An Ozzfest Oral History: Ozzy & Sharon Osbourne, Rob Halford, Randy Blythe & More on the Game-Changing Metal Fest
By the mid 1990s, touring festivals were big business in the U.S. Encouraged by the success of the pioneering Lollapalooza, new names like Blues Traveler’s jam-oriented H.O.R.D.E. Festival and Kevin Lyman’s punk-focused Warped Tour became major players in the summer live music landscape.
But no festival served to both bolster and encapsulate a scene as wholly and perfectly as Ozzfest, the heavy metal juggernaut that slashed its way across America – and, in time, much of the world – from 1996 to 2018. Conceived by Sharon Osbourne, manager and wife of Ozzy Osbourne, as something of a middle finger to Lollapalooza, Ozzfest quickly defined itself as much more than mere payback. Rather, it was a roving nerve center for the multi-generational metal faithful, as well as a breeding ground and sometimes kingmaker for a wave of new (or, as some would label them, “nu”) metal superstars. “Anybody who was anybody played,” says Slipknot percussionist Shawn “Clown” Crahan. “Socially, culturally, it was the place to be.”
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The cred was built in from day one: Sharon and Ozzy were metal royalty, and for the two inaugural Ozzfest dates in 1996, and most tours thereafter, Ozzy served as main stage (and, occasionally, second stage) headliner. The following year, Sharon engineered a Black Sabbath reunion – at that time, a Halley’s Comet-like event – as the main attraction. For metal fans, Ozzfest was a can’t-miss affair; for bands, especially newer ones, a slot on the bill was akin to being anointed. “The value that Sharon brought to the entire industry with Ozzfest can’t be amplified enough,” says Judas Priest singer Rob Halford.
Ozzfest staged its final show, a one-off, in 2018, and its days as a touring concern ended years earlier. But its impact is still apparent today, whether in the success of gold- and platinum-selling, arena-dwelling metal bands – Slipknot, Disturbed, System of a Down and Lamb of God among them – that cut their teeth on the tour, or in the many metal-focused festivals and cruises, from Slipknot’s Knotfest to Lamb of God’s Headbangers Boat to 2023’s Power Trip extravaganza at the Coachella site, that emerged in its wake. Whether the tour will one day be resurrected, as is occasionally rumored, remains to be seen. Until then, here is the story of Ozzfest, as told by Ozzy, Sharon and many of the principals and players who were there.
In 1996, Ozzfest is born.
Rob Halford (singer, Judas Priest): Sharon was the first person to put together a touring festival of this magnitude for heavy metal. And what she created was opportunity – not only for new metal bands, but for all types of metal bands. All dimensions of metal were being displayed, from classic metal like Priest and Sabbath to nu metal, death metal, black metal… every kind of metal experience was shown from those stages.
Dale “Opie” Skjerseth (production manager, Ozzfest): There was Lollapalooza at the time, and there were a few other festivals. But this was a fully heavy metal fest. I’d never seen anything like that.
Sharon Osbourne (manager; cofounder, Ozzfest): So what happened was, in 1996 I said to my agents for Ozzy, “Ozzy should be on Lollapalooza.” They went and asked, and the response was, “Ozzy’s not relevant.”
Ozzy Osbourne (artist; cofounder, Ozzfest): They said, “Ozzy is a dinosaur.” Sharon got pissed off about that.
Sharon Osbourne: I said, basically, “F–k you – I’ll show you how relevant he is!” I was so furious at the way they disrespected him as an artist.
Ozzy Osbourne: “You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna do the Ozzfest.” I thought she’d f–king gone nuts.
Jane Holman (promotor liaison, Ozzfest): The prototype for the touring Ozzfest was in 1996, and it was just two shows – Arizona [at the Blockbuster Desert Sky Pavilion in Phoenix] and Southern California [at the Blockbuster Pavilion in San Bernardino, Calif.]. I had just moved to Los Angeles from Houston to work with John Meglen on creating PACE Touring, and we all went to the Ozzfest in San Bernardino and said, “Ooh, this is cool.”
