In a recent podcast episode of The Osbournes, the topic of resurrecting the legendary Ozzfest festival as a traveling behemoth once again reared its bat-winged head. And guess what? Sharon Osbourne didn’t exactly slam the coffin lid shut on the idea. “Yeah, sure. Of course,” she replied when the question was presented.
Now, before you start conjuring visions of mosh pits erupting across the country, remember, this is just a glimmer in the metal eye. As Sharon readily admitted, the financial viability hinges on finding a sweet spot where bands, managers, and organizers all walk away happy. This, as she pointed out in a previous episode, was the Achilles’ heel that brought the original Ozzfest to a grinding halt years ago. Greedy agents and inflated demands put the kibosh on the headbanging pilgrimage.
“It’s great. That’s what we wanted — everybody to do spin-offs and do their own festivals, and it’s great. It’s great for fans; it’s brilliant. But why is it when it comes to us that everybody thinks that we are trillionaires, and so that every manager who wants their band on our festival wants one of the fucking trillions they think we’ve got to put on the festival?” Sharon added.
Ozzy suggested the possibility of maybe focusing more on lesser-known acts, in a way to circumvent the financial hurdles as they will not be so demanding, but Sharon replied: “You can do it for a baby stage, but you still need the headliners. It’s always great to have the baby stage, I mean, that’s what it’s all about — breaking new bands. That’s why we did it. It’s very hard for acts who are not known to suddenly go and be in front of 50,000 people on a main stage at a festival and understand what they’re meant to do. It’s very intimidating. You could have maybe five thousand people at that baby stage, and then to go from five to fifty to sixty thousand people, and it’s really, really hard for baby bands. They’ve paid their dues anyway. That’s what it’s all about.”
Jack Osbourne chimed in, saying that the majority of the recently launched rock festivals in the United States are “basically just Ozzfest,” to which Sharon added: “Well, it’s the same bands just going around and around and around. But that’s what’s so good, because we started something, people have taken it, and it’s still great for the genre. It’s really good.”
Ozzfest, for those who might be too young to remember the glorious 90s and early 2000s, wasn’t just a festival; it was a cultural phenomenon. It was where Black Sabbath riffs mingled with the nu-metal angst of Korn, where Slipknot masks became fashion statements, and where Ozzy Osbourne, the godfather of heavy metal himself, reigned supreme over a sea of mosh pits and air guitars.
