Written by You might have expected the Prince Of Darkness and Godfather Of Heavy Metal to have been a diehard fan of hard and heavy rock music himself, but Ozzy Osbourne had a surprisingly broad music taste – and often, metal itself would barely feature in his listening habits at all.
According to his son Louis on a recent episode of fellow Osbourne offspring Jack’s podcast, Trying Not To Die, one of the artists Ozzy was particularly obsessed with in the 80s was a prog legend and true 80s MTV heavyweight.
“Dad was obsessed at the time, and with the musical production thing, [with] Peter Gabriel‘s So album,” Louis revealed. “God, we listened to that album…Dad was mad into it. Most of our lives it was Beatles, Beatles, Beatles that we listened to all the time, but that was one of the albums that he [kept playing].”
Ozzy himself backed this claim up, writing at length about his love for So in his final book, Last Rites, which was published last year just weeks after his death.
“There’s not a bad track on there,” he insisted. “In Your Eyes. Red Rain. Mercy Street. They sound as fresh today as they did then.
“For a whole year after it came out, I blasted it everywhere I went…I’d play it all day on the tour bus. I’d play it all night at whatever hotel we were staying in. I’d crank it up on my boombox if I was by a swimming pool. And at all other times – other than when I was on stage – I’d be singing one of the songs from it at the top of my voice.”
For a whole year after it came out, I blasted it everywhere I went
Ozzy Osbourne
Ozzy humorously explained that he played (and indeed sung) so much Peter Gabriel during that time that his personal security guard had to take time off to put himself through a “Peter Gabriel detox”. Incredibly, though, it was during this period that Ozzy would end up meeting the man behind his obsession, during a chance encounter at a hotel Ozzy was staying at while on tour.
“I was staying at this hotel in Midtown Manhattan,” he wrote. “That morning, my security guard meets me at my suite, gets into the lift with me and I hit the button from the ground floor…then, the lift stops at the mezzanine level. The doors open. And this bloke gets in. And it’s Peter fucking Gabriel.”
If you’re thinking being a music legend himself meant Ozzy kept his cool, you’d be sorely mistaken.
“I couldn’t believe my luck,” he continued.”I was like, ‘Oh, I’ve gotta tell you, Peter, I love your album so much, it really is an absolute masterpiece, just seeing you here in person makes me want to listen to it another thousand times.’
“He couldn’t have been nicer, actually. Before he got out, I asked him how long it had taken to make, and he said, ‘Oh, a long time…at least three months. And I was, ‘Fuck me, if I tried to make that record like that, it would take me thirty years.’
“Then we said our goodbyes and he was gone.”
Released on May 19, 1986, So was a smash hit, becoming Peter Gabriel’s biggest-selling solo album and featuring what would becoming many of the former Genesis man’s trademark hits. Hitting number one in the UK album charts and number two in the US Billboard 200, it would go on to be certified triple platinum in the UK and five-times platinum in the States.
Ozzy Osbourne’s memoir Last Rites is out now via Sphere,
