It always sort of irks me when an artist knocks one of their releases. It just feels like the artist would end up insulting the portion of their fanbase that might have a favorable opinion of that album. Even still, it's always interesting to hear. This weekend, Ozzy Osbourne announced a massive vinyl box set of his discography.
With the announcement, came some discussion of his career. While Ozzy has previously said that Blizzard of Ozz (1980) and Diary of a Madman (1981) are tied to be his favorite album, his least favorite album may be a bit surprising. Ozzy is not a fan of 1986's The Ultimate Sin.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, the Prince of Darkness revealed:
"[Producer] Ron Nevison didn’t really do a great production job. The songs weren't bad; they were just put down weird. Everything felt and sounded the fucking same. There was no imagination. If there was ever an album I'd like to remix and do better, it would be The Ultimate Sin."
The album features one of Ozzy's biggest solo hits, "Shot In The Dark."
Elsewhere in the interview, Ozzy recollected about the infamous "Bark At The Moon" cover and music video shoot, saying the make up took over eight hours.
He had to keep it on for the “Bark at the Moon” video shoot, which was filmed “in this disused Victorian mental hospital somewhere in fucking England.” Ozzy loved how macabre the setting was and remembers finding patients’ files strewn about the floor. “It was fuckin’ weird,” he says. “It was like one of them old movies. We found a fetus — a fucking baby — in a pickle jar there. And it was all fucked up and dark gray. It was fucking vile.” He pauses. “And no, I didn’t drink it. The very thought of it makes me feel sick.”
But mostly, he remembers the shoot as being “fucking freezing, ’cause I had all this human hair stuck to my body and the fingernail extensions and the fucking werewolf thing.” It was a vivid scene and he still laughs about watching people freak out when they saw him acting casually around the set. “I went to the canteen after we did the makeup test, and these kids were in there and they were freaking out when they saw me,” he says. “I’d fucking drop dead if I were to see me. It was so real. The contact lenses they had in make you look demonic.”
Read Ozzy talking about some of his classic albums here.
