"It's funny, Ozzy and I have always had a lot of mutual friends," says
monster-rock icon Rob Zombie, thinking back to the beginnings of his friendship
with the legendary Ozzy Osbourne. "My manager's been good friends with his wife
[Sharon, who doubles as Ozzy's manager] for a while. I did OzzFest in '99 with
Black Sabbath. Way before that, I remember going over to his house to write
some songs together -- that might have been the first time I met him. But our
paths cross constantly. When I'm not on OzzFest, everybody I know is, so he's
just one of those people I see all the time."
As a teenage Black Sabbath fan growing up in Haverhill, Massachusetts, Zombie could hardly
have imagined such a thing. Neither could he have imagined joining forces with
Ozzy for their current headlining tour "A Night of Merry Mayhem," which comes
to the Centrum in Worcester this Saturday. The outing marks the release of the
first new Ozzy album in six years, Down to Earth (Epic), as well as
Zombie's The Sinister Urge (Geffen), the follow-up to his hit '98 solo
debut, Hellbilly Deluxe (Geffen). Both discs debuted in the
Billboard Top 10, and Zombie recently took advantage of a break in the
touring schedule to direct new videos for both Ozzy ("Dreamer") and himself
("Never Gonna Stop").
Ozzy's personal and professional alliance with Zombie is indicative of the
remarkable staying power he's shown over the past decade. In the wake of his
'91 smash No More Tears (Epic), he announced his retirement from the
road -- which seemed like a pretty good idea given the ascendancy of grunge at
the time. But someone pointed out that Ozzy would be a huge concert draw in any
rock climate, and before long he was back on tour. He and Sharon organized the
first OzzFest in '96, when metal was just starting to awake from its
alternative-era slumber. Five years later, nearly every act on commercial rock
radio -- from Zombie to Linkin Park -- is an OzzFest grad, and the Ozzman
himself is godfather to a whole new generation of metalheads.
That's where Down to Earth comes in. Except for "Back on Earth," a
one-off single from the '97 greatest-hits collection The Ozzman Cometh
(Epic), new recordings haven't played a major role in the Ozzy renaissance. His
crack No More Tears band were in flux during the recording of the '95
disc Ozzmosis (Epic), which sold respectably but not as well as its
predecessor. Guitarist Zakk Wylde played on the disc but didn't appear on the
ensuing tour; bassist Mike Inez and drummer Randy Castillo left to join Alice
in Chains and Mötley Crüe, respectively. Ozzy also is said to have
locked horns with producer Michael Beinhorn, the alternative-rock veteran who
was hired to work on the album.
A new and improved Team Ozzy has been assembled for the new disc -- starting
with producer Tim Palmer, who made his name producing hit records for British
rock singers of Ozzy's generation (Robert Plant, David Bowie). Old-school
corporate-rock song doctors Marti Frederiksen (Aerosmith) and Mick Jones (of
Foreigner, not the Clash) are aboard, and the Ozzman's recently solidified
line-up is his best since No More Tears. Wylde agreed to do both the
album and the tour this time, replacing journeyman Joe Holmes (who nonetheless
wrote a couple of the disc's best tunes) alongside bassist Robert Trujillo
(Suicidal Tendencies) and drummer Mike Bordin (Faith No More).
But perhaps the biggest surprise on Down to Earth is Ozzy's lyrics: he's
in "Paranoid" confessional mode throughout, exposing his insecurities with a
candor that's more chilling than any spook-rock cliché could be. He
makes his point right away in the opening lines of the hit "Gets Me Through":
"I'm not the kind of person you think I am/I'm not the Antichrist or the iron
man." The song turns out to be a mushy thank-you letter to his fans, but it's
the fiftysomething singer's war against himself that makes the deepest
impression.
Wylde spruces up that tune's slightly overwrought Sabbath grunge with the kind
of terrifying Slash-on-amphetamines solo he became known for back when you
could still hear that stuff on the radio, and the band sound even better on the
straight-up metal tracks. They move beyond Sabbath on the pummeling "That I
Never Had," opting instead for the catchy power metal that defined Ozzy's early
solo career. The singer has no trouble chugging along with them on that song or
on the two sinister rockers that end the album: "Alive," which sounds like an
apologetic tribute to his wife for putting up with his craziness, and "Can You
Hear Them?", a frightening ode to the voices in his head.
