When the giant gridiron helmet at one end of the field opened, the crowd inside Gillette Stadium heard the demented cackle of Ozzy Osbourne bellowing: “All aboard!” before they saw him.
Wearing a New England Patriots shirt with the number one on it, he clutched the microphone stand with both hands and roared the familiar battle cry of “Aye, Aye, Aye”.
The band behind him launched into the opening chords of Crazy Train, the Patriots’ traditional entrance anthem, and the place went berserk.
Coming off the back of their second successive Super Bowl victory, the club wanted to kick off the 2005 campaign by inviting the man himself to welcome the players on to the pitch with a live performance of the team song.
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Grinning maniacally throughout, with a gaggle of screaming kids and cheerleaders waving pom-poms in front of the stage, Osbourne wasn’t exactly exuding the sinister air of the one-time “Prince of Darkness”.
No bats were in danger of being chomped upon at Foxboro.
But the Patriots’ faithful lapped it up because, by then, that heavy metal standard had already become part of team lore. For nearly two more decades, every time they heard the opening couplet, “Crazy, but that’s how it goes, Millions of people living as foes” they knew Tom Brady and his all-conquering squad were about to come bounding out through plumes of fake smoke.
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A ditty about life during The Cold War is an odd number to become synonymous with firing up fans at a game but in New England, and far beyond, that’s the place it now holds in the culture.
Alongside rabble-rousing standards like The White Stripes Seven Nation Army, Queen’s We Will Rock You and House of Pain’s Jump Around, Crazy Train is a staple on the playlist at every major sports venue here. At some places, it’s an even more integral part of the show.
Every time the Kansas State Wildcats football team, who play at the Aviva next month, storm the field at Bill Snyder Stadium, Ozzy wailing about “going off the rails” has long been a cherished part of the college’s pregame ritual, whipping the student body into a frenzy.
The genesis of Osbourne’s first solo single after being kicked out of Black Sabbath is as curious as its sporting afterlife.
Desperate for something commercial to launch his Blizzard of Ozz album in 1980, the lyrics were written by Bob Daisley, his bass player, the riff came from the Gibson Les Paul of soon-to-be legendary young gunslinger Randy Rhoads, and Ozzy supplied the vocal melody.
Allegations and accusations about the non-payment of royalties due to the other two writers and their families (Rhoads was tragically killed in a plane crash not long after) became the stuff of tawdry legal drama involving Sharon Osbourne, his wife and controversial manager, through the decades.
There was serious money to squabble over since the tune has been ubiquitous at arenas across America for nearly half a century. Every time Chipper Jones came to bat for the Atlanta Braves during home games in the 1990s, his arrival at the plate was accompanied by the song.
It became so identified with the beloved third baseman that, long after his retirement, the club honoured Jones’ legacy by issuing a bobblehead doll to fans that played Crazy Train.
“I was an Ozzy fan and Black Sabbath fan,” said Larry Walker, a right-fielder with the Colorado Rockies who chose the same walk-on theme.
“It was the kind of music I grew up listening to. There are a lot of songs that might work, maybe AC/DC. But Ozzy, with the start of that song, when you hear it, immediately everybody is going: ‘Aye! Aye! Aye!’ You can hear them all doing it, right? It was great. It all came together.”
Befitting somebody whose final concert took place at his home stadium of Villa Park just 17 days before his death, Osbourne had a peculiar sports pedigree. During his Bark at the Moon tour in 1984, he was arrested for public intoxication in Memphis.
The subsequent mugshot, featuring him shell shocked in a St. Louis Blues’ hockey shirt, became cherished by fans of his music and the team.
Nineteen years later, milking his reality show fame, he threw out the first pitch at Wrigley Field and then led the customary rendition of Take Me Out To The Ballgame during the 7th inning stretch.
He didn’t appear to know the words, the drivel that came out of his mouth was indecipherable, and, instead of joining in as per tradition, most Chicago Cubs’ fans burst into laughter at the cacophony. The niceties of America’s pastime were a long way from his childhood in postwar Birmingham.
Growing up in the streets of Aston around Villa Park, he was never a devotee of his local club on the same scale as his bandmate, Geezer Butler. He was, however, thrilled when Paranoid and then Crazy Train were adopted as the songs that played the Villans on to the field.
Last season, he and the rest of Sabbath were involved in the launch video for the team’s new Adidas kit, and, before the Champions League game with Celtic earlier this year, fans unfurled a giant Tifo of Ozzy at the Holte End. Then the players walked on to Ozzy singing: “Heirs of a cold war, that’s what we’ve become, Inheriting troubles, I’m mentally numb.”
Crazy? That’s how it goes.
