Ozzy Osbourne – Crazy Train

Every so often, I like to do a series of ten Guitar Riffs for Ukulele. The idea with them isn’t to cover the original song, but to throw them in as a little comic relief. Throwing out a quick snatch of a riff people recognise but never expected to hear coming out of a ukulele is a great way to catch people’s attention.

For the first riff, it’s back to Ozzy. He has already cropped up twice in this series of posts with Paranoid and Iron Man, but this time it’s Randy Rhodes knocking out the riff.

This one seems to be quite popular with uke players. Check out the versions by Gio Gaynor and Seeso. My version is in the same key as Seeso’s, but played slightly differently. You can find his version of the tab here.

Crazy Train Ozzy Osbourne ukulele tab

For the picking on this, I use my thumb for the C string and alternate picking (alternating between index and middle finger picks) for the other notes.

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23 Comments

  1. p9000 May 1st, 2008 6:37 pm

    OOOh! I LOVE when you do these riffs… Got any Brian May? Keep up the good work!

  2. Nelson May 1st, 2008 10:24 pm

    Haha this is righteous, I’ma use this for me friends.
    They’ll wanna hear the whole thing too so I guess I’ll learns Seeso’s too.

  3. Rilrod May 1st, 2008 11:05 pm

    Nice riff. Be great if you could chuck in some Jack White this time round or some Datsuns. Bring on the Garage Rock Ukulele!!

  4. seeso May 2nd, 2008 12:43 am

    Holy cow, man. Yours is a lot easier.

  5. Iain May 2nd, 2008 11:01 am

    Yeeees!

  6. Woodshed May 4th, 2008 9:24 am

    p9000: I’ve been working on a full solo version of BoRhap (for months on end), so I might include the riff from it.

    Nelson: Have fun with it.

    Rilrod: I might include Salute Your Solution. Seven Nation Army was in one of the earlier batches.

    seeso: I’m very lazy. If there’s an easy way, I’ll play it that way.

    Ian: WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

  7. 0o0o May 8th, 2008 6:42 am

    hmmmm…. master of puppets, sweet emotion, dr.feelgood, the borhap riff would be excellent.

  8. Woodshed May 8th, 2008 8:29 pm

    I’ve already got all ten together for this time round (BoRhap is there), but there’s sure to be another one before too long.

  9. Trevor January 16th, 2009 4:43 am

    Is there any way I could find this entire song for ukulele? I can only find guitar tabs.

  10. Vatsal February 9th, 2009 3:29 am

    for some reason the second bar with the E string doesnt sound right. I tuned it perfectly but it doesnt match what I hear or what its supposed to sound. the first bar sounds great though.

  11. Woodshed February 9th, 2009 10:09 pm

    Vatsal: What would you suggest instead?

  12. Vatsal February 16th, 2009 5:13 am

    hm I dunno. I was just wondering if anybody else was experiencing something similar. I feel like I’m missing out. It just might be the tuning…

  13. MR.EMG May 27th, 2009 3:12 pm

    i made an easier but higher pitched version its only on two strings
    though, because i modeled it on the E and A only instead. nice though

  14. eli September 29th, 2009 11:29 pm

    hey in GCEA tuning which is standard, the 2nd fret E sounds like open string A… how do i change that like what key is this supposed to go in…

  15. xaimueng March 14th, 2010 2:58 pm

    thx i Like this

  16. Woodshed March 14th, 2010 5:23 pm

    xaimueng: You’re welcome.

  17. Ruby December 28th, 2010 4:27 pm

    Well, I’m certainly going off the rails on a crazy… Uke.
    When I plug my electro-acoustic uke into my brothers friends ew marshall half stack later, we will know :))
    this is brill!
    X

  18. Woodshed January 1st, 2011 12:30 pm
  19. ISAAC June 18th, 2011 4:31 pm

    AWESOME

  20. Luke August 9th, 2011 8:28 pm

    this is also a riff of holywood undeads song undead

  21. Woodshed August 11th, 2011 11:49 am

    Luke: Thanks for the info.

  22. LULU August 26th, 2015 1:28 am

    usually when i play this i add the bassline to the beginning, the tabs i use for that are

    a——————————————————–
    e———————————3-3——————
    c–2-2—-5-5—-0-0—-2-2———0-0—-2-2—
    g——————————————————–

  23. Woodshed August 26th, 2015 9:26 pm

    LULU: Thanks for the tab.

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