Ozzy takes aim at Tony Blair

Ozzy Osbourne has described meeting former British Prime Minister Tony Blair – and not being impressed in the slightest.

The Prince Of Darkness recalls meeting Blair when the then Labour leader was guiding the country into a war in Iraq, and leaving with an even lower opinion of politicians than he had to start with.

In the second part of a series for Noisey – in which Ozzy is interviewed by his son Jack – the Black Sabbath icon discusses his ear for a melody, religious zealots and politicians.

He says: “I met Tony Blair once and he’s looking at me. He comes over, and it’s just when the Iraq war had started, and I thought he was going to say, ‘You could do very good for the country by doing a song for the troops’ or something. But he goes, ‘Do you know I was once in a band, but I couldn’t quite get the chords for Iron Man.’

“I’m like, ‘Is that all you’ve got to fucking say?’ We vote for these people and they never seem to pull off all this shit they promise us to get in.”

Asked by Jack to reveal the secret of his success, both with Sabbath and as a solo artist, Ozzy says he puts everything into every studio session.

He adds: “When I go into a studio, I’ve never gone, ‘You know what, I really feel like doing a fucking bad album.’ Sometimes that happens, but sometimes it doesn’t. I record an album, leave it for a couple of weeks then listen to it.

“I don’t play an instrument, I don’t understand music. I come up with the melodies. That’s the only thing I have got.”

In the first of the three part series, Ozzy talked about “loving” life since he turned his back on drink, drugs and cigarettes.

Ozzy’s career-spanning retrospective Memoirs Of A Madman was released this month.

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.