Ozzy Osbourne, "Mama, I'm Coming Home"

6 Days to Find a Home


There's a probably apocryphal story of a young Bob Dylan approaching Mick Jagger to tell him, "I could have wirtten 'Satisfaction,' but you couldn't have written 'Mr. Tambourine Man.'" To which Jagger responded, "Yes, but you couldn't sing 'Satisfaction.'"

Ozzy Osbourne is not a great songwriter. By now we've all heard about how Iommi wrote the riffs and Geezer Butler wrote most of the lyrics on the classic Black Sabbath albums, and only a fool couldn't notice that Ozzy's only great solo albums--Blizzard Of Ozz, Diary of a Madman and No More Tears--were assembled with his two best backing bands. The wiriting credits of some of his best singles ("Bark at the Moon", "Shot in the Dark" and Perry Mason" among them) often show outside help, and have been disputed in court over the years. He's a self-admitted a rock star first and a musician second. But boy, what a rock star.

It's not just that he's a rock star, as heard on his biggest solo hit, "Mama, I'm Coming Home." Written primarily by Lemmy (who surely knew this couldn't be a Motörhead song) and guitarist Zakk Wylde
(years away from the self-parodying Black Label Society), "Mama" is one of the only power ballads that earns the classification. Wylde's playing is as delicate and diverse at is would get, but it's Osbourne's show, pushing a voice with far more character than range to deliver more heartfelt sentiments than anyone thought Ozzy, or metal in general, was capable of. He's a rock star, but imagine any other rock star, even Ozzy's closest peers--Brian Johnson, David Lee Roth, Steven Tyler, Lemmy, Joan Jett, Rob Halford, Bruce Dickinson, Paul Stanley, Alice Cooper--pulling off "Mama, I'm Coming Home." It doesn't work.

Perhaps Ozzy scores because he'd prefer to sing "Mama" than "Crazy Train". Part of his appeal is that he's metal's wolfman ("barking at the moon"), a gentle giant whose crazy side came to the top at the right moment. Osbourne once said that his family's TV show felt like being the Wizard of Oz telling people to ignore the man behind the curtain. He must've forgotten that he already ripped the curtain down on track three of No More Tears.

Ozzy Osbourne, No More Tears

Zakk Wylde is metal's greatest one album wonder. He's written a few good songs with Ozzy in the past 20 years, as well as many bad ones with Black Label Society, a band that's apparently only enjoyed by Guitar World readers. But give him his due, in all the endorsements, record sales and touring slots that he deserves, never forgetting that he co-wrote and played lead on the best solo album by heavy metal's Elvis.


Nearly everyone points to Blizzard of Ozz or Diary of a Madman, the two albums that Ozzy wrote with Randy Rhoads, as the towering achievements of his solo career. They're not far off. But for songwriting, Ozzy peaked with 1991's No More Tears. Like a few of his metal legend contemporaries, mainly Judas Priest, Ozzy was both distancing himself from glam metal and competing with the rising thrashers of the early '90s. That sense of urgency, plus the enlistment of Motörhead's Lemmy and budding guitar god Wylde, ending up giving Ozzy an album that held up not only with his Randy Rhoads records but his indelible work on the first six Black Sabbath records.

It was "I Don't Want to Change the World," not "Crazy Train" or "Bark at the Moon," that made me a dedicated Ozzy fan. That stadium-sized chorus dishes out one of metal's most badass messages. While bands as varied as Mötley Crüe and Slayer were trying to scare the pants off of parents, preachers and politicians, Ozzy did so without even trying, or so he claimed. "Don't you try to teach me no original sin/I don't need your pity for the shape I'm in," goes one defiant couplet. "I don't want to change the world/I don't want the world to change me."



No More Tears also is the last genuinely creepy Ozzy album. Long before he was metal's (and eventually, with The Osbournes, America's) goofy dad, Ozzy could chill you with a child abuse narrative, from the gleefully irksome "Mr. Tinkertrain" to the equally haunting and infectious title track. "Hellraiser," an ode to Clive Barker's Pinhead, thrashed hard enough for Motörhead to record their own version for March or Die.




