“Mr. Crowley” by Ozzy Osbourne

"Mr. Crowley" is Ozzy Osbourne's tip of the hat to the English occultist Aleister Crowley, and it sits on Blizzard of Ozz, his first solo album, from September 1980. Osbourne wrote it with guitarist Randy Rhoads and bassist Bob Daisley, and it opens in a cathedral fog of keyboards from Don Airey, who cleared the band out of the studio and knocked the intro out in half an hour; Ozzy told him he had plugged straight into his head.

Then Rhoads takes over, and his first solo became one of the best known in metal, a rush of notes that Guitar World readers ranked 28th best of all time in 2011. Lee Kerslake drums, Daisley adds backing vocals, and Max Norman engineered. A live version went out as a British single that November, and the studio take followed in North America in 1981.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.