{"id":2551,"date":"2013-08-16T09:04:53","date_gmt":"2013-08-16T16:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/?p=2551"},"modified":"2014-07-27T17:44:08","modified_gmt":"2014-07-28T00:44:08","slug":"black-sabbath-preview-indianapolis-ozzy-qa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/?p=2551","title":{"rendered":"Black Sabbath Preview- Indianapolis Ozzy Q&A"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>There is no denying the legendary status of Black Sabbath. They are all Rock n Roll superstars, defining what Metal was as a lifestyle. Without Sabbath, we would not see the likes of the Metal acts today like Slipknot and Tool or fellow legends like Motorhead and Megadeth. Front man, Ozzy Osbourne, however, does not see Black Sabbath as a Metal band anymore. At a pre-tour press conference Osbourne elaborated on this, \u201cI\u2019ve never really liked that – using that word heavy metal, because 80s metal was all Poison, Motley Crue, Ozzy, and so on, and the 70s was a different thing you know. And it got different in the 90s. I mean, it\u2019s like it doesn\u2019t have any musical connotations for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And the new album 13<\/em> is not a Metal album. It is more like their first albums, not the Paranoid <\/em>or Iron Man<\/em> years, but the time they were grinding it out as a Blues band. Now, this is not your typical Blues album, nor should they abandon what made them the stars they have become. What gave the band the inspiration to produce their first #1 album, yes, I repeat, first #1, was one simple concept, one simple word \u2013 freedom. Ozzy explains, \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of free spirit, which is what he [Rick Rubin] was looking for, I suppose. It must have been. We did very well, his idea of a Black Sabbath album.\u201d Freedom is what was missing from Black Sabbath. It is what the band had forgot when they tried to force albums in the 18 years since the last album was released.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On Sunday night, Black Sabbath rolls into the Klipsch Music Center in Indianapolis. After nearly 45 years of Black Sabbath, a lot of lineup changes have been made. This is not a different lineup. This is the original crew. This is Ozzy, clean, sober, and still with the distinct sound that no one else in the business can touch. It is guitarist, Tony Iommi, a cancer survivor while the new album was being made, truly the \u201cIronman\u201d of the band, as Osbourne refers to him. It is bassist and band lyricist Geezer Butler. Rumors are already flying that this may be their last tour together so it will be a truly once in a lifetime experience for many. It is amazing that those in the crowd Sunday night will see the same Black Sabbath that rocked arenas 40 years ago when they were revolutionizing music.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here are a few more snippets from the pre-tour press conferance that will get you fired up. The humbleness and pride really shines through in all of Ozzy\u2019s answers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Question: Hey, I remember back when Sabbath originally got back together in the late 90s and you guys did a lot of touring then into the next decade. The band had tried back then for a time to get a new record together and then it didn\u2019t materialize. Can you put your finger on what made things different this go around that did enable you to come up with some pretty raw material?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ozzy Osbourne: You know what? I was doing this television thing with the Osbournes back then, and I had my own career, and I suppose it was a clash of egos, and it just didn\u2019t feel right. We tried to force an album. In fact we did – we recorded a demo, with a bunch of stuff, which is nothing like the way we used to do. We were forcing it out of ourselves. Where upon this album, this–the 13<\/span> album was just kind of came out–we just clicked. I mean, you know when you\u2019re in a band and you go into something that is working. You know, we didn\u2019t have to force it. It just came naturally.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Question: When did you realize that?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ozzy Osbourne: There\u2019s no answer – there\u2019s no formula. There\u2019s no magic–it just happens or it doesn\u2019t–I wasn\u2019t really into it. They weren\u2019t really into it, and you can\u2019t force it. It either comes or it doesn\u2019t, and I said before in the press that the reunion album was going to have to be something special, the most important album of my career.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When it comes out naturally and you get that tickling feeling in your spine and you know you’re on a sort of that spiritual thing you sort of–you know that everything\u2019s working right, you\u2019re not forcing it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Question: So you know, 13<\/span> has already proved to be very successful for the band. It\u2019s the band\u2019s first Number 1 album in the US. How does this feel after 45 years?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ozzy Osbourne: You know what? You\u2019re asking the wrong guy, because when it went to Number 1 in England, it just went Number 1 in England, America, Germany, New Zealand, and I\u2019m like, “What?” I mean, I\u2019m still kind of pinching myself like I\u2019m going to wake up and it\u2019s all been a dream, because had this happened in 1972 after Paranoid, I\u2019d have gone, \u201coh, yes, okay.\u201d But now after 45 years up the road, and we get our first Number 1, it\u2019s kind of a hard thing to swallow, you know? You just kind of–it\u2019s great. I\u2019m not saying I don\u2019t want it to be Number 1, but I just don\u2019t understand why now, you know? I mean, we\u2019ve been around for a long time, in one way or another.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Question: Okay, so now you\u2019ve got the album that you wanted. What\u2019s the live show going to be like?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ozzy Osbourne: You know, all I can say is a month or so ago we were in New Zealand, Australia, and Japan, and it was astounding how the reception was. We\u2019re going to do some old and we’re going to do some new and it\u2019s just kind of interesting to be able to do some new stuff because in the past I haven\u2019t been able to do a lot of new stuff because of the fact that my range is too high and I couldn\u2019t do onstage what I did in the studio.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But now on this – on 13<\/span> I sang it in a range that I could do most of them on stage so we did new things, \u201cEnd of the Beginning\u201d, \u201cGod is Dead?” and a couple of others, but we couldn\u2019t do most of the cuts off the album if you want to change them around and all. We\u2019re not going to go and just do new stuff with very limited old stuff. We\u2019re going to do \u201cParanoid,\u201d \u201cBlack Sabbath,\u201d a good mix of the old stuff as well as the new stuff.