00:00The story of Diary of a Madman is often overshadowed by what happened next. The
00:08years after Diary of a Madman were peak Ozzy Osbourne. These were the years that
00:13made him notorious, where his offstage behavior threatened to become more famous
00:17than his music. Like the time Ozzy bit the head off a dove at a record company
00:22meeting.
00:22You, you've actually, you bit the head off a, was it a pigeon? Well it's my
00:28hobby, you know. Or the time he must took a bat thrown on stage as a toy and bit
00:33its head off. I am trying to play it down somewhat because we're getting a lot of
00:38hassle from the animal society because there's a rumor going around that I'm
00:42blowing up goats and I don't know where that come from, you know. The day he was
00:46arrested in Texas pissing on the Alamo.
00:48Singer Ozzy Osbourne thinks it's fun to defile public shrines. He says his
00:53greatest ambition is to turn the steps of the White House into a public restroom.
00:56And the terrible moment when it all came crashing down. March the 19th, 1982, when
01:02guitarist Randy Rhodes was tragically killed in a plane crash. But all that
01:08came after. The story of Diary of a Madman really began back in April of 1979.
01:14Fired from Black Sabbath, his marriage falling apart, some people said Ozzy's
01:18career was over.
01:25He was just getting started.
01:37Sharon Arden, the daughter of Dawn Arden, Black Sabbath's manager, convinced him to
01:46put a band together and offered to become his manager. In London, Ozzy met Bob
01:52Daisley, the bass player for Rainbow. They auditioned drummers and settled on Uriah
01:57Heap's Lee Kerslake. Finally, they flew out a guitar player Ozzy had met in LA. He was a
02:04little guy who had a thing for polka dots and played in an upcoming band called Quiet Riot.
02:11He was called Randall William Rhodes, known to the world as Randy Rhodes, one of the greatest
02:19guitar players of all time. Ozzy had found his band.
02:27Debut album Blizzard of Oz was recorded at Ridge Farm Studios in England. The band clicked,
02:33with Ozzy particularly impressed by Randy Rhodes' guitar playing. Released in September
02:37of 1980 in the UK, it went to number seven in the charts. Released in the States the following
02:42year, it went to 21 in the Billboard charts, while standout signal Crazy Train went to number
02:47nine.
02:48The band toured the U.S. By the time they'd finished, Blizzard of Oz had sold a million
02:54copies. Guitar Player Magazine voted Randy Rhodes Best New Talent of 1981. Randy, on behalf
03:01of the over half a million readers of Guitar Player Magazine in the U.S. and in 70 countries
03:07throughout the world, I'd like to present you with the 1981 Best New Talent Award. Congratulations.
03:14Less than a year after they recorded Blizzard, the band were back at Ridge Farm Studios to
03:18record the follow-up, Diary of a Madman. Ozzy'd had the Diary of a Madman idea in the back
03:24of his mind for years. A loose concept that came from the madness in his life, and a genuine
03:29fear that he was losing his mind.
03:31This Diary of a Madman isn't just a thing that I've thought of now, it's just an idea
03:34that I've moulded round in my head for ages. In actual fact, when I put it to my management,
03:38I thought I was totally insane.
03:40Where would you like us to go? Would you like us to go over to the fireplace?
03:43We set fire to each other.
03:45After months of touring, it was the band who were on fire, and all four members contributed
03:50to the songwriting.
03:56Ozzy was no longer in the shadow of Black Sabbath, but a solo star in his own right. The title
04:01of the first single from the album said it all. He was flying high again.
04:07On one hand, the song seemed like another of Ozzy's drug anthems, and throughout this
04:11time he was indeed being a bad, bad boy. But it could also be seen as a triumphant two
04:16fingers to everyone who had written him off. The guitar solo by Randy Rhodes was like a gauntlet
04:22being thrown down to the guitar players of the 1980s.
04:25I'm on the join in the head.
04:41Album opener, and the second single from the album, Over The Mountain, sounded heavy, but came with a positive message about finding the magic in yourself.
04:47message about finding the magic in yourself everyone has got a certain amount of craziness
04:52in them and i'm the guy to unleash it for you if you like randy rhodes supplied a suitably mad guitar
04:57solo if you can't kill rock and roll showed a softer side of the band the lyrics were no less
05:10heavy as ozzy and bob daisley took aim at what they saw as the lies of the music business
05:17in between there was the menacing believer power ballad tonight the voodoo symbolism of little
05:29dolls and the mysteriously riffy s-a-t-o and then there was the album closer diary of a madman
05:37an ambitious six-minute epic that ends the album in grand style
05:41all this would be overshadowed by what happened next but 40 years on the music remains
05:52dying of madman is the sound of a time bomb ticking the crazy train coming off the rails
05:57and of a band at the peak of its powers few bands ever flew as high
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