Ozzy Osbourne was resurrected in 1980 with more than a little Aussie help

When Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi lost the tips of his fingers in an accident, it looked like a catastrophe. It turned out to be a blessing.

Ozzy Osbourne at the Moscow Music Peace Festival in 1989. Picture: Getty Images

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He must have done a deal with the devil. Ozzy Osbourne was one of the luckiest blokes in rock and roll. He met the right people and he met the right sound at just the right time. He looked and played the part as his band reshaped their slowed-down blues, forging a diabolical heavy rock feel.

The theatrical satanic references were overplayed, but we were good with that. Of course Black Sabbath’s first, self-titled album was released on February, Friday 13, 1970.

Among the final tracks recorded by the Beatles as they splintered in acrimony through the early months of 1969 was John Lennon’s I Want You (She’s So Heavy). It was the band’s longest song and Lennon, pushing boundaries as ever, used just 15 words throughout. Playing lead guitar and singing at the same time, Lennon put down the basic blues track which, over its final three minutes, his bandmates turned into an intoxicating heavy rock reckoning that the music they had changed so much would change again.

Paying attention was Tony Iommi, who had been a year ahead of Osbourne at school in Birmingham. “A pest,” as Iommi recalled.

While it at first seemed a catastrophe that Iommi lost the tips of his fingers on his right hand in a factory accident on his last day at work, against most odds it was a blessing.

In any case, a mate assured him, Belgian guitar virtuoso Django Reinhardt had lost the use of two fingers on his fretboard hand and created a music style that made him world famous.

Iommi, a left-hander, would also have to adapt his fretboard finger work. He did so by making crude prosthetic “fingertips” from dishwashing detergent bottles, changing first to banjo strings before lighter alternatives were developed. Along the way he lowered the strings’ pitch to make them easier to play, and in doing so created a deeper, heavier almost foreboding sound.

He caught up with Osbourne just in time to launch the heavy rock genre and in a 12-hour shift at a London recording studio with seven long songs and the sound effects of distant church bells, wind and rain, and a moody cover picture of a ghostly woman at a country mill, they were off.

The follow-up established Black Sabbath as ruling the heavy rock world with the songs such as War Pigs, Hand of Doom, Iron Man and the title track, Paranoid. Its compelling riff created a hard rock standard they would not match, at least in chart terms.

In a kettle-and-black moment, Osbourne was sacked from the band in 1979 for his drug and alcohol use, but they reformed – very successfully – from time to time and played one-off shows including Live Aid and, incongruously, the Queen’s 2002 jubilee show at Buckingham Palace.

One wondered which institution had changed the most.

That turned out to be a practice run for Osbourne’s meeting with genuine royalty the following year: Osbourne and his wife ­Sharon appeared on several shows with Barry Humphries as Dame Edna including the dame’s 2003 Live at the Palace performances on US television. Addressing Sharon, Edna, handing her a small purse, said: “I brought a little gift for you from Australia … a kangaroo scrotum made from a little wobbly bit.”

By then, another Australian had helped shape Osbourne’s post-Sabbath life.

Not all Australians are familiar with Bob Daisley, a gifted bass player, singer and songwriter from Sydney, but he may be Australia’s best-selling artist.

Locally he played in the acclaimed Kahvas Jute, and in London with blues groundbreakers Chicken Shack – from which Christine Perfect joined Fleetwood Mac and married John McVie. He joined Mungo Jerry and then Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow. He would go on to play with Black Sabbath and Gary Moore and with members of Deep Purple. But in 1979, he was in London at a loose end and bumped into Osbourne at a venue called the Music Machine, a launching pad for The Clash and Boomtown Rats.

Daisley was there to see a band called Girl, a forerunner of Def Leppard. He and Osbourne struck up a friendship and Osbourne said he was forming a band. Back at Osbourne’s house, Daisley played with some early potential members. “They were good players, but not world class,” Daisley told me on Wednesday and told Osbourne at the time. This led to the hiring of brilliant 22-year-old American guitarist Randy Rhoads and Uriah Heep drummer Lee Kerslake.

With Daisley, Osbourne and Rhoads writing the songs, the first album, Blizzard of Ozz (a title suggested by Osbourne’s father), was a worldwide hit. The follow-up album, Diary of a Madman, performed especially well in the US and placed the band at the front rank of touring acts. Complicated disputes arose about credits and royalties and at one point the albums were rereleased with Daisley and Kerslake’s contributions removed.

Yet Daisley had helped reset the Osbourne story. And on Wednesday he shed a tear for his old bandmate. “There’s been a lot of dirty water under the bridge,” he said, “but I think back to the happy, fun times on the road. All the good times have come flooding back.”

Rhoads was killed in 1982 when, as a joke, a plane swooped on the tour bus and clipped him.

Kerslake died of prostate cancer in 2020.

Osbourne returned for a final album with Black Sabbath, his 13th, called, naturally enough, 13.

An interviewer mentioned to him that the album had gone top 10 in 50 countries. “Really?” he said. “I didn’t know there were 50 countries.”