The seven-band main stage bill that year was headlined by Ozzy Osbourne, with direct support from metal heavyweights Slayer and Danzig. A smaller second stage featured newcomers and cult acts like hardcore unit Earth Crisis, industrial-metal combo Fear Factory and L.A. “spookycore” troupe Coal Chamber.
Dez Fafara (singer, Coal Chamber, DevilDriver): In San Bernardino, Coal Chamber played the second stage – basically a makeshift thing in the center of a field, maybe 11:00 in the morning. But I looked to the left of me, and there was Sharon Osbourne. When I got offstage, she said, “Hey, when you cool off I wanna have a conversation with you.” Which of course made me a little nervous. But we talked and she said, “I’d love to manage you, and I’d love to put you on the rest of these Ozzfests. We’re gonna be moving this thing around the country next year.” I was a street kid from L.A., living with my whole band in a tiny studio. It changed my life.
Holman: I talked with Sharon after that show and she expressed an interest in making Ozzfest a touring property. So we launched in 1997 and just cruised for the next five, six years, 10 years.
Sharon Osbourne: I was like, “I believe in it, let’s go for it.”
Holman: We were pretty sold that it was going to work. And we liked the idea of staying true to metal. At that time Lollapalooza was kind of all over the board as far as genres go. But we said, “We are metal.” We stuck to that theme and the lifestyle around it.
Sharon Osbourne: In the U.K. and Europe all the festivals were very mix-and-match. I mean, Black Sabbath played with Rod Stewart. We loved that, but we wanted one genre. We wanted to do a heavy metal/hard rock tour.
Halford: The enthusiasm was just ginormous in ’96. And you’ve got to remember, this is in the advent of the internet days, so people are still looking at Metal Maniacs and all these magazines for information and listening to the ever-important radio for news about this thing called Ozzfest. Ozzy and Sharon have put it together, and there’s all these bands and… Ozzy’s going to play, too! And the kids were going, “We want this.” Because it was an experience. And it was not happening anywhere else.
Shawn “Clown” Crahan (percussionist, background vocalist, Slipknot): Slipknot was just starting out, and after practices we would watch that little VHS video tape they put out of the first year [The Ozzfest: Live] that had Earth Crisis, Coal Chamber, Neurosis, Slayer, a bunch of the bands. We’re practicing, practicing, practicing, we’re watching the tape over and over and over, just dreaming: “Wouldn’t it be cool if one day we could be accepted, and people liked us? We could be on this festival, we could play, and then, you know, go watch Earth Crisis!”
Fafara: I remember sitting on the bus that night after the San Bernardino show and having a conversation with my guitar player, Miguel, saying, “If this festival happens next year, it’s gonna be massive. And it’s gonna move heaven and earth for a lot of heavy metal bands that get the chance to be on it.”
Ozzfest kicked off in earnest in 1997 and did it in grand fashion. The tour’s first year as a moving festival boasted a co-headlining package of monumental proportions: Ozzy performing a solo set, followed by the long-awaited reunion of the original Black Sabbath (albeit with Faith No More and Osbourne solo band drummer Mike Bordin in place of Sabbath’s Bill Ward, who was not invited to participate). The remainder of the main stage lineup was star-packed, highlighted by Marilyn Manson, then in full Antichrist Superstar mode (at the time, Manson and his band were labeled “the sickest group ever promoted by a mainstream record company” by then Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman, and were routinely picketed by Christian groups at venues), Pantera and Type O Negative.
Holman: We launched with Black Sabbath in 1997, and that gave it a little bit more of a push.
Sharon Osbourne: There were still a lot of personal feelings between everybody in the band. It gets to that silly level where you start nitpicking at each other, but I was ready for that. The guys met a few times, sorted it out, and it was great.
