The final chapter of his 2009 autobiography, “I Am Ozzy,” is titled “Patient Notes,” and it opens with Ozzy Osbourne in his doctor’s office.
The two are having a chat about the health of one of rock music’s most famous and infamous characters. The discussion includes the litany of bad habits and destructive behaviors in which Ozzy has indulged over the course of 40-plus years.
You could ask the same thing about the career of a guy who never completely fell out of fashion. His career got a rocket-fueled boost in the early 2000s when MTV aired “The Osbournes,” one of the most successful reality TV shows ever, bringing Ozzy and his family into the homes of people who hadn’t listened to a note of his music.
But even before that, Osbourne and his wife/manager, Sharon Osbourne, had kept his career moving forward with creations like the all-day metal orgy Ozzfest.
On Saturday night, Ozzy Osbourne, 62, headlines a show at the Sprint Center. His opener is Slash, former lead guitarist for Guns N’ Roses. Ticketmaster shows that most of the $74 floor seats are gone, but plenty of other good seats remain, which means a crowd of around 8,000 is expected — about the same number that showed up for his first Sprint Center show in December 2007 (with Rob Zombie).
He is no longer the face of heavy metal, but it’s fair to say that in 2011, Ozzy Osbourne is its dean or its godfather emeritus and as well-known and mainstream as McDonald’s.
As a reader posted on The Star’s music blog, Back to Rockville: “I compare him to Willie Nelson and Snoop Dog: People who everybody knows, even if you hate their music.”
His career durability says a lot about the place of metal and hard rock, too, which remains among the most popular and enduring in our pop culture, especially in this town, where the annual Rockfest thrown by the radio station the Rock (98.9 FM) always attracts more than 40,000 fans, no matter who’s in the lineup, and where the Rock’s Halloween and Christmas/holiday shows sell out the Midland theater.
Above: Rockfest, Kansas City's annual spring hard-rock orgy.
Losing its demons
Though musically, heavy metal remains as aggressive as ever, it has lost much of its menace as a “threat” to our society and the cause of its violence.
Metal has been demonized for decades, and Osbourne is attached to some of those earliest episodes. He was branded a Satanist and compared to the occultist Aleister Crowley (thus the song “Mr. Crowley”) and sued by the parents of a teen who committed suicide and had heard the song “Suicide Solution.”
Heavy metal has also been blamed as an accomplice to crimes, most notoriously after the murders at Columbine High School in 1999, when it was reported that the killers had played violent video games and listened to bands like Marilyn Manson, Rammstein and KMFDM.
Music was also cited in the murder trial of the West Memphis Three in the early 1990s. Prosecutors mentioned the accused’s fondness for metal and submitted as evidence a photograph of a defendant wearing a Metallica T-shirt.
The Columbine killings ignited a firestorm debate over violent video games and dark, aggressive music and their contributions to violent behavior. The same music-violence association was raised again after the rampage in Tucson, Ariz., on Jan. 8.
On his radio show, Rush Limbaugh was among those who noted the shooter’s music tastes: “The guy listened to heavy metal, and some of that anarchist stuff. We’re dealing with an insane individual.”
This time, though, that argument got little traction and was either ignored or dismissed as baseless, clichéd opinion. At the website Metal Insider, writer Zach Shaw shot back: “The typical long-haired metalhead isn’t any more inclined to violence than, say, a pill-popping, vitriol-spewing (person) that’s been married four times.”
Jim Kilroy, the tireless promoter and custodian of Kansas City’s hard-rock music scene and the man behind all the Club Wars and Metal Wars competitions, said the environment has changed.
“I think it’s a lot different than back in the days of the (Parents Music Resource Center) and Columbine,” he said. “Metal is more mainstream. You hear it more. They play metal and hard rock at Arrowhead before and during Chiefs games.”
Kilroy is as familiar as anyone with the local hard rock/metal scene. His history with that crowd goes back to the mid-1980s and his days publishing the fanzine Banzai and then his ever-growing list of band competitions and showcases.
‘Cookie Monster vocals’
On Jan. 28-29, he is throwing the Rock and Metal Fest at the Uptown Theater, a two-day metal festival that will feature more than three dozen bands, an air-guitar championship and heavy-metal karaoke.
But he doesn’t always like what he hears at his own events.
“A lot of it is really aggressive with these Cookie Monster vocals. A lot of screaming. But it’s escape. It sure doesn’t mean someone who listens to it is going to go psychotic.”
And the crowds he sees?
“You see people bringing their kids to shows,” he said. “I think it’s a generational thing more than a lot of other music. People take their kids to see Ozzy. I wonder: Is that going to happen with a band like Modest Mouse? Critics may hate a lot of the music, but the fans are loyal. They come back, and some bring their kids with them. Who thought Poison would still be popular?”
It’s worth noting that one of the more popular vocalists in metal is Rob Halford of Judas Priest, who went on MTV News in 1998 and announced that he is gay. He and the band continue to tour and remain one of the more popular and revered acts in metal. Whatever that says about metal fans can’t be said about fans of country music, which has yet to produce an openly gay male star.
Perhaps what it says about the metal crowd was implied by writer Mikal Gilmore in his essay “Clash of the Titans: Heavy Metal Enters the 1990s” from his 1998 book “Night Beat: A Shadow History of Rock & Roll.”
