Ozzy Osbourne in an Illinois Basement

A reminiscence

In my early teen years in suburban Illinois, during that purgatorial moment when your hormones are screaming but you don’t have a driver’s license yet, a group of us would pass the time roller-skating in our friend Tara’s basement while listening to heavy metal. We liked Black Sabbath the best. Tara's brothers played hockey, so there were many pairs of inline skates we could borrow; her basement was unfinished—all high wood-beamed ceilings and concrete floors—and her parents were never, ever home. This was the ideal environment in which to strip down to our underwear, put on a blacklight strobe light (I’m not even sure where we got that), and skate around to “War Pigs.” One summer afternoon as we were gliding away down there, Tara’s mother, Donna, came home from work unexpectedly, heard the music, and opened the basement door to find us like that—five of us, three girls and two boys, our undies glowing under the flashing green strobe light, Black Sabbath blaring. She started screeching, “You’re all on drugs! Get out of here! You’re all on drugs!” In fact, we were stone cold sober; we only felt like we were on drugs. That was the raw, alchemical power of the music. Thank you, Ozzy Osbourne, for giving that wild feeling of freedom to a bunch of bored kids in a Midwestern basement. Rest in Peace.