Randy Blythe (singer, Lamb of God): It made sense to have them there because they’re the very first heavy metal band. And I’ll fight anybody that wants to argue with me about it.
Skjerseth: It was a huge deal having Sabbath there. It was important to everybody. And it was the beginning of them reuniting for a few Ozzfests over the years, eventually with Bill Ward again. Every single one of those bands had such respect for those guys.
Blythe: We’re all just like a bunch of younger moons orbiting around the planet of Black Sabbath.
On the day of the June 17 show at the Polaris Amphitheater in Columbus, Ohio, Osbourne lost his voice. Following Marilyn Manson’s set, an announcement was made that neither Black Sabbath nor Ozzy would be performing that evening, resulting in a riot at the venue.
Ozzy Osbourne: When you go on the road and you’ve gotta do two sets, it’s too much. It’s all right for a couple of shows, but that was too much for me. I took on more than I could deal with.
Holman: We knew early in the afternoon that Ozzy wasn’t feeling well, and that he wasn’t going to be able to make it to the show. But we got through Manson, and then we had to make the announcement: “We’re sorry. Ozzy’s not well. He’s not going to appear.” Pantera came out with guys from a couple of the other bands and they did some Ozzy songs, which was great. But these were people that had been out there all day, jazzed up to see Black Sabbath. The sh-t hit the fan.
Sharon Osbourne: There was chaos at the venue. We were stuck on a plane on the runway, trying to get a doctor for Ozzy, and I was getting all this information on the phone. It was like, “Oh my god, what do we do?” It was not good.
Skjerseth: The crowd went bananas. Tore the grass up and threw it at us, giant mud fights and bonfires out in the field…
Holman: The box office manager was hiding in the safe, as I recall. Because it was a lot of destruction. And that stuff builds on itself. There was a bomb scare. They ripped the air conditioner unit off the box office building. Destroyed a display car on the plaza. It was scary.
Skjerseth: Well, I worked for Guns N’ Roses before that, so honestly not much scared me anymore.
Over the next few years Ozzfest continued to stack the festival’s main stage with metal’s biggest names: Tool, Megadeth, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and return trips for Ozzy, Sabbath, Pantera, Slayer and others. But for many fans, the main attraction was the up-and-comers raising hell on the much smaller, often much wilder, second stage.
Ozzy Osbourne: I know what it’s like to start a band off. When Sabbath started, we couldn’t get a gig in f–king hell. So Sharon says, “We’re gonna have two stages, and we’re gonna have big bands, and also new bands.” Which is a great idea.
Sharon Osbourne: In a way that second stage was more important to us, because to give new bands the opportunity of playing in front of a large audience is an amazing thing to do. You want to pass the torch from one to another.
Fafara: Instead of spending four years in the trenches, traveling from town to town in a van and opening up shows in clubs, you could get out and play in front of so many more people and elevate your career with a quickness.
Ozzy Osbourne: I remember when Slipknot broke through. It was f–king great.
Mick Thomson (guitarist, Slipknot): Ozzfest in ’99 was our first-ever tour. Our first record didn’t even come out until halfway through it. If I was the one running things, I would’ve been like, “Hey, your record’s not out yet? Get f–ked!” Thankfully I wasn’t in charge of band selection that day.
Crahan: Slipknot, we owe the Osbournes a lot. They launched us. Because we were nothing. So we had to go out there and prove it. But the thing with us is when we’re together and we’re onstage, it’s us against everybody. Six songs, 25 minutes, we went hard that summer.
Fafara: I mean, it’s nine guys in masks. Like, what are you gonna do? I’m a huge KISS fan – I grew up in the KISS Army. And that generation’s KISS is f–king Slipknot, you know?
David Draiman (singer, Disturbed): We opened the side stage on the very first day of Ozzfest 2000. Way the hell early. There was, literally, 20, 30 people in front of us when we first got up there. By the time the set was done, there were about four or 5,000. It was a very surreal moment. Like, “This is the stage you wanted to be on. Now you’ve gotta show them why you belong up here.”
