Sometimes business can interfere with creativity, especially in the music world. When a band doesn’t feel the freedom of creativity, they might not be able to produce something they like. According to Dinosaur Jr. singer J Mascis, Ozzy Osbourne didn’t like the album ‘Sabotage’ by Black Sabbath because the band was fighting legal issues at the time.
‘Sabotage’ was released in July 1975, and Black Sabbath was going through a legal battle with former manager Patrick Meehan. Meehan was fired from the band the same year the album was created and released, and the members had to deal with business instead of focusing solely on the creative process.
J Mascis recently spoke about his all-time favorite albums, among which was ‘Sabotage.’ He said in the interview that it affected him since the first time he listened to it. Later, he had the opportunity to interview Ozzy Osbourne and ask him what he thinks of the album himself. However, Osbourne said that there were a lot of lawyers to deal with, and he indicated that the band didn’t enjoy working on it as much as they could have if the circumstances were different.
J Mascis spoke to Music Radar:
“I got to interview Ozzy on the phone once, and he didn’t like ‘Sabotage,’ so I asked him why he didn’t like it, and he just said because there were all these lawyers in the room, it was a bad time, and it just reminded him of that, which I understood because I had that kind of feeling with the ‘Bug’ album, with Dinosaur Jr. It reminds me of a bad time with the band.
Ozzy was great because he just answered all the questions that I had. Like, boom, boom, boom! It was awesome! Like my favorite line, ‘Smoking and tripping is all that you do,’ and I was asking him about writing songs, and he was like, ‘Blah, blah, blah, Geezer wrote most of the songs. I wrote some of the stuff.’ I asked him, ‘Who wrote that line?’ He said, ‘That was me!’ That line…”
In that interview with Ozzy, he replied to J Mascis’ questions very well, and the singer seemed to have enjoyed that. Even though Ozzy doesn’t like his band’s 1975 album, ‘Sabotage,’ the album had very positive criticism. Rolling Stone had stated during that time about the album as the best Black Sabbath album since their ‘Paranoid’ and had added that it might even be the best Black Sabbath album so far.
