One of my all time favorites is undisputed Ozzy. The ‘enfant terrible’ from the hardrock :).
Ozzy always had a special place in my musical heart, for his solo work. Of course I like Black Sabbath, but the solo albums of Ozzy are my favorites.
My oldest brother introduced me to his music (kind a similar as he introduced me to Satriani). In our youth my brother was a real “hard rocker”, jackets full pf patches of Maiden, Metallica etc. Me, I was more of a populair music kind a guy which turned over by the years. There was a local band in Zutphen (my hometown) called “Meta Remorse”. It was one of Zutphens leading rock-cover band. I wen’t to their rehearsals every Saturday in “De Barrak” The played almost only Ozzy covers, guitar player Gordon Groothedde (which is now one of Holland’s top producers https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Groothedde) Shredded the guitar like crazy. He created that real Ozzy kinda sound.
As some of you might remember we used to have walkman’s to listen to music, a kind a old fashion IPod with cassette tapes ;). My brother gave me a TDK-SA 90 tape, a gold stickered one I will never forget :) some things keep in your memory for ever, with the album “Tribute to Randy Rhoads”. This album was, as I later on discovered, a tribute album for the late Ozzy guitarplayer Randy Rhoads. Randy died at the age of 25 while touring with Ozzy by planecrash.
The recording was a live concert from Ozzy with Randy (guitar), Tommy Aldridge(drums) and Rudy Sarzo (bass). The first thing that came to my mind hearing the first song “I don’t know” was……Wow what the !@#$ is this, Ozzy’s voice combined with the voice of Randy’s guitar and the virtuosity he had was something I’ve never heard before. Everything was right. I played the cassette over and over again. After a while I knew every little detail in the songs and played airguitar like my life depended on it ;).
From that album I liked ever single song on it, the energy from Ozzy’s voice, the old school way of drums. But my al time favorites are Crazy train, Revelation (mother earth) and I don’t know
From that time on, Ozzy was my hero.
One of my whishes was to see Ozzy live, but that wasn’t that easy. It was years later that Ozzy finally came to Holland. My brother and I ofcourse where one of the first to get tickets. Unfortunatly the show got cancled because Ozzy had a ATV accident from which he was hurt badly (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-203641/Ozzy-seriously-hurt-quad-bike-crash.html)
So there goes our dream.
Some years later we finally got to see him with a Black Sabbath reunion on the Belgium Graspop festival. Black Sabbath was the main act. It was a great festival, my first expirience with Soulfly (massive), talking about energetic….. Dreamtheater was playing right before Black Sabbath. So our musical appetite was greatly filled.
Ozzy had quiet some guitarist in his bands, after Randy the best for me was Zakk Wylde. He came very close to the Rhoads sound I did admire so much.
When I was playing in bands myself already as a bassplayer) the idea came up to start a Ozzy tribute band. I had some friends from who I knew they had a weakness for Ozzy to so we got started. We had drums (Michael Hendrix), our own Zakk Wylde clone (Rene Aalbers) and the band “Crazy Train” was born… But we missed Ozzy, our singer. We put an ad out in a local music magazine and Gerrit Groot Roesink responded to the ad. We invited him, and when her arrived at our rehearsalroom we we’re very pleased with what we only saw. Gerrit was an old school rocker whith a little resemblence of Ozzy, so it was bullseye for our band. The fun thing was that Gerrit wasn’t the greatest singer but neither was Ozzy , but it al fitted. We took some bandpicture at a train museum with old trains… And there was Crazy Train. Our guitarplayer Rene was a big fan of Zakk Wylde, he was really one of the best guitarists I have ever played with. When he sorted out a song for us to play, it was spot on and every note was like the original. Such a pleasure to play with. The is a DVD of us playing our first gig, but I have to look it up first, then I wil post it for you to see. In the next clip there is Rene (a bit older than when we played Crazy train ;)).
We played our first gig at the DWK in Zutphen as supportact for the local rockband Sixstrings. (i’played that band right before we formed Crazy Train). It was an huge succes. I was completly in my element. Playing the music I loved the most, and being part of this great band.
Unfortunatly we didn’t last long. Rene had the bad habbit to only being interested in a particular guitarplayer for so long. When he felt like he checked everything out from that guitarist, it was time for him to move on….. A big bummer cause I finally felt that I played a band with potential but most important played music I could really play for decades. We did try to find another guitarist, but being spoiled with the great musicality of Rene we didn’t find any equal again. So the band stopped….. Untill this day I still regret it.
Ozzy is coming this year again to Graspop Belgium, perhaps the last change to see him…. Sol ets order some tickets ;)
Thank you,
Take care….