Ozzy's more boisterous fans have always been reluctant to indulge the madman's
avowed Beatles fanaticism, which is usually good for a chart-seeking ballad or
two per album. That's why Foreigner softie Jones is here. But despite its
clever nods to Sabbath, John Lennon, and deceased guitar god Randy Rhoads, the
pacifist goop of "Dreamer" might be too much for even the girliest Ozzy fan.
The disc's other Jones collaboration, "Running Out of Time," is more like it:
an '80s-style metal ballad where Ozzy proclaims himself "just another lonely
broken hero." Some of us wouldn't have our heroes any other way.
With 10 years and two multi-platinum albums under their belts, Rob Zombie's
trash-metal horror institution White Zombie called it a day after touring in
support of their hit '95 disc, Astro-Creep: 2000 (Geffen). According to
Zombie, he didn't expect much when he set out on his own with Hellbilly
Deluxe. "When you end your band and try to do a solo thing, it usually
never works. I was mentally preparing myself for it not to work so I wouldn't
be surprised when it didn't. Because there had been a lot of solo records right
at that time, like Scott Weiland and Chris Cornell, that never really caught
on. I was like, 'Well, maybe mine's next in line.' I kind of set goals like,
'Okay, if we sell half a million, we should consider it really good and go from
there.' For it to sell three million was great. I think it was mostly because
my intent was never to get away from my original sound."
When Zombie got together with producer Scott Humphrey to make Hellbilly
Deluxe, he was missing a crucial element of his original sound: a band. As
a result, most of the sounds on the metal radio smashes "Dragula" and "Living
Dead Girl" were electronic, and that made them Zombie's most
industrial-sounding work to date. The singer did get a band together by the
time he finished the album, and the cartoonishly named crew -- Riggs (guitar),
Blasko (bass), and Tempesta (drums) -- show up road-tested and rarin' to go on
The Sinister Urge. To Zombie, the disc's live-rock feel is an
improvement. "Records like that just sound bigger and more exciting. On the
last record, overly using computers and stuff was more of a necessity than my
desire. I didn't have a team of musicians to work from to make it happen any
other way."
Ozzy Osbourne
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Along with guest appearances by Ozzy (who duets with Zombie on "Iron Head") and
Slayer guitarist Kerry King (who delivers a ferocious solo on the punkish
rave-up "Dead Girl Superstar"), the album also includes a couple of left-field
sonic embellishments that add color to Zombie's trademark grind. Female backing
vocals and a cheeseball horn lick give the loping "California" an interstellar
strip-club vibe; an entire orchestra shows up on the ghoulish sex saga "Bring
Her Down to Crippletown." "All that stuff can be powerful if you use it right,"
says Zombie. "If you go back and listen to the big Bob Ezrin records from the
'70s, from Kiss's Destroyer to The Wall, they all have those
instruments scattered everywhere, and it just adds so much."
Adding frills like that helped accomplish one of Zombie's goals: to make each
track on the disc stand out from the next. Another was to make the kind of
concise album his heroes Sabbath and Kiss did in the '70s, with no filler.
"When albums were shorter, I remember listening to the same album over and
over. I never get that feeling now because people make their records so long
that you never get to track 17 -- ever, in your lifetime. With this record, you
could put it in your car and listen to the whole thing by the time you get to
where you're going. I always thought that was good."
Indeed, danceable radio nuggets like "Never Gonna Stop" and the darkly
hedonistic "Feel So Numb" recall a simpler time when metal was about cars and
rock singers had hair longer than their songs. The disc's one indulgence is
"House of 1000 Corpses," the lengthy spaghetti-western title track to Zombie's
debut feature film, which was recently dumped by Universal Studios for being
"too dark and disturbing." The movie garnered Zombie a ton of publicity, and
he's currently looking for a new distributor. "I don't know if there will ever
be a soundtrack to the movie, so I figured I'd put it on the album, where to me
it really belongs anyway. I write enough songs about other people's movies.
It's nice to come full circle and write one about my own."
"A Night of Merry Mayhem" features performances by Ozzy Osbourne, Rob
Zombie, and Mudvayne this Saturday, December 15, at the Centrum in Worcester.
Call (508) 755-6800.
Issue Date: December 13 - 19, 2001
