Ozzy Osbourne is in front of thousands of people, but he just wants them to get high in “Passaic, 1975.”

Track: “Passaic, 1975”
Album: In League with Dragons (2019)

There are many real people in Mountain Goats songs, but I don’t think anyone shows up as often as Ozzy Osbourne. John Darnielle loves his music, but he seems equally interested in the story of how Ozzy came to power. There are other songs about his early years in a slaughterhouse and his mental state, but “Passaic, 1975” finds him in front of tens of thousands of audience members and not making the best use of the opportunity.

Or is he? In Memphis, in the song, Ozzy blacks out in front of a huge crowd despite a unique piece of tech supposedly keeping the show interesting and exciting. John Darnielle shows us over and over again that Ozzy doesn’t care in the way we think we’d care, he just wants to get high. Not only that, but he wants you to get high. It’s the greatest aspiration he can think of, so why do any of the rest of this stuff?

If you’ve been to a live show and heard someone yell for “Going to Georgia” in the middle of the wind up to a slower song, you can’t help but hear a line like “contingency plans in case the new one flops” as a line with a double meaning. The Mountain Goats aren’t Black Sabbath, obviously, but John Darnielle has to see some of his much younger self in Ozzy’s methods of dealing with the fame he’s found. I think reading too much into it is probably a mistake, though. This is the story of Ozzy getting what he supposedly wanted and finding that there are, to borrow another Mountain Goats line, “brighter things than diamonds.”