Brisbane Entertainment Centre, March 19, 2008
(Black Rain review)
It’s a good night for an Ozzy Osbourne concert. Tis the day before Good Friday, so there’s an almost full moon shining through thinning clouds over the paperbark trees of the Boondall swamp and an autumn nip in the air. The faithful gather, from teens to elder folk including dads with sons in tow, almost universally clad in black with band t-shirts to the fore. Lots of Sabbath and Maiden, and a solid show of support for Black Label Society, the other band of Ozzy’s guitarist, Zakk Wylde.
We, uncharacteristically, skip the supports, arriving in time to take our seats and soak up the anticipation as canned AC/DC blasts over the speakers of the reduced-capacity entertainment centre.
Then it’s lights down and curtain up, an introduction of movie and television excerpts with Ozzy stage centre: waving a dildo, crapping on the carpet, psychoanalysing Tony Soprano ... it’s adolescent stuff, not quite in a league with the blood and sacrifice of the Prince of Darkness.
Enter Ozzy, and any illusion of the parent-terrifying, virgin-deflowering, devil-worshipping icon of old is crushed in a simple vision: black jeans, floppy long-sleeved pullover stretched over a respectable but not outlandish beer gut, wide black (of course) hairband, spectacles. When he jumps up and down and claps over his head, the image that comes to mind is of an ageing, gothic Richard Simmons.
Even when the hairband gets tossed to the exuberant crowd, the image persists of a man who has just got up off the couch to knock out a few tunes.
But this is Ozzy, The Ozzy, and forget The Osbournes TV show and the tabloid dross that reduced one of metal’s founding fathers to something of a pop-culture icon. Ozzy Osbourne, father of the year: who’dathunkit? While his persona on stage is more grandfatherly than unruly, this working class guy with a love of blues and b-grade horror films is one of the greats, and tonight he gives the impression that the stage is his natural environment. He loves it, he needs it, maybe too much: the exhortations to shout ("I can’t fucking hear you") and adulate are perhaps a little too frequent. The Simmons analogy does not extend to any major exertion, although he does seem to delight in emptying buckets of water over the mosh pit. And he’s still cheeky, mooning the audience only three songs in -- after the press photographers have been escorted out.
The voice, well, it was never a weapon of mass destruction -- never a Robert Plant or an Ian Gillan, for instance --and it hasn’t improved with age, but it’s unmistakably Ozzy and he does the job and he loves it. This is an unlikely gig to feel the love, but it’s almost palpable, and when he says, more than once, that "I love you guys", there’s a real sense that he means it.
The bass player whirls, twirls, bends and frets, as though the 80s are alive and kicking and the big hair has never gone out of fashion (and maybe he’s right) and Zakk Wylde is a fierce, Nordic presence torturing his guitar stage left and never do the twain meet. In the middle of the flinging follicles and painful contortions, Ozzy is a point of calm, never wandering too far from the mic stand. Drums and keys round out the band and between them they fill the centre with a stealthy volume; at the time, I didn’t think I needed ear plugs, but three hours later, the ears are still ringing. Nicely, I might add.
There’s a painfully long interlude almost an hour in, with Zakk giving his guitar the treatment for 20 minutes: behind the head, a moment of teeth on strings, a long moment on his knees with a bricklayer’s crack threatening to add yet another moon to the evening. We are offered distraction by camera close-ups of the audience, some of whom take delight in exposing their breasts. Unlike the unfortunate and sleazy episode with Motley Crue, this didn’t offend, given the ladies were genuine volunteers and coerced by no more than being framed on the big screen. Not all felt the urge to share, and one daringly matched Ozzy with a flash of butt: three full moons in one night.
You would be forgiven for thinking this all sounds like a splinter show from The Osbournes, but there’s a factor that shouldn’t be overlooked: the music.
I was expecting something a little more lavish, a little more theatrical or atmospheric. Lots of gels, maybe lasers, backdrops, smoke, maybe some pyro. Maybe I was harking back to Maiden’s tour de force earlier this year, or just letting the whole Prince of Darkness thing colour my expectations.
What we got was rock n roll, straight up, no nonsense. There were a few video backdrops -- War Pigs, Mr Crowley, Crazy Train stick in the mind -- but mostly it was the camera feed of the band, the lights down and up between tunes, and a bunch of superb songs that leave much of the current top 40 in the shade. Suicide Solution, Mama I’m Coming Home, I Don’t want to Change the World, Road to Nowhere... and a few off his latest (superb!) album, Black Rain, including I Don’t Wanna Stop and Here for You. All of that and not a single bat in sight, let alone on the menu.
Ozzy will be 60 in December and his body is famously ravaged by drug and alcohol abuse. Yet when he sang I Don’t Wanna Stop, and later promised to return to Australia sooner rather than later, I didn’t doubt it. The clincher: the closing song, Paranoid. One of rock’s most powerful tunes sung by the master himself. Sabbath on a sabbat (near enough!): now that’s a damn fine way to end a night.
Black Rain review
``ALL my life I've been over the top/I don't know what I'm doing/All I know is I don't want to stop,'' sings Ozzy Osbourne on I Don't Wanna Stop, just one of the apparently autobiographical references on his latest album, Black Rain (Sony/BMG). Another surfaces on the thumping anti-drug song 11 Silver, ``I can't believe I'm still here, I should be dead, yeah''.
Points to Ozzy: not only has he survived a life of heavy metal excess, but his voice and songwriting skills show little of the shambling, stuttering survivor given an injection of broad popularity thanks to his family's reality TV show, The Osbournes.
From the hard-core opening of Not Going Away to the gentler, comforting Lay Your World on Me, Ozzy shows he still has the goods, even if the voice sounds clipped or thin in places.
The indomitable, affable singer, who helped define metal with Black Sabbath and powered on with his solo career, is embarking on a tour of Europe before headlining one of North America's most successful touring festivals, his self-titled Ozzfest.
Clearly, there's plenty of life in the Ozzman yet.
His cynicism is alive and well, too, whether it be taking a shot at organised religion in the title track, or capitalist excess in God Bless the Almighty Dollar, on which he pulls out all the stops to create an apocalyptic, seven-minute anthem.
He hits out at religious extremism again on Civilise the Universe, and pulls no punches in decrying the state of the world, lamenting on harmonica-accented Black Rain that children march into the desert to die.
The album shows versatility you'd expect from someone who's been making music for more than 30 years, with superb support from his touring band, in particular guitarist Zakk Wylde.
It's not all blood and tears: Here For You is an 80s-style power ballad suitable for a metal-lovin' couple's anniversary. One can't help feel Ozzy might have had his wife Sharon in mind, given her unflinching devotion to keeping not only him, but his career, alive.
As for '80s power rock, it doesn't come much better than the layered intro and chugging follow-through of Countdown's Begun.
The Prince of Darkness has conjured an infectious spell of hard rock tunes here; his claim to the title remains intact.
Interview with Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler
Ozzy's homepage
