Words: Paul Brannigan
When The Prince Of Darkness invites you aboard his private jet for a flying visit to South America to launch his solo farewell world tour, it’d be rude to refuse. In 2018, Paul Brannigan buckled up as Ozzy Osbourne shared stories of voodoo offerings, cemetery visits, night terrors and potty-mouthed demons. In memory of Ozzy, who has sadly passed away aged 76, we revisit the trip in full…
CEMENTERIO GENERAL de Santiago is an extraordinary place, as beautiful as it is haunting. A true city of the dead, it’s a sprawling 210-acre complex of ornate tombs and elegant mausoleums, the final resting place of approximately two million Chilean citizens. All but two of the deceased former Presidents of Chile are interred here. Significantly, there’s no plot for the CIA-sponsored dictator Augusto Pinochet: there is, however, a chilling monument to the thousands of Chileans who were ‘disappeared’ by the military during his brutal regime.
Here and there, teddy bears, cuddly toys and cloth dolls are tied to trees and stone crucifixes, heart-wrenching reminders of children taken from their families too soon. For all its architectural splendour and historical significance, this is not a location one would wish to explore in the hours of darkness.
“I remember seeing The Exorcist,” says Ozzy Osbourne, a figure in black shuffling carefully between the ossuaries. “Sabbath were in Philadelphia. The manager, Patrick Meehan, comes in and says, ‘You gotta see this film.’ So the four of us, Black Sabbath, go to see this film, and we were so fucking scared that we had to spend the night together in one room. We’re supposed to be the Satan band, and we’re all in one bed, scared shitless. We had to go to see The Sting afterwards to get our minds off it!”
The Prince Of Darkness is in an upbeat mood, largely, one suspects, because this afternoon’s photo session affords him a vista other than the interior of a hotel suite, dressing room or airport lounge. So pleased is he, indeed, that later this same evening he’ll send a late-night text to photographer Ross Halfin: “Come take some photos of me in the bath,” it reads. “I’ll leave the door on the latch…”
Santiago is just the fourth stop on the singer’s No More Tours 2 trek, titled with a knowing wink to his 1992 ‘retirement’ tour, but in his 50th year of touring Ozzy has settled back easily into familiar routines. The private jet which transports the 69-year-old singer between gigs now represents a serious upgrade on the battered Commer van which once wheezed between Black Sabbath’s engagements in continental Europe, when Osbourne was still a wet behind-the-ears Brummie teenager; but the job – bringing music to the masses – remains the same.
Sabbath never made it to South America while Ozzy was in the band first time around, but finally played Chile on their farewell The End tour: “It was like Beatlemania in a heavy metal way,” Ozzy recalls.
The singer first visited South America in January 1985, for the inaugural staging of the mammoth Rock In Rio festival, a 10-day event which drew some 1.4 million people to a purpose-built City Of Rock, with Queen, AC/DC, Yes and Rod Stewart among the headline acts.
On that occasion, Ozzy recalls, he was booked for a photo session by a river in Rio de Janeiro, along the banks of which locals had laid out candles and plates of fruit. During a lull in proceedings, the singer recalls picking up an apple and taking a bite, to the immediate and very visible consternation of his horrified hosts.
“Everyone was like, ‘No! No! No!’” he laughs. “It was a voodoo offering, and so everyone freaked.”
By his own admission, Ozzy is a very superstitious man. He may no longer wear the silver metal cross his father Jack hand-crafted for each member of Black Sabbath to ward off evil spirits back in the ’70s, but he remains reluctant to meddle with forces he does not understand. And with just three dates of his final world tour ticked off the docket, today he’s taking some convincing that his freshly launched long farewell campaign isn’t cursed.
To understand Ozzy’s intuition here, we must rewind a few days, to the evening of Friday, May 4. The travelling party’s private jet is descending towards a Mexico City airstrip, with just 10 minutes remaining of a four-hour flight from Los Angeles, when Sharon Osbourne leans across to her husband and gently says, “Ozzy, I’ve got something to tell you.”
“I go, What’s that darling?” says Ozzy, replaying the scene. “She goes, ‘I haven’t brought my passport.’ And I go, You’re fucking joking…”
Upon touching down in Mexico, with promises being made that the absent travel document will be couriered in on the next southbound flight from LA, it initially appears that immigration officials at the airport will take a common sense, if law-bending, view of Mrs O’s misfortune. Surely, they reason, the famous wife of one of the planet’s most recognisable rock stars is unlikely to represent any serious threat to the security of the Mexican state.
