There's a cackle after Ozzy Osbourne first welcomes listeners with that iconic "All aboard!"
Maniacal, menacing. Coupled with the jagged ups and downs of the song's signature riff, it's an instant shot of adrenaline.
This warning of sorts opens "Crazy Train," a song that never cracked the Billboard Hot 100, but has taken on a second life as a ubiquitous stadium anthem and Osbourne's defining hit. Today, you can hear it in every football stadium in America on a Saturday afternoon or Sunday night.
In 1981, rock fans in Davenport heard the song at Palmer Auditorium, when Osbourne came to town on tour for his debut solo record "Blizzard of Ozz."
Two years before the tour, Osbourne was booted from his post as frontman for Black Sabbath, where he helped to shape the ascending genre of heavy metal. Fans in Davenport got to see Osbourne at the onset of his solo fame.
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To put it simply: these years were as crazy as the train he sang about.
In 1981, he bit the head off a dove while meeting with record executives. Five months after his show in Davenport, he decapitated another animal, this time on stage in Des Moines, chomping the head of a bat — thinking it was rubber — in one of music history's most iconic moments.
Earlier that year, in Rolling Stone, Osbourne took aim at the rising British genre of new wave, saying "I think there's an incredible lack of thought that goes into that stuff ... I think it's real bad news."
Ozzy unleashed 'fury'
Quad-City Times music reviewer Rick Moore tried to encapsulate Osbourne's morbidity and chaos in his critique of the show in Davenport.
"Ozzy Osbourne: The name alone conjures up visions of burning crosses in green meadows, of luxuriant foliage springing from a gravesite," he wrote. "The master of cemetery heavy metal is back with a new band, the Blizzard of Ozz, which unleashed its fury on a packed house at Palmer Auditorium."
The concert took place on Aug. 25, 1981, almost a year to the date after the final rock and roll fest at Credit Island.
Moore mostly praised the performance, and gave an idea of what made Osbourne's setlist.
"I Don't Know," "Mr. Crowley" and "Crazy Train" made the cut. As did a few songs from "Diary of a Madman," Osbourne's sophomore record to be released a few months after the show.
Moore made note of the instrumentalists in the Blizzard, too, calling drummer Tommy Aldridge, formerly of Black Oak Arkansas, "one of the most important drummers today" and the most talented musician on stage.
He also pointed out bassist Rudy Sarzo, formerly of "obscure Los Angeles outfit" Quiet Riot, as Moore called them.
Two years later, Quiet Riot's third record went six times platinum.
"The bass player constantly amazed the audience by playing with his left hand over the neck of his guitar as well as with the traditional underhanded approach," he wrote.
As for Ozzy, he took the stage with his arms outstretched, holding up peace signs, as Moore described it.
"Lest we forget, though, this was Ozzy's show," he wrote, later calling the frontman a "great entertainer" before critiquing his oft-lambasted vocals.
The opening band was none other than seminal British metal band Def Leppard, on the heels of their second record "High n' Dry." Def Leppard opened their career with six consecutive platinum records, a remarkable feat that they were only getting started on by the time they played the Quad-Cities in '81.
Moore called them a "band to watch as its youthful members gain more experience."
Two sides of 'Hysteria'
The Osbourne and Def Leppard show wasn't the only significant heavy metal show to rock the Quad-Cities in 1981. Judas Priest came to town earlier that summer, too, alongside Savoy Brown.
These appearances came as metal music continued to ascend in pop culture, beyond the genre's crunchier, amateurish roots.
Another profitable business venture hit the Quad-Cities in 1981: ticket scalping. The Quad-City Times published a feature about local makeshift entrepreneurs who saw a Rolling Stones concert in Chicago as an opportunity for profit.
Ahead of the show, there were 25 ads re-selling tickets to the show in the Times classifieds. There were fears that the tour would be the Stones' last in the United States, so many were willing to pay whatever it takes.
"The Stones tour through the Midwest was like a gift from heaven," Times reporter Tom Collins wrote of the local scalpers he interviewed.
One of them re-sold eight tickets for a profit of $556 more than face value. Today, adjusted for inflation, that would be just under $1,900.
The Stones tour in '81 also featured an A-list of opening acts: Van Halen, Heart, Journey, Tina Turner and — for exactly two nights — Prince, who left the Los Angeles Coliseum stage in a rage after fans hurled slurs and jeers his way for dressing provocatively.
Six months later, Prince appeared in Davenport.
Around the country in the summer of 1981, there was an abundance of landmark moments. In July, Sandra Day O'Connor became the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court.
In August, MTV debuted as a 24-hour channel for music videos, singlehandedly changing the industry as we know it. And later that month, Mark David Chapman was sent to prison for the murder of John Lennon.
In June, the CDC investigated the first clinical report of AIDS.
By the end of the decade, AIDS/HIV was a cultural and medical epidemic, one that disproportionately impacted Black and Latino populations, as well as gay and bisexual men. Hysteria surrounding the disease polarized many Americans and contributed to increased violence against the LGBTQ+ community.
It also harshly struck the music community. Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, NWA rapper Eazy-E and B-52's guitarist Ricky Wilson all died of AIDS within just over a decade of the disease's first discovery.
In 2009, Osbourne made headlines after sharing that he had been incorrectly diagnosed as HIV-positive. It came just six years after the rocker was diagnosed with Parkinson's. In 2023, he revealed he had a spinal tumor.
Still, Ozzy is extremely active in pop culture. His family rose to fame, too, largely thanks to their reality TV show in the early 2000s. In 2019, he even appeared on a song with hip-hop hitmaker Post Malone.
And in 2011, Osbourne came back to the Quad-Cities to play a show at Vibrant Arena. Def Leppard played the same venue with Foreigner in 2015.
That youthful band was one to watch, after all.
This story is part of a series called "Timeless Tickets," where we're aiming to find the most notable concert in the Quad-Cities, every year from 1960 to today. Do you have a story or photo to share from an iconic local show? Send it to entertainment reporter Gannon Hanevold at ghanevold@qctimes.com.
To read more "Timeless Tickets" stories, click here.