My good friend had one and only request for his birthday this year, and that was to go the Ozzy Osbourn concert in Tulsa. I haven’t been a huge Ozzy fan since I was a kid, but it was a great chance to see one of the big artists that I have never seen in concert. I still remember back in the early 90’s when Ozzy was on the “No More Tours” tour. I vividly recall sitting at Pizza Hut begging my mom to take me to the concert, saying “This is his last tour, if I don’t see him now, I never will.” I couldn’t believe she didn’t want to take me! She grew up in the era of Black Sabbath and loved “Fairies Wear Boots,” so this should have been a shared interest. Well, apparently it wasn’t, so no concert for me and I had to come to terms with the fact that I will never see the rock icon. Obviously, almost twenty years later, he is still touring and the “No More Tours” tour was not the last one. There have been many of the “this is my last tour” statements from several bands, but I think Ozzy is the one who started the trend. It is a great marketing ploy, but it rarely sticks.
The concert was a great experience. An added bonus was that Slash was the opening act. I went to a lot of concerts when I was a kid, but Guns and Roses is another big band that I didn’t get to see. Since Guns and Roses isn’t really Guns and Roses anymore and Axl seems to be so far off the deep end that a real reunion will never happened, Slash is the next best thing. He had Myles Kennedy touring with him as his singer and it was awesome. Kennedy sang the Guns and Roses songs perfectly – in fact, his vocal range probably far exceeds what Axl has at this point. Slash was great, he played a mix of solo songs, Guns and Roses songs, and even a Velvet Revolver tune. The highlight was “Sweet Child O' Mine.” Hearing Slash play that song live was unbelievable. There are not any guitarists that can imitate his sound, and that is one of the greatest guitar songs ever written.
Ozzy was great as well. He opened with “Bark at the Moon,” and his voice wasn’t very strong. I thought it was going to be another concert of seeing an aging artist with an awesome band, but significantly mixed down vocals. I run into that a lot with the bands I see because most of the bands I like are from another generation. After the first song; however, he sounded great – surprisingly so for a 62 year old. The set list was good and other than “No More Tears” he played all of the songs that I hoped to hear. For me, the highlight was “War Pigs.” It started out with air raid sirens and had really creepy imagery of World War II footage playing on the big screen behind the band during the song. If my mom would have been there, she would have been pleased because they did play “Fairies Wear Boots.”
Ozzy’s stage presence was kind of funny; he jumped around a lot and at times, seemed to be doing calisthenics. He loved shooting the crowd with a fire hose, which probably made for some interesting walks back to the parking garage in the single digit weather. He also dunked his head in a bucket of water after almost every song and played the entire show sopping wet. It was all in good fun and he still looked like he enjoyed every minute on stage. It was a great show and a great experience.
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