The year was 1979. Ozzy Osbourne had been booted from the band he'd taken to fame and fortune, Black Sabbath, for his erratic behavior and massive appetite for hard drugs. Ozzy didn't know where to turn next, but his wife, Sharon, helped him put together a new band featuring drummer Lee Kerslake, bassist Bob Daisley and guitar prodigy Randy Rhoads.

The resulting album, featuring songs by Daisley and Rhoads, was released in 1980 in England and 1981 in the United States. It was called Blizzard of Ozz.
Since then, Blizzard of Ozz has become one of the most revered metal records of all time, and it deserves the acclaim it received. In particular, Rhoads, formerly of Quiet Riot, was an extremely gifted guitarist. His training in classical theory helped him create a groundbreaking electric guitar technique that would make this album.

Ozzy's voice was never especially impressive. He didn't even write the songs; he only has a writing credit on one track, the simplistic "No Bone Movies." Ozzy rose above the rest of the pack through a mixture of guts and eccentricity. As a result, Ozzy's personality understandably got the most attention, but on Blizzard of Ozz, Randy's talent provided the foundation.

The record finds Ozzy evolving beyond what he'd done with Sabbath. The songs stray from the blues that had always been at the base of Sabbath's music, branching out into far more complex scales for the arrangements and laying the groundwork for the heavy metal of the 1980s.

"Crazy Train," a showcase for Rhoads' guitar prowess, became Ozzy's signature song. The subject matter, mental illness, had been familiar to Ozzy's fans since Sabbath's Paranoid several years prior, but this song was something different. Where Sabbath's Tony Iommi specialized in sludgy riffing and plodding tempos, necessitated by the fact that he was missing part of a finger on his fret hand, Rhoads was a speed demon. His solo breaks throughout the song are the definition of shredding. "Crazy Train" is reason enough to buy the album.

Ozzy's sensitive side, which hadn't really made an appearance before, comes to the surface on "Goodbye to Romance." It's an unexpectedly melodic ballad, with Ozzy lamenting his past failures over a chord progression lifted from Pachelbel's "Canon in D," more evidence of Rhoads' classical background.

The next song, "Dee," is Rhoads by himself on acoustic guitar. Though only 50 seconds long, the touching ode to Rhoads' mother makes the guitarist's stylistic versatility easily apparent. After the controversial "Suicide Solution," Ozzy delves into his other lyrical mainstay, the occult, on "Mr. Crowley." The synth intro is very '80s but menacing all the same, Ozzy's demented howl is at its best, and Rhoads tops himself once again on the solos.

Ozzy would go on to have a successful solo career, but Rhoads tragically died in 1982, his musical legacy unfinished. Blizzard of Ozz remains his most enduring contribution to recorded music, and it does him justice.

Download: "Crazy Train," "Mr. Crowley," "Goodbye to Romance"

-- Andrew