Mr. Crowley
by Ozzy Osbourne
- 108
- BPM
- D minor
- Key
- 7A
- Camelot
- 32
- Danceability
- 4
- Acousticness
Two months after Blizzard of Ozz reached UK shelves in September 1980, a live version of "Mr. Crowley" by Ozzy Osbourne came out there as a single. North America waited until 1981 for the studio version. By then it was the second single from the album, after "Crazy Train".
Osbourne, guitarist Randy Rhoads and bassist and lyricist Bob Daisley wrote it about the English occultist Aleister Crowley, who founded the Thelemite religion in the early twentieth century. The spark was a book, The Diary of a Drug Fiend, that Osbourne had read, along with a deck of tarot cards found in the studio just as recording began.
Don Airey's keyboard solo opens the track. Airey remembered clearing the band out of the studio and telling them to come back in half an hour. When Osbourne returned and heard it, he said Airey had plugged into his head. Rhoads's first guitar solo became one of the best known in heavy metal. Readers of Guitar World placed it 28th among guitar solos in 2011. That same year a Gibson reader poll put the song 23rd among the greatest heavy metal songs.
Mr. Crowley runs at 108 BPM, the tempo of mid-tempo pop, dancehall and indie. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.22 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 556 ms. It is in D minor, Camelot 7A, which shares its notes with F major and mixes cleanly with G minor and A minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.