But in times of heightened political rhetoric, acts of mercy can be interpreted as signs of weakness and, as negotiations at the airport continue, word is passed down the chain of command to the effect that this particular visitor from North America – citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as she might be – will not be permitted to officially enter the country. Instead, the order decrees, Mrs Osbourne must spend the night aboard the jet on the airstrip, and will be cleared to return to Los Angeles at dawn.
Ozzy Osbourne is infinitely sharper than you might realise. This being the case, he’s entirely mindful than comments made in anger – let’s say, for the sake of argument, those pertaining to the current incumbent of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington DC and his belligerent, antagonistic attitude to the US’s southern neighbour – could inadvertently land him in hot water if taken out of context.
So while prefacing his reaction to Sharon’s ordeal with the disclaimer, “I’m not politically motivated: when people ask me about the governments, I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about”, he will quietly add, “It’s anti-North America here… like, ‘Don’t tell us what to do, leave us alone, you fuck your own country up.”
With the singer recuperating from a dose of bronchitis, his mood is in no way improved by the absence of his beloved spouse. Indeed, were life a cartoon, Ozzy’s every move in Mexico City could be shadowed by an ominous black cloud. He’s here to headline night two of the Heaven And Hell Festival – Mexico’s premier heavy metal weekender – atop a bill featuring Saxon, Megadeth, Judas Priest and more. That the show day falls on Cinco de Mayo, an annual celebration held to commemorate the Mexican Army’s unlikely triumph over the occupying French at the Battle of Puebla, on May 5, 1862, promises to lend an extra frisson to the occasion.
Pleased to be embraced by Ozzy and his touring party, MOJO is instructed by superefficient German tour manager Thomas Reitz to meet everyone at 6.40pm by the elevators on the 12th floor of our luxury hotel. It’s here that we are introduced to Ozzy’s band – guitarist Zakk Wylde, bassist Rob ‘Blasko’ Nicholson, drummer Tommy Clufetos and keyboard player Adam ‘Son of Rick’ Wakeman – plus the singer’s security guard Eddie Mendoza, and the man himself.
The festival promoters have arranged that the group will be given a police escort to the event site, Autodrómo Hermanos Rodríguez, and so, within five minutes of our rendezvous, this writer and the ‘talent’ are smuggled out of the hotel’s back entrance and ushered into a fleet of black SUVs with tinted windows. We’re soon hurtling through the streets of Mexico City, its notoriously chaotic traffic magically melting away as speeding motorcycle outriders swerve ahead, blocking lanes and opening up hitherto clogged transport arteries. It is, to be honest, fantastically exhilarating.
There are few such luxuries immediately apparent at the festival site. In common with backstage areas at similar events across the globe, a mini-village of marquees and portacabins has been erected for the artists and industry schmoozers and, upon disembarking from the caravan, the musicians disappear into their respective sanctuaries. Ozzy’s dressing room area is an alcohol-free zone, and his backstage rider requirements are unfussy and relatively basic. As the singer maintains a strict sugar-and-gluten free diet, the emphasis is on organic fruits and nuts, along with, rather charmingly, a stated demand for a box of PG Tips teabags and a box of Yorkshire Tea.
As is the current etiquette for touring artists, there’s a meet-and-greet with (fully paid-up) VIP guests to negotiate pre-show – a handshake, a photo, an autograph and off you pop, gracias – and Ozzy also takes the opportunity to exchange pleasantries with his old friends in Judas Priest, just along the corridor. “They’re from Birmingham, they’re just the lads,” he says. “I’ve known them for years. Rob [Halford] is a great singer.” And, just as soon as Priest finish their hugely enjoyable set on the festival’s Heaven stage, the adjoining Hell stage is illuminated in light and, at 10.50pm, it’s showtime.
A few observations from gig number three of No More Tours 2. Firstly, Carl Orff ’s Carmina Burana is still the most recognisable, and thrilling, intro music in heavy metal. Secondly, after a period in exile, during which Ozzy recorded his most recent studio album, 2010’s Scream, with Greek guitarist Gus G, it’s oddly reassuring to see Black Label Society main man Zakk Wylde back at Ozzy’s side.
