It looks like, even after all these years (and with one big gig to go), Sharon Osbourne has lost none of her tenacity for making sure that Black Sabbath – and most specifically her husband Ozzy Osbourne – don’t get jerked around.
That’s the takeaway from her latest interview with Metal Hammer – just weeks ahead of the Back To The Beginning last ever Black Sabbath (and friends) celebration – in which she reveals the lengths she’s gone to to fight Ozzy’s corner, and that one band got dropped from the big name final blowout.
“I had a huge, huge, to-do with a manager over this celebration for Ozzy and Sabbath,” Osbourne reveals. “And it was probably the worst I’ve felt in years. And I don’t care what this person says about me, thinks about it, because he doesn’t know me. And he’s now going around making up bullshit lies because I threw his band off the bill.
“I don’t care what people say. Because do you know what? I don’t love them. I care about people who love me, what they say about me. You can’t care what an industry says, because you don’t love them, so how can it hurt you? It doesn’t.”
Inevitably, attention has turned to which band got the boot, with fans quickly pouncing on the recent announcement that the gig would be livestreamed to notice that Tool weren’t mentioned as part of the livestream line-up.
Given the timing of both this late-in-the-day poster revision and Osbourne’s revelations, Tool would appear to have been the victim of Osbourne’s ire.
After all this is the band whose own fans sued them after a disappointing festival performance.
Alternatively, in the interview, it’s suggested that the boot-ee may have been Billy Corgan (someone who Osbourne has had run-ins with in the past): “Of course. Billy is a very, very bright, artistic person. I managed him and we fell out. I’m too confrontational and pushy for Billy.”
But no.
Or Iron Maiden? “I love Iron Maiden, it’s just the singer because he was so horribly disrespectful,” explains Osbourne. “But if you’re going to take Ozzy’s money, and play before him every night of a festival [the 2005 Ozzfest]and you’re bad-mouthing him to the crowd, you’ve got to pay. So I had him pelted with cans of baked beans that were open, and cut his sound.”
And Tool?
Well, following that initial streaming announcement, the band did post a link to that livestream on their socials (implying that they were on board) and news that an unnamed fan asking Ozzy Osbourne’s Facebook account as to whether Tool were still on the bill earned an affirmative, soon spread around fan communities.
In addition, Tool’s name was later updated to the streaming graphic and a representative from the band also confirmed to Loudwire that they were part of the bill.
However, at the time of writing Ozzy.com is now showing that gig listing minus Tool’s name…
And yet the official Back To The Beginning.com event page still features them.
A case of Ozzy being a bit off the pace?
Don’t worry. You can rely on us to keep you posted with more solid Tool in/out news coming soon…
