The astonishing claims about the Birmingham-born Black Sabbath icon, who died last year, were made by American heavy metal star Dee Snider, of Twisted Sister.
In a post on X, he claimed Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler penned all of the band’s lyrics.
He also claimed Ozzy’s first two solo albums featured lyrics written by Bob Daisley, and that the No More Tears album had contributions from Lemmy Kilmister.
Snider also suggested that Sharon Osbourne “doesn’t like to share” while discussing the legacy of Ozzy’s music, but aded that while many artisits don’t write their own material they can still make songs their own.
Dee is hardly dropping some breaking news, here.
https://rockandrollgarage.com/geezer-butler-explains-why-he-was-black-sabbaths-main-lyricist/
Yeah, wtf. “The bassist writes the lyrics” has been an Ozzy thing forever. There’s nothing wrong with it. Especially in Sabbath. They’re a band, people contribute. What’s the stink about?
IDK who penned the words, the album Paranoid is a masterpiece and nobody else has the vocal style of Ozzy and it is a major reason that it’s a masterpiece.
Meanwhile there’s a whole industry of doom-metal working off Sabbath’s and Ozzy’s style. E.g. Druidess, Hail Darkness, Stoned Jesus, Castle Rat, etc.
I don’t know these bands, thank you! I will check them out
Sabbath basically invented doom metal (together with Beatles), so there are a whole lot of bands paying tribute to them, and imitating Osborne’s vocals was quite fashionable in stoner rock. These bands are just what I’ve found in the past few years, though Stoned Jesus are pretty old. Truckfighters are also somewhat similar.
Oh if you like any of those, I have some for you too. In no particular order, and they don’t necessarily sound like Sabbath or Ozzy and they all vary a little, and have varying levels of heavyness, but they follow a general vibe (of one of like 4 genres) that was kinda sorta born from the Sabbath roots (an album rec in parentheses, where remembered lol):
Electric Wizard (Dopethrone), Sleep (Holy Mountain), Acid Witch (Witchtanic Hallucinations), Om (Pilgrimage), Baroness (Red Album), Bongripper, Dozer, Kyuss, Earth (Earth 2), Noothgrush, Neurosis, Dystopia, High on Fire, Mastodon, Orange Goblin, Torche, Inter Arma, Weedeater, Yob.
I have known a couple of these but I will check out the rest. Thank you friend
Yeah, it’s like saying geddy lee didn’t write Rush’s lyrics.
AFAIK, as soon as they saw that besides being an excellent drummer, Neil Peart was a voracious reader, they went, phew, we can get him to write the lyrics.