OZZY OSBOURNE

By Ana Adame

QUESTION: So, Ozzy, how are you feeling these days?

OSBOURNE: I’ve finally stopped smoking cigareffes, but I’ve put on a few pounds because of it. I’ve done all kinds of drugs, but cigarettes are one of the most addictive things I’ve ever put into my body, and I’ve wanted to stop smoking for a lot of years now. But I figure that a little extra weight is okay~at least it’ll save my voice. I can always lose the weight.

QUESTION: What happened with Zakk?

OSBOURNE: The tour I did with Zakk was really just a one-off thing. It was never meant to be a permanent reunion. I just wanted to take the old No More Tears band out one more time when I went to Australia and Japan earlier this year, and that band was Zakk, Randy Castillo on drums and Mike Inez on bass. For the OZZfest this year, my band will be Mike Borden on drums, Joe Holmes on guitar and Robert Trujillo on bass and who knows what it’ll be afier that? I love Zakk, and Randy and Mike, and I wish them all the best. I’m just at a point in my life now where I don’t have to have a permanent band. I like working with all kinds of different people. The beauty of being Ozzy is that it doesn’t matter who I get up there with, as long as I get up there.

QUESTION: Do you prefer it that way, compared to when you were with the same Black Sabbath lineup for almost a decade?

OSBOURNE: Well, let’s face it: there are only so many ways you can play "I Don’t Know" and "Crazy Train," so it’s good to switch the band members every now and again. It keeps me on my toes.

QUESTION: You’re currently in the studio finishing the upcoming Black Sabbath live album (recorded during two shows in Birmingham, England, in December 1997), as well as recording some new tracks with the band. How’s that going?

OSBOURNE: Doing this work with Black Sabbath again has really opened my eyes to a lot of things. I have to admit, Tony lommi has certainly not lost his ability to come up with great nffs~the problem for me is keeping up with him. [laughsj Honestly, I think Tony is one of the most underrated guitarists in the world. In a way, I’m glad he never got the recognition he really deserves, because sometimes, when that happens, it goes to people’s heads. But the live album is flicking awesome~and I’m not just saying that to sell it, because I really don’t need to sell anything. The performance was so incredible that it’s only requiring some minor touch-ups in the studio, which is much less than things I’ve done in the past. There will be two new studio tracks on the album as well, and their titles are [tentativelyl "Psycho Man" and "Selling My Soul."  It’s been almost twenty years since I last recorded with Sabbath, and I really wondered whether the magic would still be there... and it’s like it never lefi. It’s so nice, especially afier all the hostility, the anger and the bad things we’ve said about each other over the years, to come full circle and be friends again. I mean, Tony and I are getting along better than we ever have; I’ve never had this kind of relationship with him.

QUESTION: Are you writing more than the two songs that will appear on the Black Sabbath live album?

OSBOURNE: Oh, yeah. It seems like every day I come in there are two new songs for me to learn. And Tony comes up with songs so quickly that it’s hard to catch u~and I really want to come up with some great things and make a totally awesome record. We figure that, while the iron’s hot, we should strike.

QUESTION: What’s the status of Ozz Records, the record label you launched in ’96.

OSBOURNE: The problem was that, as soon as we started the label and set up our office, bands started sending in demo tapes~and I hadn’t even expressed what kind of bands I was looking for. I was looking for every kind of music, but of course. I got inundated with metal bands. It was around this time that we started getting the OZZfest together~at first it was just these four shows that we put together that sold like hot cakes. So when the summer of ’97 rolled around, and Sharon asked me if I wanted to do an OZZfest tour, seeing as the first few shows did so well. And I asked her what to do about the record company, and she said we could always come back to it. I’ve been so busy since then, and I really haven’t been able to put much time into the record label.

QUESTION: You’ve stated in the past that you prefer not to be classified as metal, yet the OZZfest, Black Sabbath and much of what you do can, in fact, be considered metal.

OSBOURNE: The reason I don’t like the term "metal" is because, in the Eighties, any band from Motorhead to Metallica to Bon Jovi to Poison-basically any band with long hair and guitars-was called heavy metal. But to me, it’s never had any musical connotations. Those bands that I just mentioned to you are worlds apart-so they really shouldn’t be called the same thing. I’d rather be called hard rock or heavy rock-but metal is just a stigma.

QUESTION: It almost seems like, the older you get, the more projects you get involved In.

OSBOURNE: It’s work, you know, and to be honest with you, it’s all happening so fast and furious that I don’t even know whether I’m looking forward to it all. [laughs] But the saving grace is that I’d rather have work than none. My life is never sensible; it’s always crazy.

QUESTION: What goes into deciding which bands you want on the OZZfest bill?

OSBOURNE: The truth is, I have a lot of assistance from my wife and her staff because to try and keep up with everything that’s going on in music and do my own work, I’d be in a flicking mental hospital. I like Tool, I like Megadeth, Motorhead have been dear friends of mine for a long time. A lot of people ask me why I don’t get old rock bands to tour with the OZZfest, and the truth is that I like to bring new blood in. Everybody’s seen all the old bands like Judas Priest and the Scorpions and Motley Crue-but I want to give the newer bands a chance. I like to give younger bands a break.

QUESTION: Do you think that by doing the OZZfest two years in a row, people will be expecting a new one every year?

OSBOURNE: I know that eventually this is going to peter out, like Lollapalooza. I’ll know when it’s time to stop doing it . I’m not a dummy: if it stops selling, I won’t do it. But while it’s selling, hey, why not do it? It’s better to do it and let it run its course than to sit in my hotel room and wonder if I should do it.

QUESTION: Were you always confident that a Black Sabbath reunion album and tour would be successful?

OSBOURNE: It’s not that I was confident, but the truth is that the original Sabbath is the one that people remember. I know that Ronnie James Dio came in alter me and did a couple of good albums, but once you take the original singer out of a band, it’s really no longer the same band. And I’m not saying that to toot my own horn, but it’s kind of like taking Paul McCartney and John Lennon out of the Beatles-without their voices, it’s not the same band. Black Sabbath is kind of a legend, and for years and years, my office has been inundated with people asking about the old days, and wondering whether we’d ever get back together. And when we closed the OZZfest each night last year with a Sabbath set, it was awesome. The crowd was fucking unbelievable. Some people said that, at the shows we did in Birmingham in December, we sounded better than we did when we werekids. And we’ve all played "Iron Man" and "Paranoid" and "Children of the Grave in our respective bands, but there’s nothing like the original. And believe me, if I didn’t think that it was a viable situation, I wouldn’t do it-we’re doing this because of public demand.

QUESTION: Will you tour with Black Sabbath?

OSBOURNE: Yes, we’ll be touring the United States in the fall.