No More Tours
Ozzy. (Black) Sabbaths. Father's Day. Lies.
June 21, 1992 was Father’s Day, which means it was also a Sunday. My family had finished our Father’s Day dinner, given my dad a tie (or maybe a water ski, despite the fact that dad never waterskied), and I told my parents I was going over to my friend-since-first-grade Billy’s house. Like many a sitcom plot, on the other end, Billy told his parents he was going over to his friend-since-first-grade Paul’s house. Machiavelli would be so proud.
Where we were really going was to see Ozzy Osbourne’s last tour ever.
Why were we being secretive? Well, both our families were devout Mormons, which meant that Sundays were our Sabbath and—among other religious restrictions/suggestions that I won’t detail here—not really a night to go to a concert, much less to go see the purportedly devil-worshipping, self-proclaimed “Prince of Darkness.” Seeing Ozzy on a Sunday would be whatever is, like, 20 rungs below “frowned upon” in Mormonism.
BUT!
But it was his last. Tour. Ever. The tour was literally called “No More Tours.” Last stop on the crazy train, so to speak. We kind of had to go, didn’t we?
I mean, at the time (and to this day), I owned…*checks notes*....*re-checks notes nervously*....zero (0) Ozzy Osbourne albums. Then and now, off the top of my head,I could probably name you six Ozzy songs, tops. Let’s do this: Crazy Train, Mr. Crowley, Mama I’m Coming Home, No More Tears, Suicide Solution. OK, so five. I can name five. Of those five, I can sing at least part of three. I don’t think I’ve ever even heard Suicide Solution; I just know it was controversial in its time. And there’s a good chance I’m confusing/conflating it with Lita Ford’s duet with Ozzy, “Close My Eyes Forever.”
So I own zero Ozzy Osbourne albums. Far more shamefully, I also own zero Black Sabbath albums. (I know!) But growing up, there was enough on the radio and in the atmosphere to satiate any thirst I may have had. To this day, I have to admit I get a little itchy with the production on the Ozzy albums…something about the sounds just doesn’t sit right for me. (Feel free to argue with me in the comments. They just don’t sound…finished?)
Menial proof of fandom notwithstanding, it seemed monumental to go see a legend on his last tour. And my friend Billy, a bigger fan, needed a co-conspirator. (I like to think that my willingness, among all our friends, to sneak out to see Ozzy was the seed that eventually led to Billy & I going to Neil Young’s Bridge School Benefit Concert together for nearly 20 years in the late 90s til the mid 2010s. Pick your friends wisely). If you had a chance to see an all-time rock legend potentially bite the head off of a bat (so the rumors went), wouldn’t you take it?
Quick detour: what was it with the 80s and all the worry and panic over devil-worshipping? People were hysterical. There was one road, up Emigration Canyon, that kids from my high school all thought was inhabited entirely by “devil-worshippers.” Like, they’d formed some Beelzebub-funded HOA and bought out an entire section of the mountain in order to, like, worship the devil. Which….”worship the devil”....what did that entail, really? Human sacrifice? Animal mutilation rituals? Guttural chants? Making devil horns with your fingers? Potlucks? It was all very, very vague. All of this to say: America got really frothy and worked up about devil-worshipping in the 80s (see also: the most recent season of Stranger Things). It seems almost charming in retrospect. “Ahhh, remember when we thought the kids were gonna worship Satan…”
So Billy (friend Billy, not Stranger Things Billy; we’re back on topic) and I find ourselves—on Father’s Day, on the Sabbath, with a flimsy sitcom plot lie holding the whole thing together—on the last row of the Delta Center (just in case, y’know, Satan himself shows up; you don’t wanna be too close when Old Scratch emerges in flames from the floorboards looking for a lying Mormon teenager to publicly sacrifice.)
Eventually the show ends. The lights come up and it’s just a hazy basketball arena. No virgins have been sacrificed. No bats beheaded. Zakk Wylde played some shredder guitar. Ozzy clapped a lot, sometimes on the beat. One look at the average setlist and, including the Black Sabbath songs, I probably knew 6-7 songs. I do remember “War Pigs” being pretty wild.
We head back to Billy’s parents’ station wagon and decide to stop at a nearby grocery store to get a beverage. All the fire and brimstone of hell can make one rather parched, after all.
