This story begins in 1984 when parents found their nineteen-year-old teeanger named John McCollum
dead in his bed in Indio, California. The cause of death was determined to be a self
inflicted gunshot wound. McCollum was found wearing headphones listening to side one
of the Ozzy Osbourne 1980 album Blizzard of Ozz, which featured the song suicide solution.
That song would become the subject of a civil lawsuit against Ozzy
and his record labels CBS and Jet Records . The parents of McCollum claimed that a 28 second
instrumental portion of the song contained hidden lyrics encouraging listeners to and i quote ‘get
the gun and try it.” The complainants claimed that the lyrics were sung at 1.5 times the normal
speech rate and were not part of the published lyrics to the song. Instead the album’s liner
notes listed the line as and i quote “vocal frills and ad libs.” UPI news would also report
that the lawsuit against Osbourne and his labels named the black sabbath song paranoid as also
promoting death. McCollum’s father a banker would tell UPI that his son dropped out of
the 9th grade and spent hours listening to heavy metal and would be quoted as telling publication
"[He's] a perfectly normal kid there, who really doesn't show any signs of any depression at all,
and happy and all of a sudden, six hours, he's dead. No one [could] explain it, the only thing
we know is he was listening to this music," Press coverage about the incident did go against some of
the things his father claimed as it would come out that John McCollum suffered from depression
and that he did have some trouble with the law including an arrest for drunk driving,
but his father claimed he knew his son well adding 'We were extremely close,'We had our own
handshake, and our own hit on the arm, so this came as a complete surprise to me.... I never
knew what was on those records he listened to. The first time I heard them was the day after John's
death and I knew it was the music that caused it.' The complainants lawsuit, relied on a on a
California law prohibiting assistance or encouragement of suicide. Ozzy’s wife and
manager Sharon would respond to the Lawsuit telling the new york times
'I'm glad this boy never read Shakespeare in school, because he would have shot himself
years earlier,'. 'Everyone was killing everyone in Shakespeare.' Ozzy’s lawyer
echoed the same sentiments, but about hollywood movies like the texas chain saw massacare.
Ozzy would tell Billy Morrison in 2020 during an interview on Sirius XM how
he learned about the lawsuit recalling “Sharon phoned me up in England. She said,
‘Get on a plane. You’ve gotta come out.’ I said, ‘Tell me what I’ve got to come out for.’
She said, ‘I’ll tell you when you get here.’ I said, ‘Is it problems?’ She said,
‘Just get on an expletive plane.'” “I get to LAX, come to the terminal,
and there must’ve been 200 cameras. I’m looking over my shoulder [while] I’m standing, and [there
are] about 15 microphones in front of me: ‘What do you think of this lawsuit?’ And I’m going, ‘What
lawsuit? I’m gonna go back to the hotel. I’ll find out what it’s all about.” Ozzy would add he was
and i quote ‘beyond shocked’ about the lawsuit. Ozzy would have mixed emotions at the time
of the suit as he told an interviewer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NYtytTKuTw&t=106s
(2:37 - 3:56) Ozzy would claim that
the song’s message was misunderstood saying the song was written about friend former
AC/DC frontman Bon Scott who died due to acute alcohol poisoning. The song was meant to be a
warning about the dangers of drugs and alcohol. According to the book ozzy knows best, mccollum’s
father went as far as to hire a company called the Institute for Bio-Acoustics Research who claimed
that some of Ozzy’s music contained hemisync tones (which do exist and according to the book and i
quote ‘utilizes sound waves to increase the rate the brain assimilates and processes information).
The complainant’s lawyers went as far as claiming that because of these hemisync tones, listeners of
ozzy’s music were susceptible to influence. Soon enough outside organizations including
religious groups feeling galvanized by the lawsuit,
used it as evidence about the evils of rock music. The lawsuit would end up being dismissed by a
california judge in 1986 who would find osbourne and his label not responsible in Mccollum’s death.
Judge John Cole was quoted as saying in his ruling "Musical lyrics and poetry cannot be construed
to contain the requisite 'call to action' for the elementary reason they simply are not intended to
be and should not be read literally,” “Reasonable persons understand musical lyrics and poetic
conventions as the figurative expressions which they are…“We have to look very closely at the
First Amendment and the chilling effect that would be had if these words were held to be accountable,
That does it for today’s video guys thanks for watching be sure to hit the
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