Ozzy Osbourne was left devastated by the tragic death of Randy Rhoads in March 1982, to the point where he thought about quitting music altogether. However, the Prince of Darkness was in the middle of the Diary of a Madman tour at the time, and so a turbulent few months lay ahead.
While Jake E. Lee would eventually take over the lead guitarist role full-time, the period before his arrival was anything but stable.
A number of high-profile players would come close to the gig. But the Ozzy machine eventually settled on Bernie Tormé, who was brought on board for an ill-fated spell to try and help finish the tour.
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“I only played about seven or eight gigs with Ozzy; I was involved for around three weeks,” Tormé remembered in Total Guitar in April 2005. “They had a terribly problematic situation. Ozzy had just broken America and was coming back to New York to play two enormous gigs; it was his breakthrough point.
“I think after the Randy thing happened, Ozzy’s immediate reaction was, ‘Let’s pack it in.’ I mean, Randy was a mate of theirs. He wasn’t just some random guy.”
In 1982, Tormé’s stock was high, and it was Sharon Osbourne who helped him sign a solo record deal with Jet Records – a connection which led to him stepping into Rhoads’ shoes.
“At the time, I was totally unaware of anything Ozzy had previously released other than the Black Sabbath stuff, and I didn’t like Sabbath,” he recalled. “I had just finished playing with Ian Gillan, and at least I was sort of into Deep Purple.
“But David [Arden, Sharon’s brother] said, ‘It’s $2,000 a week. I told him I’d think about it, so I talked to everyone, including Gillan’s manager, who knew David Arden. He said, ‘Do it, but make sure you get a week’s pay up front.’ So I got the gig. I went out, and it was really depressing.
“It was the most horrible situation,” Tormé added. “At the beginning, I had a borrowed guitar, Randy’s pedals, and Randy’s amps. Having heard the records, I had an enormous amount of respect for the guy, so I thought, hold on, if I go in here and play exactly the way he played, I’m sort of erasing him as a person.
“I don’t think they wanted someone who was trying to become Ozzy’s guitarist at that point. I think they just wanted to get through those show dates.”
Get through the dates they did, but it wasn’t Tormé who saw the tour out. He wasn’t mad about that.
“I loved Ozzy,” he says. “He’s such a nice guy, and he was in such a bad way. I just didn’t feel like the right guy to be in that band.
“I felt really bad about replacing Randy because it crossed my mind: if my band were in the middle of a tour and I had been killed, would I have been happy about them carrying on? I don’t think so. That isn’t to say they made the wrong decision.”
He accepted that the band needed to play on. It was best for everyone. But it wasn’t an environment he felt at home in.
“I didn’t want to use Randy’s pedals, and I had his roadie who didn’t want to be there and was just crying all the time,” he said. “But my pedals hadn’t arrived at the first gig.
“Randy’s pedals would turn on and off at times when I was nowhere near them. They had lights on them, and I could see the lights. I was like, ‘Fuckin’ hell, he’s trying to help!’ I just felt too close.
“It was really odd because it was a personal choice for me – I needed the money, basically. But the day I walked out I was like, ‘Fuck me! I’m glad to be out of that.’”
Alongside a solo career, Tormé would go back to working with Atomic Rooster, with Brad Gillis filling his place in Ozzy’s band after a late-night hotel-room audition. Tormé’s time in the band was short, but he also goes down in heavy metal folklore as the player who saved Ozzy’s career.
