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On September 12, 1980, at Glasgow\u2019s Apollo, Ozzy Osbourne played his first official solo show after being kicked out of Black Sabbath. MOJO\u2019s James McNair was down the front to witness the Second Coming Of Ozzy.<\/p>\n
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Words: James McNair<\/strong><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2025\/07\/Ozzy-Osbourne-Live-1980_Getty_Crop.jpg” title_text=”Ozzy Osbourne” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Expelled from Black Sabbath in April 1979, Ozzy Osbourne had everything to prove as a solo artist. MOJO\u2019s James McNair, then a teenage metal fan, was there to witness his first official solo show with new band Blizzard Of Ozz.<\/strong><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n September 12, 1980 and Carl Orff\u2019s demonic O Fortuna rings out across The Glasgow Apollo. It\u2019s Ozzy Osbourne\u2019s intro tape and musical shorthand for: Enter, Prince Of Darkness\u2026 <\/p>\n It hasn\u2019t been that long since Ozzy holed up at West Hollywood\u2019s Le Parc Hotel for a debauched three-month bender trollleyed on cocaine, Guinness and Cointreau to obliterate the pain of being kicked out of Black Sabbath. His career appeared to be toast and his first marriage was kaput, but now his new manager and girlfriend Sharon Osbourne \u2013 and a Californian guitar wunderkind named Randy Rhoades \u2013 have brought him back from the brink. <\/p>\n \u201cGo fucking crazy!\u201d, Ozzy roars as he and his new band launch into I Don\u2019t Know. This not-yet-writer and 3,499 other Glaswegian metallers respond accordingly.<\/p>\n All flashes of teeth and manic hand-clapping, the singer cavorts in a white shirt with fringing under its arms. For \u00a33.50 we\u2019re witnessing The Second Coming Of Ozzy; his first official gig with Blizzard Of Ozz. Save for two Sabbath songs \u2013 Iron Man and Children of The Grave \u2013 Blizzard\u2019s relatively short set is drawn from their self-titled debut, released that same day. <\/p>\n Thanks to hard-rock oracle Tommy Vance\u2019s BBC Radio 1 slot The Friday Rock Show, we\u2019ve heard flagship single Crazy Train, and now we\u2019re heeding Ozzy\u2019s deranged-sounding \u201cAll Aboard!\u201d invite. He is nothing if not inclusive. <\/p>\n Randy Rhoades, it transpires, knows exactly how to take the harmonic seeds and inherent doom of Tony Iommi\u2019s playing and make them his own via hyper-melodic, neo-classical shredding. Ozzy loves what Rhoades is bringing, covets him, and at the Apollo he easily lifts the petite, handsome kid with the Mick Ronson feather-cut as though he were a trophy \u2013 which, in fact, he is. <\/p>\n Drummer Lee Kerslake (Uriah Heep) and bassist Bob Daisley (Rainbow) are the seasoned rhythm section pros, the foundation upon which Osbourne and Rhoades\u2019 bravura performance builds a bridge between Ozzy\u2019s legacy with Sabbath and the post-Van Halen world of heavy metal fireworks. Sabbath\u2019s erstwhile frontman is shedding skins, embracing the \u201880s.<\/p>\n Even if Ozzy succeeds in getting inked Scots bikers to sway to it, Blizzard\u2026\u2019s dud, momentum-sapping ballad Goodbye To Romance doesn\u2019t fly. After that, though, we see Ozzy\u2019s confidence grow song by song. His critique of magick, Mr. Crowley, and the epic slice of gothic environmentalism (Revelation). Mother Earth prove particularly powerful live. Although we don\u2019t yet know it, Rhoades and Daisley\u2019s masterful arrangements will provide a blueprint for Ozzy\u2019s solo career which will last another 45 years.<\/p>\n The bat. The dove. Pissing on The Alamo. Rhoades\u2019s tragic death aged 25. The Osbournes, Ozzfest, and Ozzy\u2019s status as a magnet and petri dish for successive generations of guitar talent. Like his quad bike crash and the final cruel ambush of Parkinson\u2019s, all of these things were still ahead of Ozzy that night in Glasgow. He was 31, still more singer than caricature, and it was wonderful to see him perform before the static of so much accrued incident obscured his gift. <\/p>\n \u201cDo you remember Ozzy kissing The Apollo stage?\u201d, Sharon Osbourne asked me years later when I told her I was there. I didn\u2019t remember it and still don\u2019t, but the idea of Ozzy doing so rings true. Given his difficult upbringing, Ozzy\u2019s treasured relationship with his audience was perhaps about acceptance, about coming home and finding his place in the world. From the Glasgow Apollo to Villa Park in Aston, Birmingham, he did so with great stoicism and energy, his thirst for performance unquenchable to the end.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n IMAGE:<\/strong> Watal Asanuma\/Shinko Music\/Getty Images<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Inside Ozzy Osbourne\u2019s First-Ever Solo GigOn September 12, 1980, at Glasgow\u2019s Apollo, Ozzy Osbourne played his first official solo show after being kicked out of Black Sabbath. MOJO\u2019s James McNair was down the front to witness the Second Coming Of Ozzy.Words: James McNairExpelled from Black Sabbath in April 1979, Ozzy Osbourne had everything to prove […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":2625,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mojo-presents"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"akindell","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2624"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2629,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624\/revisions\/2629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}