And thirdly, the 80,000-plus metal fans filling the Autodrómo Hermanos Rodríguez to capacity tonight really, really, really love John Michael Osbourne.
Every gap in the performance is punctuated by deafening chants of “Ozz-ee! Ozz-ee!” and with the revealing of each successive metal standard in the action packed set list – Bark At The Moon into Mr Crowley into I Don’t Know into Sabbath’s Fairies Wears Boots into Suicide Solution – a sense of communal hysteria escalates. From our vantage point just behind Adam Wakeman’s keyboards, with laser beams strafing the darkness, illuminating a sea of bobbing heads, it’s quite a sight.
Given such close access to the performers, however, it soon becomes apparent that Ozzy is not entirely happy with how the gig is unfolding. More specifically, it’s clear that he’s not satisfied with his vocals, as a combination of the altitude and his bronchitis is affecting his breathing. Ahead of No More Tears, the title track of the singer’s 1991 album and the sixth song listed in black type on the set list taped to the front of the stage, Ozzy wanders across to shout something in Blasko’s left ear. The bassist then comes over to repeats the message to Adam Wakeman as Ozzy heads towards Zakk Wylde. With zero drama, the song is dropped, and the band go seamlessly into Road To Nowhere instead.
Solo spots for Wylde and Clufetos give the vocalist time to compose himself out of sight of the audience, and a decision is taken to drop Flying High Again also. Ozzy is noticeably happier when he returns to the stage, and the home straight, starting with Shot In The Dark and climaxing with – what else? – Paranoid, is joyous heavy metal theatre. There’s no time for self-congratulatory back-slapping, however: the final howls from Wylde’s amps are still resonating as the band pile back into their getaway vehicles, their daredevil police escorts already gunning their engines for a high-speed exit to the airport. Ozzy is still unhappy, but post-mortems can wait, and conversation is muted as the motorway ahead opens up.
If anyone is tempted to think that, for artists of advancing years in particular, live gigs are now simply a cynical cash-grab opportunity, mere showbiz routine, they should try spending an hour with Ozzy Osbourne in the wake of a performance he deems below par. Sitting in his hotel room on the 16th floor of Santiago’s Intercontinental Hotel 36 hours after the Mexico City gig, the singer is still downcast, still picking apart his contributions to the night, despite also insisting, “You have to leave the last gig on the stage.”
“It was not my intention to sing like a fucking arsehole!” he says with a sigh. “I’ve been taking this fucking stuff [to aid recovery from bronchitis] and when I went to the doctor I said, Don’t give me anything that’s going to dry me out. It’s all fucked up, very frustrating.
“People say, ‘Oh, it didn’t sound that bad out there’, but to me, when I’m performing, it’s like putting two E-strings on a guitar: you’ve strung it wrong, and it doesn’t sound how you want it. It’s a personal thing. In my head I want to give them everything, but it doesn’t work sometimes. If I can’t do it on-stage and I’m not having fun with it, I get fucking angry with myself. But I’m only human, you know?”
“When I get to the gig and sing like an arsehole, it’s like, this fucking thing is cursed! Sharon sent me a text saying, ‘Darling, it’s not cursed, it’s just teething problems.’ It’s a new day, a new gig. But if it goes again, I’ll be pissed off again.”
Niggling problems notwithstanding, the singer is in rude health, a testament to his rigorous health and fitness regime. It was not always thus. Recalling his first trip to South America in 1985, he recounts boarding the Rio-bound flight directly from an enforced six-week stay in the Betty Ford clinic, then immediately getting “fucking loaded” on the plane.
“I woke up with my wife stabbing me in the chest with a fucking dinner fork,” he laughs. “I’d never gone six weeks without a drink before. It took me a long while to get that under control. Now I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t do dope…”
Asked how’s he spent his first couple of days in Chile, he points to a clunky looking exercise bike across the room. “It’s like something out of the fucking Stone Age. I exercise every day, the endorphins are great!”
The singer is at pains today to stress that this is not his farewell tour, merely his last full-scale world tour. “Sabbath’s was a farewell tour,” he notes, “but I’m not stopping, I’m not retiring. This could go on for the rest of my life.” Pressed on whether the world might also see a new Ozzy record this decade, the singer is less confident, though reveals that he has “10 songs ready to go, really strong ideas, melodies, lyrics, everything…”
“But a new record? There’s no point,” he says bluntly. “It costs you this much to make, and then they steal it. Why do I want to spend my money on that?”