We walk into Smith’s grocery store, each get a drink—mine was probably some kind of Clearly Canadian or other novelty early 90s drink. I can’t speak for Billy’s drink, but I do love the richness of two Mormon kids sneaking out to see Ozzy on a Sunday and capping it off with…soda. Such a hilariously mild strain of rebellion.
We head back out to the parking lot and, uh oh, Billy can’t find his keys. Retracing our steps through the parking lot and store, we come up empty. Our unspoken anxiety rises like Satan from the floorboards. We scrape our brains for some kind of solution, anything that will get us into the car and home without parental involvement. Machiavelli has left us to our own devices, at this point. Finally, with no other options, we call Billy’s dad from a payphone.
And then we wait.
Billy’s dad, a man of very few words on his most talkative day, arrives. He looks at both of us standing next to the station wagon and wordlessly unlocks the car. There, on the driver’s seat, flooded by the interior car lights is Billy’s brand new Ozzy Osbourne tour t-shirt and a No More Tours tour program. Billy’s dad purses his lips, looks at both of us, then back at the merch, says “see you at home” to Billy and gets back in his truck.
We had failed. And we didn’t even get the tongue-lashing that may have felt somehow like relief (my dad, I think, would have said more than a little something). We were left to marinate in the fact that we were just two dumb teenagers who couldn’t pull off even the smallest, stupidest, not-even-that-rebellious of a heist.
Oh and while we’re here, how about an incomplete list of tours/festivals Ozzy Osbourne has played since 1992’s No More Tours? I suppose there’s some poetry in the fact that Billy & I lied to our parents to go to a show that Ozzy lied to us about.
Retirement Sucks Tour 95-96
Ozzfest 96
Ozzfest 97
The Ozzman Comething Tour 98
Black Sabbath Reunion 98-99
Ozzfest 98
Ozzfest 99
Ozzfest 2000
Merry Mayhem Tour 2001
Ozzfest 2001
Down To Earth Tour 2002
Ozzfest 2002
Ozzfest 2003
Ozzfest 2004
Ozzfest 2005
Ozzfest 2006
Ozzfest 2007
Black Rain Tour 2008
Ozzfest 2008
Monsters of Rock 2008
Ozzfest 2010Scream World Tour 2010-11
Black Sabbath 2012-14
Ozzy & Friends Tour 2012
Black Sabbath 2013
Ozzfest Japan 2013
Ozzfest Japan 2015
Black Sabbath The End Tour 2016-17
Ozzfest Meets Knotfest 2016
Ozzfest Meets Knotfest 2017
Ozzfest 2018No More Tours II 2018-present
Just have to tell my own Ozzy story. Actually, it’s a Black Sabbath story. At some point in the 1970s, yes I’m that much older, when Black Sabbath was at the height of their popularity, My middle school friends and I went to a free concert festival in Overton Park in Memphis, Tennessee. I don’t remember the whole bill, but I’m pretty sure the headliner was Seals & Croft. Most of the rest of the bill were other folk/rock bands. At some point, The cool chill vibe gave way to Daaa,daaa, dadada dadada da daaa daaa daa. All hell broke loose when the volume amped up to 11. Not sure I had ever heard of Black Sabbath, and I know I had no idea who Ozzy was. So that was the beginning.
My friends and I were hooked. Fast forward to summer--time for church camp. I was raised in a Southern Baptist community, maybe only slightly less or more conservative than the mormons -- drink alcohol, you’re going to hell. Dance, going to hell. Fornicate, going to hell twice.
So time to board the church bus to camp on a river somewhere outside of Nashville. My buddies and I had randomly been upsetting the applecart for several years, but this year was special. My best friend David had somehow snuck his turntable and speakers with 12” woofers onto the bus.
When we arrived, we all headed to our assigned cabin. David and I immediately set up the stereo system and pointed the speakers in the windows and released Paranoid to the masses. We had barricaded the door to keep the counselors out. It lasted about 5 minutes before the power was cut, but damage done. Aside from being banned from all group activities and under heavy guard from the counselors, we ruled camp that summer. Then the parents were informed, and that’s a whole new story.
Potluck? Haha, Soooo good!
I remember that tour. What a strange time it was to witness the literal death of hard rock, hair bands and guitar solos as Kurt, Krist and Dave ushered in the new world of Grunge in the northwest. Thanks for the trip back in time Paul!