Ultimate Rhoads

By D. O'Malley (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews

I recently heard that two of my all-time favorite albums, Ozzy Osbourne's "Blizzard of Ozz" and "Diary of a Madman," had undergone a 24-bit remastering process, and were to be re-released on CD. I couldn't wait to check them out, and I purchased them the moment they became available.
The first clue that something was wrong came while I was leafing through the booklet for "Blizzard." The old back cover photo of Ozzy on stage with guitarist Randy Rhoads, bassist (and lyricist) Bob Daisley, and drummer Lee Kerslake had been doctored so that only Ozzy was now visible. Strange, I thought.

Then I sat down to listen. My first reaction to "Blizzard" was that the drumming sounded sloppier than I remembered. Skipping from track to track, I noticed some things were sounding very different, and that the album seemed to have not only been remastered, but had been completely remixed from the original multi-track tapes.

Giving the liner notes a closer look, I discoved that all of the bass and drum tracks for both albums have been re-recorded by current Ozzy sidemen Robert Trujillo and Mike Bordin, respectively.

I'm not kidding.

At this point I began to get pretty upset. The bass and drum tracks have been re-recorded in such a way as to mimic the original sound of the albums, but it doesn't work: Trujillo's bass is actually noticeably out-of-tune on a couple of numbers, and Bordin's drumming never matches the feel of the original tracks. Of course, "Blizzard of Ozz" was a somewhat lo-fi album to begin with. What about "Diary of a Madman," the album I've long characterized as the "Sgt. Pepper" of Heavy Metal?

In my opinion, "Diary" has been ruined. From the opening drum triplets of "Over the Mountain" everything is wrong, wrong, wrong. Every ounce of magic the album had has been sucked out of it. Randy's guitar tones are completely messed up. Some of his solos and fills are barely audible, and his various effects and textures have been replaced with a dry, shrill tone in many spots. The new mix retains none of the charm, atmosphere, or detail of the original. Even "Flying High Again" sounds awful. Why on earth would Ozzy tamper with one of the greatest sounding albums in hard rock history?

Well, according to Sharon Osbourne, Daisley and Kerslake have been removed from the albums because they have been "harassing" the Osbourne family. The truth is that Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake are suing Ozzy for non-payment of royalties and for crediting others (Rudy Sarzo and Tommy Aldridge) for their work on "Diary of a Madman." By removing them from the recordings, Ozzy can ensure that Daisley and Kerslake will receive no future mechanical royalties from his back catalog. This is simply an act of monumental greed and arrogance, and I implore you not to support Ozzy in this shameful endeavor.

These CD's are being promoted as "original recording remastered," with no outward indication to the buyer that they have been re-recorded with sidemen Randy Rhoads never even met. It is an unforgivable affront to Randy's memory, and it is deliberately misleading to Ozzy's longtime fans. Unfortunately, these will soon be the only versions of these albums you can buy, so get the 1995 22-bit remasters while you still can: They sound fantastic and are the only authentic versions of these hard rock masterpieces.

Paul Wolfe wrote:The remasters were done to end the legal battle, they were not done to screw the fans or make money. They suck, sure, but so what? Don't buy them and in another few years they'll be remastered again. They are Ozzy's best sellers and get remastered repeatedly.

McLowery wrote:

Paul Wolfe wrote:The remasters were done to end the legal battle, they were not done to screw the fans or make money. They suck, sure, but so what? Don't buy them and in another few years they'll be remastered again. They are Ozzy's best sellers and get remastered repeatedly.

Dude, going from two of the best hard rock albums of not just their own time, but of all time, to "sure they suck!" is a mighty fucking far drop in stature wouldn't you think?

The replacement of Bob and Lee's tracks didn't just remove their parts from the albums it destroyed the electricity and the almost pure as it gets true Rock-n-Roll those two albums stood for. Nobody is capable of going into a studio, sitting down with the master tracks and then laying down a performance that melds right into the mix like they were supposed to be there and that is because Bob, Lee, Randy and Ozzy all worked those songs together, they knew each others idiosyncracies and they were all on the same wavelength.

The life drained right out of those albums with that pompous act of sacrilige the Osbourne camp comitted on them. This stands, IMO, as one of the ugliest faces of the music industry because now a lot of other bands are doing the same thing, destroying the magic their album once had just so they can save some fucking money..