunities for everything to go wrong. Since the first era of the band was concerned with the kind of psychedelic rock that made you want to frolic through the fields, the loss of Syd Barrett to his own mind cast some questions about where the band was going to go next.
Since they had the ear of the public at this point, though, the band’s more experimental albums like A Saucerful of Secrets and Ummagumma managed to capture the attention of both fans and critics. Even though the back half of Ummagumma probably shouldn’t be listened to by anyone with functioning eardrums, the band persisted, going on to create a landmark run of albums beginning with Meddle.
Finally having their sound down with the track ‘Echoes’, Roger Waters would take the reins as band leader and conceptual artist, making the kind of overarching decisions for the band’s next era. Throughout projects like Dark Side of the Moon and Animals, the band would get more introspective, talking about their personal pain and the struggles that come with trying to relate to one’s fellow man.
As Floyd was on their way up, Osbourne was already starting to put the pieces of Sabbath together. While the heavy metal pioneers would be nowhere with guitarist Tony Iommi, Osbourne would turn their dark hymns into brooding works of art, bellowing about the atrocities of war on ‘War Pigs’ and the crazy world of the occult on ‘Black Sabbath’.
When talking about his favourite bands to Louder, though, Osbourne confessed that everything Floyd did resonated with him, saying, “I can’t think of an individual song, but I really like their album Obscured By Clouds. That was the soundtrack, wasn’t it? I remember listening to it while I was high on drugs. It had those weird bubbles on the cover. The Floyd made good albums; I don’t think they ever made a bad one”.
For all of the accolades Sabbath get as one of the founders of metal, they had their progressive side as well. While Sabbath Bloody Sabbath may be known as one of their crowning achievements during the Osbourne era, the greatest strength of the album comes from their willingness to get weird, making sprawling epics with the help of progressive rock pioneer Rick Wakeman.
Even without Waters at the helm, Floyd wouldn’t slow down, either, with David Gilmour taking control of the group and getting even more cerebral on albums like The Division Bell. Osbourne may have a reputation to uphold as one of the fathers of heavy metal, but who knows? Maybe as he retires from the road, Osbourne may get a progressive rock covers record out of his system.