Despite all its associations with the dark side, Gilmore sees heavy metal as rock ’n’ roll’s “only constant standard-bearer.”
“Whereas movements like rockabilly, psychedelia, disco and even punk played out their active histories in a handful of years each,” he wrote, “metal has proven popular for over 20 years now.”
Make that about 40 years now.
Gilmore says the music endures because its fans so often see themselves as outcasts — “kids who feel pressed or condemned by adult society, who feel deprived or hopeless or angry and who need to assert their own pride and bravado.” And the music and its scene give them a way to express that.
And sometimes those fans are well-adjusted and loved and merely have an appreciation and affection for hard music. One of those is Bill Brownlee, a contributing writer for The Star and the host of two music blogs, There Stands the Glass, an omnibus music site, and Plastic Sax, which covers the local jazz scene.
Brownlee is also comfortable standing up front at a Slayer/Megadeth show and describing the scene, as he did in August from out at Sandstone Amphitheater:
“Megadeth was a model of technical precision. ‘Take No Prisoners’ showcased the band’s strengths: machine-gun drumming, brutal bass breakdowns and masterfully ferocious guitar work. Dave Mustaine is one of only a few rock stars capable of making efficient use of a double neck guitar.”
“What I love the most is the immediate catharsis,” Brownlee said. “It’s all about the release. Either you flee or you submit to it and let it hit you, physically. And the music can be so loud, it physically massages you. It’s the opposite of jazz, where you sit, rub your chin and think.”
Metal’s magnetism
Another of those fans is Cat Simpson, who has held a few behind-the-scene jobs in the local music world. She is now a business owner (the Donut Girl Bakery) and enrolled in the MBA Entrepreneurship program at UMKC.
She is also a Metallica devotee and a “metalhead at heart.”
“I got into heavy metal in seventh grade. I was an overachiever and was ridiculed for it,” she said. “I quickly … made friends with other kids who were also pissed off. They were listening to the latest craze: grunge.
“But along with Nirvana, Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam, I was introduced to Metallica’s ‘Black’ album, and I was hooked. They have been my band ever since. I love it all.
“Later on I got into Black Sabbath, Pantera, Deftones, Fear Factory, Slipknot and a slew of nu-metal bands I’d rather not discuss. In my more adult years I have developed a fondness for Iron Maiden, Nine Inch Nails, Motley Crue and Slayer. But Metallica has always been tops.”
Another unlikely fan is Nina Persson of the Swedish pop band the Cardigans. Persson, 36, was almost 20 when she discovered she liked “anything by Black Sabbath.”
“I like the song ‘Black Sabbath.’ The one that starts with the church bell,” she told Rolling Stone magazine. “I only heard them … when we were thinking of covering ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.’ That was the first time I realized that it was actually good music. I was pretty mellow in my music tastes before that.”
Plenty of people have made the same discovery, music fans who aren’t interested in the occult or anarchy or uncorking their frustrations and bravado or on the verge of mayhem.
They will be at the Sprint Center on Saturday with friends and families to see the former Samsung, Pepsi and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spokesman and rock’s Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne, deliver nuggets like “War Pigs,” “Suicide Solution,” “Crazy Train” and “Paranoid.”
And he will get the kind of amused and beloved reaction Willie Nelson gets from loyal fans: We’re happy you’re here and your music is still alive.
Yes, it’s funny how time slips away, and it’s also funny how often reality changes and the truth is revealed.
| Timothy Finn, The Star
• From the Riverfront Times’ review of the Jan. 14 show in St. Louis: “It’s hard to find fault with the show — even though occasionally everything on stage felt chaotic. … Being able to scream the chorus to ‘Bark at the Moon’ as if you were in your car — except that this time Ozzy himself was singing right in front of you — is an irreplaceable experience, no matter your age.”
• From the Omaha World- Herald review of the show Sunday nigh“This version of Ozzy had energy. He ran back and forth, jumped around, sprayed the audience (and himself) with a hose and said the F-word countless times. But it was his voice that really got me. He performed songs such as ‘Iron Man’ and ‘Paranoid’ flawlessly.”
setlist
From the Jan. 12 show at the Target Center in Minneapolis:Bark at the Moon; Let Me Hear You Scream; Mr. Crowley; I Don’t Know; Fairies Wear Boots; Suicide Solution; Road to Nowhere; War Pigs; Shot in the Dark; Rat Salad; Iron Man; Killer of Giants; I Don’t Want to Change the World; Crazy Train; Mama, I’m Coming Home; Paranoid.
Ozzy Osbourne performs Saturday at the Sprint Center. Former Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash and his band open at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $28.50 to $74 and are available via Ticketmaster or at the Sprint Center box office. According to Tweets from Slash, his band has been starting earlier than 7:30 p.m. so they can play more songs.
I fed Ozzy many times and have many stories about him. I always enjoyed being around him, he was always very friendly and inquisitive. A pretty sweet guy...
Posted by: Penny | January 21, 2011 at 01:13 AM
Here's a statistic for his madison square garden arena show in NYC on Dec 1. Figure is probably for ticket sales only. Taken from Billboard.
gross - $531,694
8,015 (10,100)
attendance/capacity
Posted by: Kurt | January 23, 2011 at 09:26 AM