First, the news broke a couple of days ago that Ozzy Osbourne passed away, a few weeks after the Black Sabbath Farewell Concert. While it wouldn't shock me if he decided euthanasia was the best answer to his struggles, it could also have been due to complications from Parkinson's Disease. Ozzy's death reminds me a bit of Freddie Mercury's passing, who died a day after he publicly announced he had HIV. In both cases, I suspect they both knew it was time.
Unlike many of my contemporaries, I began listening to Ozzy midway through high school. Given that my parents were very strict about what music I could and couldn't listen to, I had to get around that by copying acquaintances' cassettes of heavy metal bands. That way, my parents couldn't really see what I was listening to, and once I got a car --and a cassette deck in said car-- I did most of my listening while driving or on my boom box while working after school or over the summer as a janitor. Bands such as Twisted Sister, Motley Crue, Scorpions, and Autograph found space on my Maxell and TDK blanks, but the second heavy metal album I copied* was Ozzy's Blizzard of Oz. It may have been a copy of a copy, since the sound quality wasn't very good, but at least I had it.
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| I couldn't find the cassette with Blizzard of Oz on it, but I could find these. |
It took my going away to college --and away from the prying eyes of my parents-- for me to more fully embrace music found on "Satanic" lists by Evangelical preachers.
The funny thing is that since I began listening to heavy metal midway through the 1980s, I came to Ozzy first through his solo career. To me, Black Sabbath was this band from the past that wasn't really relevant today. This was hammered home by my encounter with graffiti I had to clean off of a chair in my high school (I was a janitor, remember?) that said "Black Sabbath Rules The World". A couple of coworkers happened to wander by, snorted, and one of them said derisively, "They need to put an album out first!"
"First an album, next the world!" the other quipped.
It was only much later, in the 1990s, when I began listening to Black Sabbath and realizing that hey, they weren't half bad after all.
Still, Ozzy had penetrated into the national consciousness through the Satanic Panic. I didn't put any credence in all of the claims --I played RPGs and wasn't about to sacrifice small animals to Satan, after all-- but plenty of people did.**
Ozzy even found himself in the then popular comic strip Bloom County:
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| From the 1987 compilation book "Billy and the Boingers Bootleg", Page 80, by Berke Breathed. |
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| From the 1987 compilation book "Billy and the Boingers Bootleg", Page 81, by Berke Breathed. |
Yes, I was a Bloom County fan, and yes, I had all of the compilation books.
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| Here's the proof. I still have the floppy record that came with the book. |
In case you wondered what the songs sound like, here's one of them (courtesy of YouTube):
Over the years, my interest in heavy metal waned, but I still have a soft spot for heavy metal from the 70s and 80s and what it meant to my own personal declaration of independence as an adult. While the Bloom County cartoons played up for amusement the concept that Ozzy was just a "regular guy" playing around with heavy metal, the reality that came out decades later was that he pretty much was just a regular guy after all and his Ozzy persona was just an act.
***
Yesterday, the news broke that Hulk Hogan had also passed away, and with that another chunk of my youth vanished.
I wasn't that much of a World Wrestling Federation fan, as I used to watch the rival organization World Championship Wrestling (the home of Dusty Rhodes and "Nature Boy" Ric Flair), but you couldn't not be aware of WWF and it's biggest star, Hulk Hogan. Among the WWF pantheon, I cheered more for Andre the Giant than Hulk, but Hulk was the face of the WWF. There's no denying that.
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| This was at the end of Andre's career, when he "turned bad" and wrestled against Hulk in 1987. From The Detroit News. |
To be clear, I wasn't one of the pro wrestling fans around school who were so far down the rabbit hole that they subscribed to one of several wrestling magazines, but I was enough of a fan that I could at least hold my own with those hardcore fans. The fans fell into two camps: those who loved Hulk and those who hated him. Most people loved him, but there were a few contrarians who preferred Hulk's enemies (such as Rowdy Roddy Piper) instead.
But that Golden Era of wrestling is fading from memory. Hulk is just the latest to pass away, as Dusty Rhodes, Andre the Giant, Randy Savage, Rowdy Roddy Piper, George "The Animal" Steele, and The Iron Sheik are all gone.
***
Finally, overshadowed by Hulk Hogan's passing, was also the passing of Chuck Mangione. You know, the "Feels So Good" guy.
This is the full version. The radio edit/singles
version can be found here.
If you're of the right age, you couldn't avoid Feels So Good. It was all over the radio, and it helped to drive the Soft Rock radio format to greater heights. The irony was that while I heard it on radio all the time --my parents listened to Soft Rock, after all-- my biggest memory of Feels So Good tied into our first color television set.
That first Saturday we had the Sears color television around the house, I woke up and went downstairs to turn on the TV. It was pretty early in the day and before the Saturday Morning Cartoons came on, so I flipped to one of the independent or PBS stations (I can't remember which) and suddenly there was a video of the sun rising on my screen with Feels So Good playing as an accompaniment. Being one of the first color TV images I ever saw at home, that moment was etched indelibly in my mind.
Over the years I grew to appreciate Chuck's jazz output and his loyalty to his hometown of Rochester and the Eastman School of Music, of whom he was an alum and an instructor. I learned much later that Chuck was also an alum of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, of whom he played alongside Keith Jarrett.
***
All three of them had left an indelible imprint on my youth. Maybe it wasn't the three themselves that I remember most, but what they represented: rebellion, guilty pleasures, and the music my parents listened to. Still, it feels weird to be reminded of my past only when that past is permanently lost to us.
In an ironic twist, at times like these I'm reminded of this little segment from George Carlin. George's stand-up comedy hasn't always aged very well, but in this case it actually has. The entire video is worth watching, but I highlighted this one specific bit at the 4:55 mark:
Note to self: Google doesn't like it if I try to embed
YouTube videos at a specific time marker.
*The first was Twisted Sister's Stay Hungry. Yes, really.
**And still do today, just to be clear about it. If people give them half a chance, these devout folks would attempt to eradicate "satanic" music and books once more. After all, look at all the attempts to ban books and media today. Cancel Culture is not simply a thing on the political left.
Famous deaths always seem to come in clusters. Bad timing for anyone who went a day before or after Ozzy, though.
ReplyDeleteI ought to look out for some Bloom County collections. I've only ever read a few random strips. That Ozzy is barely recognizeable, though.
The thing about getting older (Well, a thing...) is that most of the people you were a fan of or who seemed important or influenced you when you were in your teens were most likely only a few years older than you, but it almost certainly seemed like they were much older, thanks to the way children and adolescents perceive the rest of the world. So when they all start dropping dead it's really confusing. I'm constantly going "Wait a moment... he was only ten years older than me?! I thought he was like forty in the 1980s..." That would certainly apply to Hulk Hogan and Ozzy, both of whom were just about ten years older than me but both of whom seemed like they had to be twice that at least.
Grrr. That was me. Forgot to switch NoScript off... Getting old... older...
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