Skjerseth: We’d be ready for a band to start playing on the second stage at eight o’clock in the morning. And changeovers between bands were one to two minutes. The last three bands would be the headliners, and then the other second stage acts would rotate. So somebody different would get that sh-t slot at eight, 8:20 a.m. or whatever.
Holman: I think that most often those rotating bands were paid. But they weren’t paid a heck of a lot. It was exposure. Some were supported by their record company, because you could still actually get record company money back then.
Sharon Osbourne: When you’re doing a festival, there’s press from all over the world at every gig. So if the record company wanted to pay, it was like, “We’ll take it.” But we would only book a band if we liked them. I wouldn’t put on a sh-t band just to take the money.
Ozzy Osbourne: Everybody thought we were making millions of dollars off it, which we weren’t.
Blythe: For us it was just huge crowds at the second stage. We had our fans that came, but then we were also getting a lot of exposure to old-school Black Sabbath fans. Judas Priest fans. Slayer fans. Because all those bands were on the bill, too. It was a real expansion of our base. I can’t even count how many times over the years I’ve heard, “I saw Lamb of God for the first time on Ozzfest ‘04 and instantly became a fan.”
Skjerseth: There was structure on the second stage, but we had to go out there and police it a few times because it got kind of… it became the Wild West.
Draiman: A pavilion has seats, and that has sort of an anesthetizing effect on a crowd. A side stage is not the same environment. You have to move the mass of bodies that are all up against one another. It’s a different type of energy that’s required.
Blythe: We just caused massive, massive amounts of chaos on that ’04 tour when we played. It was a take-no-prisoners, f–k everyone sort of vibe. But in a friendly sense, of course.
Crahan: Slipknot were playing Spokane, Washington, the Gorge [Amphitheatre], and I cut my head open onstage. I cut it on a mic stand – it’s a long story. I was totally unconscious, and they pulled me down the ramp and tried to take me away in an ambulance. I was like, “Hold on, I wanna watch the rest of ‘Wait and Bleed.’ ” And I just kept telling the ambulance people, “Look at that band!” I’m watching my band play, and they’re f–king out of control. They didn’t even know I was gone!
Sharon Osbourne: The adrenaline with that band, on that stage… they would bash into each other, it was wild. I’m going, “Oh god, one of these guys is going to get really badly hurt.”
Crahan: I went to the hospital and got stitches in my eyes. And when I got back I was told I had to go talk to Sharon. I was so scared. I got there and she just reprimanded me… the way that I needed to be reprimanded, honestly. I needed someone to remind me of my responsibilities. It was something to the effect of, “I’m not your mother, and I’m not gonna be your mother. You need chill the f–k out.”
Blythe: I developed a bit of a relationship with Sharon because I would get called to the office for whatever misbehaving I had done. Like, we weren’t supposed to stage dive because of insurance and all that, so that didn’t go over well. So I would get scolded. But it was always a little bit of a “You’re a naughty boy” kind of vibe. Like, “You shouldn’t be doing this, but it’s pretty funny.”
Sharon Osbourne: It was like going to the head mistress.
Skjerseth: We had people hijacking golf carts and driving them through the audience, all that kind of stuff.
Blythe: I don’t know if anybody knows how easy it is to steal a golf cart. You ruin the ignition jamming a screwdriver in there, but we were always stealing golf carts and rolling them and destroying them. Me and [late Slipknot bassist] Paul Gray, rest in peace, stole quite a few golf carts together and went on adventures. I remember one time at Isleta Amphitheater [formerly Journal Pavilion] in New Mexico, we rolled one of those things down a hill with, like, 10 or 12 people hanging off the side. I’m surprised nobody broke their neck, man.
