“He’d start out pretty straight and sober, probably take a bottle of scotch in there with him,” engineer Max Norman told KNAC. While Daisley was given the nickname ‘Sid Serious’ for his perfectionism, Ozzy’s behaviour was harder to call. In echoes of Geezer Butler’s observations on Sabbath’s War Pigs, this new song carried an anti-conflict message, most notably in a final verse that referenced ‘ Heirs of a cold war, that’s what we’ve become/ Inheriting troubles, I’m mentally numb’.Īfter fruitful rehearsals at Gloucestershire’s Clearwell Castle, recording for Ozzy’s Blizzard Of Ozz album began at Surrey’s Ridge Farm studios in March 1980. Randy and I were train buffs, and I said: ‘That sounds like a crazy train.’ Ozzy had this saying ‘You’re off the rails!’ so I used that in the lyrics.”īeneath the verse’s piston-pump chug, however, the Crazy Train lyric tackled weightier themes than runaway locomotives. The title came because Randy had an effect that was making a psychedelic chugging sound through his amp. “I said: ‘Look what happens when you speed this riff up.’ We messed around, and the next thing I know he took it to a whole other level”).ĭaisley, however, is adamant that “that signature riff in F-sharp-minor from Crazy Train was Randy’s, then I wrote the part for him to solo over, and Ozzy had the vocal melody. Years later, questions would be raised over the authorship of the Crazy Train riff (“We were hanging out, and I showed Randy the riff to Steve Miller’s Swingtown,” said Quiet Riot’s Greg Leon. Randy was the first guy to make it comfortable for me.”
“In Sabbath,” he noted, “they’d just write something and say, ‘Put a vocal on that’. Unusually, the Crazy Train lick was not in the standard metal keys of ‘A’ or ‘E’, marking the first time a guitarist had written to order for Ozzy’s doomy holler. Rhoads brought a ferocious neo-classical guitar technique – and an irresistible riff that lit up the band’s first writing sessions. Ozzy Osbourne and Randy Rhoads onstage (Image credit: Paul Natkin / Getty Images)
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