Ozzy Osbourne and KLOL Houston go way back
Much like ZZ Top, 101 KLOL, and Ozzy Osbourne go way back to 1970. That year, KLOL signed on the air in Houston, and Black Sabbath released its eponymous album.
Sadly, as of July 22, 2025, neither Rock 101 KLOL nor Ozzy are around anymore, but their music and memories live on!
However, in the K101 “Music Sheet Number 1” station newsletter from April 1971, the anonymous station reviewer of both the Black Sabbath and Paranoid albums was less than kind:
“They have some very helpful engineers who use an interesting bag of effects, and the guitarist manages to get off some good licks, but beyond that there is little to warrant even a second listening to either of their albums.
The major problems are with the lyrics and vocals. The former are mostly ordinary and occasionally banal; the latter are simply bad. The lead singer doesn’t sing, he sort of chants. I’m certain that this is supposed to be heavy, but the final effect is boredom.
The song topics are potentially interesting, but in most cases somebody else has already covered the territory, and done it well.
All this said, I feel it is only fair to admit that between their two LPs there is almost enough effective material for one solid, respectable hard rock album. But just one; not two. And neither Black Sabbath nor Paranoid is it.”
One can imagine that Black Sabbath’s pioneering heavy metal sound might not jive with station staffers who were also spinning records at the time from John Denver, Herbie Hancock, BB King and Bread.
The funny thing is that KLOL presented the Mar 22, 1971, Sam Houston Coliseum Mountain Black Sabbath and Mountain concert.
Of course, any rock fan will know that Ozzy and KLOL became practically synonymous in Houston.
In fact, Ozzy makes an appearance in the opening of “Runaway Radio,” the 101 KLOL documentary, from a clip of the KLOL TV show 101 Rock Place.
That Osbourne clip was from February 17, 1984, when Ozzy was hanging out at the KLOL studios before his Bark at the Moon concert at The Summit. If you watched “Runaway Radio,” then you know a big event happened in the Ozzy band that night concerning DJ Dayna Steele and drummer Carmine Appice.
For those hardcore Ozzy fans, he also signed autographs that day at Sound Warehouse and then accompanied his opening band, Mötley Crüe, to the old version of 93Q KKBQ. We won’t hold that against them!
In his lengthy interview for the documentary, the Traffic Master Lanny Griffith remembered Ozzy being in the KLOL control room, and he’s not the only one. Grego, the original head of “Outlaw Radio,” said that one time he spent the evening with Ozzy in the KLOL studio. As Grego mentions in the documentary, Ozzy smelled good. And he is not the only person I’ve heard say that over the years. Grego went to great lengths to find that special Ozzy cologne that was only available in London at the time.
Ozzy and Black Sabbath continued to be a major part of KLOL’s playlist until the station flipped formats to Mega 101 in November 2004.