Draiman: We’d have races, we’d go down hills with them. We’d do things that we really were not supposed to do with them by any sense of safety or decorum or anything else. It was nuts. But we were young and it was celebratory and we were all in our time.
Blythe: The second stage, we were all just a bunch of savage animals basically. It was a separate world. But there was a real feeling of community. I made lifelong friends.
Fafara: That was the first place I ever met Randy. He was hilarious. He used to walk around with a bottle of whiskey and a whip in his hand, whipping everything in the air. People would go in the porta potties he’d be whipping the porta potties. And I just remember going, “What the f–k has this guy got this whip for?”
Ozzy Osbourne: The spirit of the Ozzfest backstage was like a f–king campout.
Fafara: What was going on backstage and the that was going on in tour buses, you couldn’t do that now. People would go to court, to jail. It was insane both in its excess and its debauchery.
As much as the stacked Ozzfest lineups excited fans, the bills were similarly thrilling for the acts playing the shows. Bands could watch one another perform, and sometimes even play together, and younger musicians often got to meet their heroes for the first time.
Draiman: The Pantera guys were a huge part of teaching us the ropes on Ozzfest. [Drummer] Vinnie [Paul] and Dime [guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell], may they both rest in peace, were huge fans. When we were on the main stage [in 2003] they came out and played with us. We used to make that a tradition. They were a huge part of what made us fall in love with Ozzfest, you know, other than Ozzy himself, of course.
Maynard James Keenan (singer, Tool): Ozzy, I mean, that’s why I was there.
Draiman: I would always go watch Ozzy. I would always go watch Pantera. That first year I would watch Kittie. There were so many great bands, and I have no problem being the spectator. I love being the spectator. It inspires me. Watching other bands throw down, it made you want to play harder.
Crahan: I got to watch Bill Ward play, bro! And then everybody under Sabbath – Slayer, Rob Zombie, Deftones supporting White Pony, just one act after another.
Fafara: I remember catering was the most fun thing in the world on those tours. Because everybody was in catering. And I was wide-eyed. That’s the first time I met [Pantera singer] Phil Anselmo. I’d be having a conversation with Rob Halford. Or Ozzy’s sitting there – “Dez, come sit down!” It’s like, “Holy f–k – I’m eating with Ozzy!”
Crahan: All your peers were there. I would go watch everybody, and just sit and learn.
Draiman: You get up there and you’ve got, you know, members of Slipknot or Manson or whoever watching from both sides of the stage… and over in Stage Left monitor world, there’s Ozzy himself! We all felt like the spotlight was on us and we did our best to rise to the occasion.
Crahan: Ozzy would come out once in a while when we were playing and lean over the monitor board and kind of wave at us.
Ozzy Osbourne: I would occasionally try and go watch the bands. Sometimes I was doing other things. But Slipknot, that was f–king so entertaining. Korn were f–king great as well. So were Tool. Rob Zombie. Judas Priest, great. Mot?rhead, of course. I miss Lemmy [Kilmister] every f–king day.
Keenan: We got the Melvins on the second stage [with Mot?rhead, in 1998]. I was excited to watch them really annoy the f–k out of people. They have so many amazing songs, but they were like, “You know what? We’re just gonna play that one-note song for 25 minutes today…”
Blythe: I remember sitting side stage once in California for Black Sabbath, and James Hetfield was there. I didn’t really know him then, but all I could think was, I’m right behind James Hetfield, looking at him looking at Bill Ward playing drums with Black Sabbath. This is incredible!
In its first few summers, Ozzfest emerged as an immediate triumph. Its debut traveling outing in 1997 was that year’s second-highest grossing touring festival, behind the similarly new Lilith Fair. Taking stock of its run between 1996 and 2003, Billboard Boxscore reported that Ozzfest grossed $147.4 million and sold 3.8 million tickets over 237 dates. In time, Ozzfest shows were staged everywhere from the U.K. and mainland Europe to Israel and Japan.