Ozzy has always had an excellent team, but never any with more chemistry than the one he has here, from powerhouse drummer Castillo to longtime bassist Bob Daisley, playing on his last ever Ozzy record. But the first mate, of course, is Wylde, whose playing spills out into mountains of riffage and solos that always seem to hit the sky and somehow end at the right time. Other than Slash, no hard rocker was making his axe sound this simultaneously professional and spontaneous.

But Ozzy also came into his own as a balladeer on No More Tears. "Mama, I'm Coming Home" put the last ten years of power ballads in their place, deservedly becoming the album's biggest hit and reportedly earning co-writer Lemmy more than he had earned in his previous 20 years as a musician. A perfect pop song played on metal instruments, it's only matched by the equally lovely "Time After Time," making No More Tears home to the two best ballads that Ozzy ever recorded. Giving any weight to songs played at this pace is no easy task, as shown by Ozzy's attempts to recreate their success, but here he put himself at the top of the game. Think of Ozzy's only peers among hard rock frontmen--David Lee Roth, Brian Johnson, maybe Steven Tyler or Paul Stanley--and imagine any of them trying to carry either of these songs.






One of the many things that has set Ozzy apart from his peers is his ability to end an album well--remind yourself that "Steal Away (The Night)", "Diary of a Madman" and "Shot in the Dark" are all closers. No More Tears tops itself off with one of Ozzy's best notes, the wistful "Road to Nowhere," wherein the Ozzzman muses, "The wreckage of my past is haunting me/It just won't leave me alone." As he told us nine songs ago, Ozzy doesn't want to change the world. He didn't set out to be the Christian Right's worst nightmare, but he became it just by being being born with an inimitable voice and a knack for taking risks. The rest of us wouldn't have him any other way.



Reflecting on No More Tears today, it sounds even more special when considering how short the magic lasted. The production and songwriting both got soggy, Wylde got caught up in the Guitarist Wars and started overplaying. Ozzy's voice and body can no longer keep up with his mind. But no reality TV shows, tabloid appearances, pinch harmonics exhaustion or inebriated performances can make No More Tears any less awesome.

Album of the Day: Marilyn Manson, Mechanical Animals

Years before Lana Del Ray re-enacted the Zapruder film in a tasteless music video, Marilyn Manson did the same thing with a better actress for his song "Coma White."



If Antichrist Superstar was Marilyn Manson's Purple Rain, where he set out to make himself the Biggest Star on Earth, Mechanical Animals was his Sign 'o' the Times, where he reflected on the world from his throne. Hearkening to his hero, David Bowie, Manson reinvented himself as an alien rock star ("Omega and the Mechanical Animals") and depicted megastardom excess with surprising vulnerability. It sold about half of what Antichrist Superstar did, and was therefore the last bold artistic statement that he would make. It's also the best record that he's ever released.

For the first time ever, Manson and his mainly interchangeable band had to prove that they could follow up a hit album, and that they didn't need producer Trent Reznor to do it. Thus, the band tried something completely different. Unable to market himself as an outcast after appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone, Manson ditched Satan for Sci-Fi, coming up with a vague concept about alienated celebrity life.

The celebrity role becomes Manson--no matter how much he tours with Slayer, Marilyn Manson has always been a pop star. His first hit was a cover of Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams," but his finest homage to his synthpop heroes is his glamdustrial original "The Dope Show." Riding a beat unshamefully cribbed from Iggy Pop and Bowie's "Nightclubbing," Manson's acknowledges the temporary state of his place in the world: "They love you when you're on all the covers/When you're not then they love another."



Standing out amongst the record's glam throwbacks, "Rock is Dead" was futuristic enough to get played during the end credits of The Matrix. The "God is in the TV" rejoinder offers rewards as both statement and satire. I don't know what happened to guitarist Zim Zum, but his harmonics here leave Zakk Wylde's in the dust.



Manson wasn't the first rock star to sing about mo money mo problems, but he might have been the funniest. Usually a mediocre lyricist, Manson approached songwriting on Mechanical Animals with a sense of humor that he had lacked before, as heard on "I Don't Like the Drugs (But the Drugs Like Me.)" Not only is it the first and last good industrial funk song, it's Manson's greatest single, the feather in his prosthetic boobs.



Manson was right. Soon he was not on all the covers and we loved another. But if he ever makes another album this good, he might work his way back.