Who better than John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats to sing a final hymn to the recently deceased Ozzy Osbourne? All kinds of people are writing all kinds of wonderful things about the marvelously complex Osbourne, who proclaimed himself the “Prince of Darkness” while writing songs condemning the real article, but I’ve heard nothing better or more moving about Ozzy the man than the Mountain Goats’ 2019 song, “Passaic 1975.”
You might think the hyper-articulate and all-around nice guy Darnielle would be the last person to write the best all-time song about a guy who bit the head off a dead bat during a concert in 1982 and snorted ants a few years later to awe and appall the members of Mötley Crüe. Darnielle is not a metal guy. He’s as far from a metal guy as you can get and still be on the same planet.
And yet. Darnielle has always been a metal FAN, and a superfan of Black Sabbath; why, he actually sat down and wrote one of those little and normally quite dry (they’re published by Bloomsbury Academic, after all) 33 1/3 books about Black Sabbath’s 1971 tour de force Master of Reality.
But Darnielle’s little book is anything but dry, because being the novelist and consummate short-story-in-song kind of guy he is Darnielle wrote a goddamn NOVELLA about a kid who gets locked up for anti-social behavior and writes a journal addressed to his counselor Gary about how unfair it is he’s not allowed to listen to his Master of Reality tape, and who in the end is sent to another and far harsher institution after stealing the tape from safe-keeping and more or less daring Gary to report him, which Gary does. And in the course of this journal, he asks Gary to LISTEN to Master of Reality while explaining just WHY he loves Master of Reality so much, and it’s mighty fine as you can judge from his description of the opening of Master of Reality’s “Sweet Leaf”:
“And what do you hear after the coughing? [That opens the song.] Immediately after with no stopping? That’s right Gary the therapist whose brains are probably blown all over the office right now. You heard a guitar riff that comes from a volcano under the ocean!! It is a super-simple riff, and anyone could play it. I could even show you how to play it, and I am not really that good on guitar.”
And before I end this digression I think it only fitting to 1) mention that the novella’s plot dovetails quite nicely with The Mountain Goats’ positively brilliant 2002 song “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton,” which must be heard to be believed and 2) quote the end of the novella (spoiler alert!), wherein an adult Roger (that’s the kid’s name) is putting a final entry in his journal some ten years later. He tells Gary, “In a way it was you who put the binding signature on my contract with Black Sabbath. You sealed the deal. Now when I hear them I hear you disappearing into the meaningless passed.” And in closing,
“When I started this I hoped you’d write back but now I don’t care. Instead fuck you. Fuck you and go to hell. I mean it Gary. For real. You and your whole system, fuck you all. I am better than you or I will be some day. Better than all that. Getting there. Working hard to get there. So fuck you man. Fuck you all. Go to Hell.”
But the single, “Passaic 1975″ is a more personal homage of sorts, and touching in a way that nothing I’ve read in the wake of Osbourne’s death on July 22, 2025 has been. It’s one of those weird singles that has a name (“Welcome to Passaic”) that isn’t the title of either of the songs on the single, and I’ll just saying in passing that the title of the B-side (“Get High And Listen To The Cure”) is self-explanatory and quite nice, albeit different in a way from most of his songs. It sounds off the cuff. It’s just Darnielle and a drum machine. Check it out.
As for “Passaic 1975,” it’s told from Ozzy’s point of view, and the title refers to a single (and real, according to Darnielle) tour date in the life of Ozzy Osbourne in the year 1975, in (duh) Passaic, New Jersey. It paints the picture of a guy in the throes of drug and alcohol addiction, but it also paints a picture of a guy with a simple and ecstatic message. Ozzy wants the whole world to get high.
The melody is simple, the chorus anthemic to the nth heavy metal degree, even if the song itself isn’t metal at all. The song opens with two verses that set the scene:
“Write something down in illegible script
As we’re approaching the landing strip
New Gibson SG, inlaid with pearl
Tonight Passaic, tomorrow the world
In a Holiday Inn by a nameless river
Renew the assault on my lungs and my liver
And while I’m waiting for the company man
Slip on my kimono that I bought in Japan.”
Then we get to the genius part, namely the chorus, where Ozzy sets a simple commandment for his fans:
“Tell the crowd, tell the world
I want everyone to get high
Tell the press, tell the cameras
I want everyone to get high.”
And the thing is, the thing you have to hear is, the simple faith Darnielle/Osbourne puts into those words. He’s on a mission, and not a mission from Satan (the surprising thing about Master of Reality is that it’s practically an example of Christian rock) but from God, and he’s shouting his message from the rooftops as if getting high is some kind of salvation, although he obviously knows getting high is taking him down.
Which makes me think that what he’s really saying is get high on life, on being alive, on loving life and living your life to the fullest. To listen to his music is to know that the Prince of Darkness is actually a Prince of Light.
Then we get two more verses, set not in Passaic but from somewhere further down the endless highway, and they demonstrate in their telling detail why Darnielle is perhaps the most wickedly talented storyteller working in the music field today:
“And the tech crew in Memphis has a present for me
Like the ones they have on TV
The deluxe model
One of only four thousand made
Black out that night in front of ten thousand paid
In the back lounge, in between stops
Contingency plans in case the new one flops
Sometimes I wake up coughing up blood
Tonight Indianapolis, tomorrow the flood.”
That “tomorrow the flood” says everything, goodbye world conquest Ozzy might not be there to see it, he’s blacking out on stage and coughing up blood, and yet despite it all he’s still preaching, and what is amazing is that you’re rooting for him, you believe his message and against all of the odds and the evidence to the contrary it’s a positive and even beautiful message, because it comes from Ozzy’s heart and Ozzy’s heart was always pure, he was both a simple and fiendishly complex man but you can tell he means it, and that he knows his message is beautiful and pure and for the whole wide world to hear:
“Tell the person next to you
I want everyone to get high
Tell your boss, tell your mother
I want everyone to get high
Get high.”
And that’s how it closes, with that great “Tell your boss, tell your mother. ” What a masterstroke that “mother” is, as is that “person next to you” who could be anybody but isn’t because he’s there beside you and obviously loves Ozzy too, which makes him your brother. Only Darnielle, I swear, could have come up with it.
Ozzy Osbourne left behind a legacy of great music and personal trials and tribulations that make it almost a miracle he lived as long as he did. And the best thing I can think to say of the man is he was as human as they come, and that his music moved people, all kinds of people, from Roger in his institution to John Darnielle who once worked in just such an institution.
Roger risked everything to hear his Master of Reality tape. That’s how much Ozzy and his music meant to him. He risked everything and lost, but in the end, he lived to say fuck you and go to hell because Ozzy is on the side of the angels and you have to be blind, deaf, and cruel not to see that.
Get high! Hail Satan!
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
