Our next macabre-themed Rocktober song comes from the Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne, and his fantastic solo debut album, 1980's Blizzard of Ozz, which I featured back in July as a CoronaVinyl selection to highlight the guitar playing of Randy Rhoads. I'm not going to rehash my thoughts on the album as a whole -- you can click on the link above and read about it if you so desire -- but I'm here today to showcase "Mr. Crowley."
The song is about Aleister Crowley, an infamous British occultist and magician whose life and beliefs have been met with much fascination since his death, especially in the music world. He has found his way into various songs and even onto the cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, among other things. In 1971, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page bought Crowley's former residence, Boleskine House, located on Loch Ness in Scotland, which he owned until 1992 (and is featured in the band's film The Song Remains the Same).
"Mr. Crowley" starts out with eerie, Castlevania-esque organs, letting you know that something weird is amiss. Then the organs drop off as Ozzy's voice comes in with "Mr. Crowley, what went down in your head? / Oh, Mr. Crowley, did you talk to the dead?" The rest of the song seems to be calling Crowley a charlatan. Rhoads's guitar solos are awesome, as expected, and his first solo was ranked as the 28th best guitar solo by Guitar World's readers. The song itself came in at #23 in a 2016 Gibson readers' poll of the greatest heavy metal songs of all-time.
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