Life on the road with Black Sabbath was remembered fondly by Ozzy Osbourne, who says one song by The Beatles reminded him of their tour.
The track features on Abbey Road and was considered by John Lennon to be the best on the album. For Osbourne, a long-time admirer of The Beatles, George Harrison‘s Something was a hit, which helped the band through a “homesick” residency in Zurich, Switzerland. Though the band were touring Europe, Osbourne says the group were flat broke and had been sharing a single cigarette between the four of them. Though borderline destitute at the time of their tour, it’s a fond memory from the Crazy Train hitmaker. Speaking to Rolling Stone Magazine, Osbourne would confirm the band continually heard the song while driving through The Alps on their tour of Europe.
He said: “Black Sabbath were doing a residency in a bar in Zurich. It was winter, and we were driving in the van to get home for Christmas. We were homesick and had no money, one cigarette between the four of us. This song reminds me of that time, because we kept hearing it as we were going over the Alps.”
Osbourne’s love for The Beatles is well-documented, with the veteran songwriter once scrapping a cover song after realising it was a Paul McCartney song. The decision led to a surprisingly heartfelt email from the Let It Be hitmaker, who thanked Osbourne for not covering the Chaos and Creation in the Backyard track.
The Paul McCartney song had won the Prince of Darkness over when he first heard it, with Osbourne confirming he had planned to use the song. Though he did not make clear what he would have used the song for, he was told to leave it well alone by sound engineer John Roden.
McCartney and Ozzy were friends at this point in their careers, and a light-hearted letter was delivered to the War Pigs and Paranoid hitmaker when he decided not to take the song. A chance mention of the song to Roden led to Osbourne opting not to take it and, presumably, record the song or lift parts of it for future use in the studio.
He wrote in his book, I Am Ozzy: “We e-mail each other from time to time now, me and Paul. (Which means I speak and Tony taps what I’ve said into the computer, ’cos I don’t have the patience for all that internet bollocks.)
“It started when I heard a song called Fine Line on a Lexus commercial. I thought, Fucking hell, that’s not a bad tune, I think I’ll nick it. So I mentioned it – just in passing – to a guy who used to work with me called John Roden, who also happened to work with Paul.
“John said, ‘Y’know who wrote that, don’t you?’ I told him I didn’t have a clue. ‘My other boss,’ he said. Obviously I left the song well alone after that.” Word got back to McCartney that Osbourne had decided to leave the song alone, and what followed was a sweet letter from The Beatles member.
Osbourne continued: “Then, out of the blue, came this letter saying, ‘Thanks for not nicking Fine Line, Ozzy.’ You couldn’t get the smile off my face for days. And it just went on from there.
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