Halford: The start of the 2000s, Ozzfest was just larger than life. It was the event that everybody looked forward to. Everybody was eager to find out, you know, “On this date, Sharon and Ozzy are going to let us know who’s gonna appear on the fest this year.” There was a tremendous, tremendous amounts of energy around it.
Holman: As I recall, 2000, 2001, that period, were the bonus years. I think we were either the highest or the second highest-grossing festival for a couple of those years.
Skjerseth: It was running very well. And in that time, what was the other one? Warped Tour was out there. And then there were a few others that were moving along. But Ozzfest was one of the biggest, because of what it was achieving and what we were making happen.
Fafara: Sharon knew it was a smart idea to put a on a heavy metal, that’s-all-that-we’re-playing-today festival. And that if she made sure that that genre had its comeuppance, and had its day in court, everybody would come. And surely everybody did.
As much as Ozzfest functioned as a showcase for burgeoning acts on the second stage, it was the festival’s ability to line up colossal metal legends next to one another on the main stage – sometimes for the first time ever – that made it an experience unlike any other for fans of the genre. One such bill came in 2004, when Ozzfest was headlined by a fully reunited Black Sabbath, with metal icons and fellow Birmingham, England, natives Judas Priest – also in the midst of an historic reunion moment, with the return of singer Rob Halford after an eleven-year absence – in direct support. (The main stage was rounded out by Slayer, Dimmu Borgir, Superjoint Ritual and Black Label Society.)
Halford: To get Priest and Sabbath, the originators of heavy metal, side by side? That was a really big deal.
Holman: I thought a highlight of the whole thing, maybe other people disagreed, was the show [on Aug. 26, in Camden, New Jersey] when Rob Halford came out and did all the Black Sabbath songs. Which was freaking awesome.
Halford: That was an extraordinary day. I got a call from Sharon at my hotel, saying, “Ozzy’s not feeling too well. I don’t think he’s going to be able to perform. Would you help out?” I said, “Yeah, any time. When do you want me to do it?” She goes, “Tonight.” This is, like, about five hours before showtime.
Sharon Osbourne: I knew that Rob wouldn’t let us down. First of all, the friendship goes back so many years.
Ozzy Osbourne: Priest, my mates.
Halford: Sharon said, “You can do it. You can do it.” So I asked her, “Can you quickly send me the show?” They couriered a VHS tape to the hotel, and on the way from the hotel to the venue I put the VHS on in the bus and just sang along with the Sabbath performance. When I got there, I did the pre-show, had a shower, and then went out and did the Sabbath gig 20 minutes later.
Holman: I mean, this is a once-in-a-lifetime event. I thought people should pay double for it.
Sharon Osbourne: It was fantastic for everybody involved, for the audience, for everyone there. Rob saved our ass, because we didn’t want to let the fans down.
Halford: I’ve made it known throughout my years as a metal singer that the two biggest bands in my life are Priest and Sabbath. There’s just an affinity between us. So it felt like not only the right thing for me to do, but the natural thing for me to do. And it was an absolute thrill.
The following summer, Ozzfest lined up another must-see British metal twosome: Black Sabbath headlining again, this time preceded by Iron Maiden. Unlike with Judas Priest, the pairing was not copacetic. Throughout the summer, reports surfaced of Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson taking public shots at Ozzy, including mocking him for appearing in a reality television show [the then-popular The Osbournes], and criticizing aspects of the tour itself.
Holman: Having Iron Maiden on Ozzfest, although it was good for ticket sales, probably wasn’t a very good idea. There had always been bad blood between Sabbath and Iron Maiden. And I’d rather not go into specifics on that. But I don’t think Sharon was crazy about having them there.
Sharon Osbourne: It was just the singer. The other guys in the band are great, great people. No problem at all. But when you’ve got a singer that is so eaten up with jealousy for the headliner, it never goes well.
