Not even a full five years after announcing his retirement, Ozzy Osbourne was back out on the road yet again for his “Retirement Sucks” tour. Ozzy boasted a new lineup featuring former Faith No More drummer Mike Borden, Suicidal Tendencies bassist “Robert Trujillo, and former Lizzy Borden (and Randy Rhoads student) Joe Holmes. Along for the ride as support acts were Brazillian thrashers Sepultura and goth rockers Type O Negative. Me and friend dropped our 40 bucks each on a ticket and decided that this was going to be a show we had to see. In all honesty, even though he hadn’t been gone that long, I was really looking forward to seeing how this new band of his would do.
Sepultura took the stage first and all I can remember about their set was just how impressed I was. I had never been much of a Sepultura fan and had never seen them live but seeing them on this night was really cool and hearing them do songs like “Roots Blood Roots”, “Territory”, and “Refuse/Resist” is what made me a fan which I have been since. They had a lot of energy and the crowd, for the most part, seemed really pumped to see them. Type O Negative on the other hand completely underwhelmed me and bored me to tears. I didn’t like them then and I don’t like them now. They did have a pretty cool stage set up and they sounded tight bit I just never did get into them. I was hoping they would just hurry the fuck off the stage so Ozzy could come out and rip our heads off.
Ozzy’s show opened with a hilarious video intro of Ozzy superimposed into a Forest Gump, a Madonna video, and a classic Elvis live performance just to name a few. Right after the video ended the opening riff for “Paranoid” rang out and the place went apeshit. My first impression right off the bat was that I absolutely LOVED hearing Joe Holmes on guitar. I thought he sounded absolutely amazing on all the songs. Ozzy was touring for his worst album to date Ozzmosis so luckily we were only subject to two songs from that album. Joe Holmes took a unique approach to the standard live “guitar solo” by keeping the rest of the band on stage and performing an instrumental medley of some classic Black Sabbath riffs such as “Children of the Grave” and “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” only to draw his solo to a rousing close by playing “Diary of a Madman.” It was a really cool twist on what could’ve been another boring solo slot and I really dug seeing him do this.
The rest of the set just seemed to be kinda blah as it was full of predictable, standard Ozzy live staples like “Suicide Solution”, “No More Tears”, and “Flying High Again.” Ozzy’s energy was really good but it was totally obvious that his voice was shot. The band totally carried him by playing musically stellar but hearing Ozzy sound so bad was just painful. The encore of “Mama I’m Coming Home” was pretty much a buzz kill but they redeemed themselves by busting out “Bark at the Moon” that had the place going absolutely nuts.
Looking back on it, this was pretty much the beginning of the end of what could’ve been an amazing legacy of music. When Ozzy retired in 1992, if he would have stayed gone, he would have been a legend and everyone would have held him the highest regard. 20 years later, Ozzy is still treking around doing shows with a voice that is so bad you can barely recognize the songs when they’re performed live. I really wish I could say that this was a great memory for me but instead, it’s a show I wish never would have happened. I wish that show on the “No More Tours Tour” that he did here in Atlanta would’ve been my last real memory of seeing him live because at least then I would have an amazing memory of a legend who went out on top as opposed to one who has long overstayed his welcome.
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