Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).
Flying High Again (1981)
On this day 45 years ago (1979 if you don't feel like doing the math), Ozzy Osbourne wasn't doing much of anything productive. It was a little more than two weeks after he'd been kicked out of Black Sabbath, the band he'd helped start a decade earlier. Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi said it was because Ozzy's drug and alcohol use was out of control, while Ozzy felt he wasn't any better or worse than the other three Sabs. In any case, Sabbath eventually forged ahead with Ronnie James Dio and began working on what would be their best album in quite a while.
Ozzy, on the other hand, was given a lump sum for his share of the band name and spent the ensuing three months on a coke and booze bender. He figured he was done singing and would just go on unemployment, but the British label Jet Records signed him to a deal in the hopes he would record new material. Label head Don Arden sent his daughter Sharon to LA to work with Ozzy and help him get his act together, literally and figuratively.
Eventually, Ozzy put together a band called the Blizzard of Ozz. He actually had formed an initial incarnation of that band when he left Sabbath 1978, backed by three members of the band Necromandus, but he rejoined Sabbath for the recording of their final album with him, Never Say Die! This time around, the Blizzard of Ozz featured Randy Rhoads of Quiet Riot on guitar, Bob Daisley (of Rainbow) on bass, keyboardist Don Airey (of Rainbow) and drummer Lee Kerslake (of Uriah Heep). The label eventually decided to name the band's first album Blizzard of Ozz and credit Ozzy as a solo artist, something the rest of the band was not pleased about.
The second chance seemed to rejuvenate Ozzy, and with the help of Rhoads and Daisley, the album was tight and energized. "Crazy Train" was the first single and hit #49 on the U.K. Singles Chart and had moderate success in the U.S., getting plenty of airplay on rock stations and hitting #6 on the Billboard Bubbling Under the Hot 100 chart, but it's become his biggest solo song over the years, getting endlessly played on classic rock radio and in sports arenas. Rhoads got a lot of attention for his flashy, neoclassical lead guitar work, which combined big riffs with speedy solos that were very different from Iommi's playing.
After a big tour that put Ozzy back on the metal map, the band returned to England in 1981 to record the follow-up album, Diary of a Madman. Once again, Daisley wrote most of the lyrics and some of the music with Rhoads, with Kerslake contributing to the two biggest songs off the album, "Flying High Again" and "Over the Mountain." This would become a point of contention later, because Daisley and Kerslake initially received no credit for their contributions. Right before the band was set to go on tour, Daisley and Kerslake were fired and replaced by Rudy Sarzo (of Quiet Riot) and Tommy Aldridge (ex-Black Oak Arkansas).
"Flying High Again" was the first single off the album, released in October 1981. It's a triumphant victory lap for Ozzy, celebrating his return to prominence as a solo artist. Of course, it could also be about his voluminous booze and drug consumption, which he was still very much into. Either way, Ozzy was having fun with it.
"Got a crazy feeling I don't understand/Got to get away from here/Feeling like I should have kept my feet on the ground/Waiting for the sun to appear/Mama's going to worry/I've been a bad, bad boy/No use saying sorry/It's something that I enjoy/Because you can't see what my eyes see/And you can't be inside of me/Flying high again."
Rhoads punctuates it with an excellent solo. In their "Odd Couple" dynamic, he was the Felix Unger to Ozzy's Oscar Goldman: neat and precise and always on point while Ozzy slobbered around wasted and biting off the heads of various animals.
"Daddy thinks I'm lazy he don't understand/Never saw inside my head/People think I'm crazy but I'm in demand/Never heard a thing I said/Mama's going to worry/I've been a bad, bad boy/No use saying sorry/It's something I enjoy/Flying high again."
Sadly, the fun hit a brutal snag a few months into the tour on March 19, 1982, when Rhoads died in a plane crash in Florida. Ozzy was devastated but the tour continued two weeks later with Bernie Torme filling Rhoads' spot for several shows before Brad Gillis of Night Ranger stepped in and finished the rest of the tour. He married Sharon, who by this point had become his manager.
Ozzy kept rolling throughout the '80s with the help of guitarists Jake E. Lee and later Zakk Wylde. Meanwhile, in 1986, Daisley and Kerslake sued Ozzy for unpaid royalties and they eventually won songwriting credits on both Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman. Strangely, Daisley returned to help write and play bass on 1988's No Rest for the Wicked; Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath joined Ozzy for that album's tour. Even after heavy metal saw a huge decline in the '90s, Ozzy managed to thrive. His albums sold well, but his biggest success in the '90s was the creation of Ozzfest, which Sharon Osbourne put together. Ozzy reunited with the original lineup of Black Sabbath on the 1997 Ozzfest tour (something he would do periodically for the next few decades).
In 2002, Ozzy reissued the first two solo albums, replacing Daisley and Kerslake's original bass and drum parts with new parts recorded by his then-drummer Mike Bordin (of Faith No More) and bassist Robert Trujillo (who later joined Metallica). The reissues also featured new backing vocals from singers Mark Lennon and John Shanks. Sharon claimed at the time it was Ozzy's idea to re-record the parts, but Ozzy later said Sharon did that on her own. Fans were outraged and eventually the original versions were included on the 30th anniversary reissues of the albums.
From 2002 to 2007, Ozzy and his family starred in an MTV reality show, The Osbournes, which was a big hit and transformed Ozzy's image from Prince of Darkness to a sort of celebrity grandpa. Meanwhile, Sharon became a celebrity herself, guesting on numerous talent shows and eventually becoming a co-host of The Talk. In recent years, Ozzy has struggled with health issues, including Parkinson's disease. He's said he won't tour again, but wants to play some farewell shows in the U.K. at some point.
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