Ozzy Osbourne: He would go on the stage and turn to the audience and say bad things. Be disrespectful. “I didn’t condone the f–king lights,” and all this. If you don’t want the gig, just say, “I don’t want the gig.” But it’s pretty f–king stupid if you accept the gig and all you do is complain about it.
Sharon Osbourne: I just kept saying, “Let him do it. Let him do it. He’ll get it.” And on the last day, he did.
Holman: It did not end well, on any level.
On Aug. 20 in San Bernardino, Iron Maiden’s final show of the tour, Sharon took revenge. During Maiden’s set, audience members began hurling eggs and other debris at the stage. Mid-set, frontman Dickinson responded: “You may have noticed a few wise asses that decided they would go down to the supermarket and buy a few f–king eggs and start throwing them at us down in the front. I guess they thought it would be funny. Well, this is an English f–king flag and these colors do not f–king run from you a–wipes!” Eventually the band’s power was cut.
Sharon Osbourne: I had been having cancer treatments, and all the nurses that I had met over my year in chemo came to the show and they said, “Can we do anything for you?” And I’m like, “Yes, you can.” I loaded them up with cans of bean soup, vegetables, eggs, and I said, “Pelt the singer.” And that’s what they did.
Crahan: Slipknot played that show. And I was very close to the front of the stage and saw it all start to happen. I saw people come out and I could feel something was going on. And I also felt, “There’s a lot of English stuff happening here.” It just felt very personal and very serious. I thought, I probably shouldn’t be here… So I got out of there.
Sharon Osbourne: It was like, “You wanna talk? You think you’re clever? Well, watch this – you’re gonna get covered in tomato soup in L.A.”
Blythe: Sharon is a no-nonsense lady.
Holman: I love Sharon to death. She’s absolutely great. But if I did anything that she didn’t like, I have no doubt that she would murder me.
Sharon Osbourne: I just thought, “You’re taking the money to be on this tour, and you’re disrespecting the namesake of the tour. You’re disrespecting him by knocking him every night to the fans.” I don’t like that. It’s not in the spirit of what we do.
Ozzy Osbourne: If you feel that bad about the tour, f–king leave!
In 2007, Ozzfest organizers took a radical approach to ticketing in an effort to keep excitement around the festival at a peak. That year, Ozzfest announced a first-of-its-kind “free” tour, dubbed “Freefest,” with tickets given away to fans.
Holman: Everything has a shelf life. Look at Lollapalooza, before it came back in the 2000s. Scenes change. Generations change. By 2007, we wanted to try something new. That’s when we thought, “Well, why don’t we make it a free show?”
Per a Live Nation press release from June 14, 2007: “More than 428,000 tickets in all were given away through LiveNation.com, marking the largest number of free tickets distributed in the United States in the history of the concert business. The tickets were completely free without surcharges of any kind.”
Sharon Osbourne: It had never been done. And you explain to me, it was free… and it didn’t sell out! Can you believe that? Because everybody was going, “Well, what’s the twist here?”
Fafara: I just said to myself, “How the hell are you gonna pay anybody?”
Blythe: We got paid.
Skjerseth: We were on a tight budget. But we adapted. You just had to work a little harder to make things right.
Holman: It was, “Let’s go out and get the most sponsors that we can,” things like that. But financially it was just one of those things. Because a lot of the tickets ended up going to scalpers, which… don’t get me started on scalpers.
Skjerseth: I didn’t feel that year was successful in the sense of, when you give something away for free, that’s all it is to people – free. You give something away, people are like, “Oh, it’s raining out, I’m not going.”
Fafara: It definitely worked. I mean, it was insane. [DevilDriver]’s merch numbers were crazy. Our show was amazing. And the J?germeister tent was kicking hard.
Blythe: It was successful. I can’t remember the business of it, but I was like, “Whoa, I don’t know how they pulled it off.” And we were grateful to be there. God bless them for somehow pulling off the free Ozzfest. We had a good time.
