Ozzy Osbourne has always surrounded himself with some of the best guitarists in the business. For as many great metal classics have been built around ‘The Prince of Darkness’s stirring growls, it all comes back to the guitar to serve as the spine of the song, from the classical tinge of ‘Mr Crowley’ to the jazzy sections on ‘Diary of a Madman’. Before Osbourne had even struck it big, he knew that one guitarist towered above anyone he would ever work with.
After being fired from Black Sabbath, though, there was a real likelihood that Osbourne would be considered a footnote of rock history. Having been through the greatest excesses any rockstar has ever faced, Osbourne found himself too wasted to keep in step with the rest of the band, being cast to the side of the stage before leaving after their album Never Say Die.
As his wife and manager Sharon prepared Osbourne for a solo career, he found an ace in the hole when Randy Rhoads entered his life. Being a more classical guitarist than Osbourne’s bluesy roots, Rhoads would help bring Osbourne back from the dead, helping pen the first major hits of his solo career like ‘Flying High Again’ and ‘Crazy Train’.
Then again, nothing would compete with what Sabbath could do with Tony Iommi behind the fretboard. Outside of Osbourne’s booming voice on tracks like ‘Paranoid’ and ‘Black Sabbath’, Iommi was always known as the true heart of the band, being responsible for the most macabre riffs that hard rock had ever seen.
Iommi’s riffs didn’t come without a fight, either. Before Sabbath even began, Iommi got into an accident at a sheet metal factory, which left two of his fretting fingers severed, causing him to use thimbles to play for the rest of his career and inspiring him to tune down his guitar to ease the tension it put on his fingers.
While the band identified themselves as a heavy blues rock band in the beginning, Iommi’s riffs paved the way for heavy metal, becoming the blueprint for future bands like Iron Maiden to make epic masterpieces of their own. Even though Osbourne suddenly found himself in competition with his old bandmates, he realised that no one else would be able to come close to what Iommi pioneered on the guitar.
When talking about the legacy that Sabbath have had, Osbourne would consider Iommi the greatest riff crafter he had ever worked with, telling Louder, “But I do think that Tony Iommi, for what it’s worth, is the king of all demonic riffs. There’s just no one to fucking touch him. Considering he had his fretboard fingers chopped off – to this day, I’m still amazed he knows he’s touching the strings”.
Although Black Sabbath may have played their final shows, Osbourne still felt a sense of camaraderie working with Iommi, eventually asking him to lend his skills to the tracks ‘No Escape From Now’ and ‘Degradation Rules’ from the album Patient Number 9. Osbourne and Iommi may have had a rocky relationship both in Sabbath and beyond, but there’s something about those heavy riffs that keeps them returning to each other.