Talk returns to his first South American trip. Ozzy remembers meeting Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs (“pathetic and sad”) and the smell of the City Of Rock being “fucking unbelievable” as 1.4 million people used the site as an outdoor toilet for 10 days.
“I remember getting on this big military helicopter and on one side there was cardboard over the windows. I thought, What the fuck is that all about? So I peeled off the cardboard. The guy goes, ‘No, leave it alone! It’s a bad representation of Brazil!’ What it was, was that you could see the shanty towns, and they were embarrassed about it. It’s fucking nuts there, you’re either wealthy or you’re dirt poor.”
There’ll be no opportunity for such sight-seeing this time around, however. In Santiago, Ozzy will only leave his hotel suite when duty calls.
“I’d be walking around like a fucking scrapyard with all this junk on,” he says, jangling the chunky gold jewellery on his right wrist for added effect. “I’d get killed for a watch!”
The gaggle of hardcore Ozzy fans who patiently sit outside the doors of the Intercontinental Hotel for the duration of his stay in Santiago have no obvious designs on the singer’s expensive timepiece, it should be stated. All they want is an autograph on the CD sleeves, albums and posters in their backpacks, or a photo, or a hug. But despite being informed, regularly, that Mr Osbourne will not be coming out to play, they sit on, in hope. Among their number are Santiago residents Valentina Peñaloza and her 17-year-old sister Carolina, who has been gifted tickets for Ozzy’s May 8 show at the Movistar Arena for her 18th birthday, which falls on the same day.
“Ozzy changed music forever,” says Carolina, “he invented heavy metal. His music has had such an impact upon my family and I. That’s why I’m here, and that’s why I’ll be in the front row of his concert.”
Ozzy exits for the gig by the hotel’s back door at precisely 4.45pm. Neither Carolina nor her sister will see him leave. They will, however, squeal with delight upon seeing that Ozzy and Zakk Wylde have scrawled ‘Happy Birthday’ wishes for Carolina in MOJO’s copy of I Am Ozzy, and signed all their CD sleeves too.
At 9.15pm, resplendent in purple, Ozzy walks on to the stage of the Movistar Arena and asks the 17,000-strong crowd, “Are you ready to go fucking crazy?” The answer is unanimously affirmative. “Let the madness begin!” Ozzy shrieks.
This time, the gig goes off without a hitch. No More Tears and Flying High Again are restored to the set list, and for 90 minutes Ozzy holds the arena in the palm of his hand, treating the crowd less like customers in his shop than guests in his home. He’s in constant motion, an impish master of ceremonies, king of the night time world again. Before Shot In The Dark he even asks the crowd to cheer loudly for Sharon – “who’s back in Los Angeles”. The texts between the pair later on tonight, one fancies, will be rather more upbeat than of late.
Ozzy is still grinning as he scrambles out of his SUV back at the hotel an hour later. “That was good, wasn’t it?” he says. This is what you still live for, isn’t it? “When I’m on-stage it’s my world,” he replies, nodding in agreement. “No one can go, ‘Wear this, do this, say that,’ whatever. I can do what I want to do. They can’t be Ozzy, and Ozzy can’t be them.”
“I’m not the greatest singer,” he admits, “but I know how to get a crowd going. That’s my thing. What was it that Simon Cowell said? I’m not a singer, I’m a showman. If I just stood there going, (drones) I’m going off the rails… Somebody please throw a bottle at me!”
For a moment, the years roll back, and Ozzy is transported back to his native Birmingham, as he shares one last and telling anecdote.
“Before I got successful with Sabbath,” he says, “I was in a band called Rare Breed, doing, like, blues or psychedelic stuff. One night [at a gig] the leader of the band came up to me and said, ‘We don’t do that.’ I said, Do what? He said, ‘Do what you do. We don’t move around, it’s not cool.’ I said, I’ll tell you what is cool, then. Finding another singer, because I’m fucking off!”
And with that, The Prince Of Darkness does indeed fuck off, chortling as he drags his wheelie bag into the hotel lift. Tomorrow morning he’ll be flying high again, this time bound for an appearance in Argentina. Truly, there’s no rest for the wicked.
This article appeared in MOJO’s 2023 Black Sabbath special MOJO The Collectors’ Series: Black Sabbath Paranoid.
Photo: Ozzy Osbourne, Los Angeles, February 6, 2018. (Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Live Nation)