In 2010, Ozzfest staged its final tour. In subsequent years, the Ozzfest brand came back for one-off shows: in Japan in 2013 and 2015, and in San Bernardino in 2016 and 2017, in tandem with the Slipknot-led Knotfest, for two-day events dubbed Ozzfest Meets Knotfest. A 2018 show on New Year’s Eve at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif. — headlined by Ozzy — currently stands as the last-ever Ozzfest show.
Skjerseth: The last year Ozzfest toured was the one with M?tley Crüe. After that they would do a show here and there. I was in and out. I did the Knotfest one, which was great. It was one night of Ozzfest and one night of Knotfest.
Ozzy Osbourne: Knotfest, we passed the torch on.
Crahan: When we were coming up with Knotfest, a lot of the embedded ideas obviously came from Ozzfest. Like, second stage, with a great band to headline it, other bands doing it, different things going on, all these nuts and bolts were all driven home by Ozzfest. And so when we did that joint thing, it made sense. I mean, that’s our lineage.
Holman: We did a 20-year reunion at the Ozzfest Meets Knotfest show in San Bernardino in 2016. We had a lot of the veterans from previous Ozzfests come out, which was great. Because you become a family. You’re getting together every year, like freak Thanksgiving.
Sharon Osbourne: I just remember the last Ozzfest we did [in 2018] was Ozzy’s very last show. He had two-and-a-half years of dates booked after that. Who knew that he would have a major accident that would end it all. Who knew? [In 2019, Osbourne suffered a fall at his Los Angeles home, aggravating injuries from an earlier ATV accident and requiring multiple surgeries.]
Halford: I hope that Sharon is thinking about bringing the Ozzfest back. Because people want to go to an Ozzfest experience. And what she did was generate an enormous amount of interest beyond the Ozzfest experience. She brought a lot of people to the table, and that’s often overlooked.
Fafara: She changed people’s worlds. I don’t think System of a Down, I don’t think Deftones, I don’t think Slipknot, I don’t think Cold Chamber, I don’t think DevilDriver would’ve been who we are without Sharon Osbourne coming up with the idea for the Ozzfest. I think everybody owes her a great debt. She’s a f–king shot caller and she gave me the shot. She gave me the shot twice.
Crahan: We did Ozzfest three times, did it differently all three times. And it was life-changing all three times.
Blythe: As far as the metal festivals here in America, they’re all kind of “Son of Ozzfest.” That was the first, and to my mind, so far, it’s the best.
Draiman: It was a proving ground. And it was an incubator for the next generation of headliners. The Osbournes created a community with this traveling circus of sorts, and it was an amazing idea.
Ozzy Osbourne: It must’ve been a good idea! Because everybody seems to be doing their own fests now.
Sharon Osbourne: There’s more and more every year. Isn’t it fantastic?
Blythe: I keep waiting for Sharon to resurrect it and bring us all back together one more time.
Halford: I’m sure if she did it, it would be successful.
Fafara: I think there’s so many bands right now that could benefit from it and that need a tour like that. So I’ll just say this now, and it isn’t just me being selfish: I would love nothing more than to have that festival come back. And if it does, put me on the main stage!
Ozzy Osbourne: I’d love it to happen again, yeah. Even if I couldn’t do a gig there myself.
Sharon Osbourne: We get asked about [Ozzfest returning] all the time. And I honestly don’t know. After Ozzy’s accident, I don’t look into the future much. I would love the name to carry on for my husband, but I can’t plan long term right now. I just live in the day.
Keenan: Credit to Sharon for putting it together and doing her best to manage the whole thing.
Sharon Osbourne: I just said, “Let’s just give it a shot,” you know? “I’ve got nothing to lose, let’s try and make it happen.” I went full steam ahead and I was going to have nothing stop me. I was just concerned about doing it and making a statement. And that’s what we did.
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