Wizards of Ozzfest

Black Sabbath and their progeny
gather at Great Woods

by Matt Ashare

The tickets read "Ozzfest." The spontaneous fist-pumping cries that broke out regularly among roving packs of shirtless, testosterone-addled teens were for "Aw-Zee!" But the sellout crowd who gathered at Great Woods for the two-stage festival tour on June 14 weren't really there for Ozzy Osbourne. No, they'd come to see Ozzy reunite with the band who'd first cast Osbourne as the Dark Prince of heavy metal, the '70s titans who once conjured an enduring soundtrack for teen alienation that has continued to empower suburban outcasts from all corners of the world. As one upstanding member of that durable demographic put it after contemplating the schedule posted at the gate: "I can't fucking believe they're only letting Black Sabbath play for an hour -- that's what everybody came here to fucking see."

Perhaps that's why the posted schedule had Sabbath going on before Osbourne's solo set, even though Ozzy himself had been telling the press that the Sabbath reunion would be headlining the tour. The clever ruse (Ozzy in fact played first, Sabbath second) worked: the pit in front of the second stage was practically deserted by 7:15 p.m., when former Kyuss frontguy John Garcia was leading his new Slo-Burn through some Sabbathy sludge rock. But it didn't make Ozzy's lukewarm 7:30 p.m. solo set any more compelling, even though the 48-year old singer's arrival did inspire a breast-baring reaction from two young women in the front row.

Backed ably by the same lean, mean crew of alterna-rock-looking dudes he took on the road with him last year -- including former Faith No More drummer Mike Bordin -- Osbourne offered half-hearted renditions of his pop-metal hits and near-misses from the '80s. There were familiar guitar-squealing arena-rockers ("Bark at the Moon" and "Crazy Train"); there was an extra heavy dose of charmless power ballads ("Goodbye to Romance," "I Just Want You," and the insipid "Mama I'm Coming Home"). The latter were mostly an excuse for the crowd to waste lighter fluid while Ozzy demonstrated his inability to carry even the faintest hint of a tune. The one hint of redemption was the genuinely funny video shown at the beginning of the set: it featured a hamming-it-up Ozzy artfully superimposed Forest Gump-style in a number of familiar scenes, from right next to Tom Hanks on the park bench to the back seat of the car in that ubiquitous Alanis Morissette video.

The biggest problem with Osbourne's solo set was that it didn't feature any of the real hits -- i.e., the Sabbath tunes that set the standard for monster-riff headbanging almost 30 years ago. Although Sabbath have continued to tour and release albums as a shadow of their former selves since Ozzy's departure in 1978, classics like "Iron Man" and "Paranoid" have also remained a crowd-pleasing staple of Osbourne's live show. For Ozzfest he has had to save them for the big finale. Fortunately, at Great Woods it turned out that he'd also been saving his voice for the reunion with guitarist Tony Iommi and bassist Geezer Butler (Bordin handled the drumming because Sabbath drummer Bill Ward couldn't make the gig).

Sabbath opened with the turgid assault of "War Pigs" and ended with "Paranoid." There weren't any surprises -- just the best of the best, including the galloping "Children of the Grave," a colossal "Iron Man," and, for those of us who know that Ozzy's now drug-free, a rather ironic "Sweet Leaf." It was refreshing to see Ozzy up there with a couple of guys his own age, recapturing some of the dark magic they once had. After all these years it's one role Osbourne is particularly well suited to play.