I’m somewhat conflicted on how to review the “legacy edition” of Ozzy Osbourne’s Diary of a Madman as this release left me disappointed as I was expecting “more”. The challenge is that I haven’t yet been able to put my finger on what it is that I was expecting.

To dive into this release, this is a double CD that contains the original recording of Diary of a Madman along with a bonus live CD from the Blizzard of Ozz tour. The Osbournes caused quite a stink when, due to royalty disputes, they replaced Bob Daisley’s bass parts and Lee Kerslake’s drum parts on the 2002 reissue of Diary with new recordings done by Robert Trujillo and Mike Bordin. While I think there are serious ethical issues here, numerous bands have added and deleted various (ex-)members parts for as long as I can remember. Some of the ones that come immediately to mind are:

- Black Sabbath: Tony Martin was brought in to sing over Ray Gillen’s parts on Eternal Idol after Ray had left the band
- Dave Wakeling: His solo disc was “built” by the record company using session demos and hired musician long after Dave had abandoned the project
- Kiss: The greatest hits disc in Sonic Boom was re-recorded without Ace and Peter (hmmm…I bet the Gene and Paul wanted to “[add] a fresh sound to the original [tracks]” rather than this having anything to do with royalties)

Disc One of Diary is a straightforward reissue of the eight track / 44-minute CD. Disc Two is a complete live concert (unlisted location – some sites have cited this show as being from The Palladium, NYC on 5/2/81) from the second leg of the Blizzard of Ozz tour. The show sounds great and the disc’s eleven tracks runs just over sixty minutes. The challenge here is that this show has the exact same set list as Tribute (which was recorded in Cleveland in 5/11/81) and covers no new ground.

The good point of this set is that it is selling for $10 used on Amazon, which isn’t a bad price to pay for a full-length live CD. The negative is that I expected something “new” from this reissue – perhaps bonus tracks on the studio CD or, at minimum, the inclusion of the “Mr Crowley” EP so that I don’t have to worry about hooking up my turntable when I want to hear these songs. I also would have expected the live show to be from the Diary of a Madman tour as the Blizzard tour was already documented on Tribute. (Note: The difference between the Blizzard and Diary set lists was the addition of “Over the Mountain” and “Goodbye to Romance” to the set.)

Unless you have to have everything Ozzy does (or you have only the 2002 issue of Diary), I’d pass on this deluxe edition. Inevitably, there will be “super-deluxe” re-reissue that comes out sometime in the next few years.

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Ozzy Osbourne