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Question: I wanted to see if you could talk about Tony Iommi, just how inspirational for you it was watching your friend battling cancer while making this album, and his courage.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ozzy Osbourne: You know, when he came down with cancer, it\u2019s been the way of Sabbath, that is we\u2019d try to get something going again, and the last time, Bill Ward had a heart attack and we couldn\u2019t do it then.\u00a0 The easiest part of getting back together with Black Sabbath and doing an album is just sitting down and just saying, \u201cyes, you know,\u201d but then all kinds of crap gets flown in the works.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And Tony kept going. He said, \u201cI\u2019ve got this lump\u201d and I said, \u201cYou know what? If I were you, I\u2019d go and get myself checked out, because you know in a way, it was what I said to Sharon–my wife Sharon went to get checked out early part of of 2000, and she found she had colon cancer, so she had to go and get it checked out.\u201d\u00a0 So he came back and he said, they\u2019ve found I\u2019ve got lymphoma, and I go, this is unbelievable. Every time we start to get going – it\u2019s like a curse, you know? And believe me, I know from firsthand with my wife that treatment for cancer is not like doing a line of coke and going to a disco. It knocks the crap out of you, you know? But fair play to Tony, it just came down to the studio.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The only thing we had to do was make it easier for him to get treatment. In other words, we started off at my studio in Calabasas, but we all moved to his studio in England, and we all stayed in a hotel for a while to accommodate him, and he would come down to the studio every day. I\u2019d go, \u201cTony, you\u2019re sure you\u2019re okay to do this, man, are you ready?\u201d And he goes, \u201cNo I’ll do it and he came down, he came up with the goods.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I thought my God, man, he is \u201cIronman.\u201d You know, I mean, my hat goes off to him, because I mean, believe me, I don\u2019t know if you have ever known anybody who had chemotherapy before, but that really knocks the life out of you, man.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Question: I\u2019m just curious what the impetus was that – when you called Tony back in 2010 and said you know, let\u2019s get the band back together, I want to make another Sabbath album, what was going through your mind at that time?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ozzy Osbourne: I can\u2019t really remember who called who. I think it originally it was me and Tony doing an album and then we tried various base lines and we tried the instruments out and we tried a whole bunch of people, and I don\u2019t know who said, what\u2019s Geezer up to and you know, and it just kind of came together by accident and we all started to write stuff and it started to gel, whereas we tried before and we all sat there and it just wouldn\u2019t – it was just wouldn\u2019t work, you know.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But it came together very naturally and it wasn\u2019t too long to where it was like, I like that, that\u2019s pretty cool, and so you can\u2019t force anything, right? You can just – you can try and be Black Sabbath, but we all knew that we didn\u2019t want to put an album out called Black Sabbath just for the sake of us guys getting together and doing stuff together. At one point there was even talk like not calling it a Black Sabbath album, but eventually it rolled into itself.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Question: I wanted to ask about the lyrics on the album. Now I know Geezer has a big hand in that. How does the process work whto create the lyrics?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ozzy Osbourne: Well, what happens is I get a melody, and I\u2019ll just sing anything, and sometimes it can be like a beginning or a hook line or a couple of words that he gets inspiration from. He\u2019s the main lyricist, although I wrote a couple of the sets of lyrics on the album, but Geezer gives Black Sabbath\u2019s vocal message verbally. I mean, over the years, he\u2019s given me some phenomenal lyrics, you know.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He\u2019s just one of these guys that can do that.\u00a0 I get an idea like \u201cGod is Dead?,\u201d for instance. One day I was in the doctor\u2019s office waiting room, and Time<\/span> magazine was just sitting on the front with \u201cGod is Dead?\u201d and I thought, wow, that\u2019s a good idea, and I started singing that on the track, you know, the \u201cGod is Dead?\u201d bit.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And then Geezer just said, you know\u2026I thought, they’ve flown planes into the World Trade Center under the name of religion and God and all this shit, and that is not my idea of what God should be. My idea of what God should be is a good guy, you know. I don’t think there’s any good in killing people in the name of your God. And so Geezer–that was my idea, and Geezer took it to another level.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Question: Did you ever have to have discussions about you know, things that he writes that you might not agree with?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ozzy Osbourne: No, no.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Question: Is there ever a back and forth?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ozzy Osbourne: He\u2019s very careful. I mean, if you listen to the lyrics on \u201cGod is Dead?\u201d at the end of the song it says, \u201cI don\u2019t believe that God is Dead,\u201d people just look at the face value of the title and I know on this tour we\u2019re going to have Bible thumpers and people picketing us and people telling us that we\u2019re evil and all that, but you see it\u2019s what we, we kind of laugh at it, because people just go the face value that \u201cGod is Dead?\u201d, and it\u2019s all about Satan and it\u2019s just quite amusing actually because they don\u2019t really know what they\u2019re complaining about.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Question: This is just a little bit off-topic. In the movie \u201cGod Bless Ozzy Osbourne,\u201d I noticed toward the end you were learning to drive. I just wanted to know what was going on with that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ozzy Osbourne: See what happened, I got a driving license, bought a Ferrari, I bought an RA Spider, and the people would get out of the bloody road when Ozzy was driving, I\u2019m telling you. I was always getting stopped by the cops or running into somebody else\u2019s car, so one day I said to my wife, \u201cYou know what? I\u2019m 64. I don\u2019t really want to be found dead in a Ferrari.\u201d I\u2019ve survived this long of all my trials over my life. I don\u2019t want to drive over a cliff in a car, so I haven’t really been driving since I sold the Ferrari and the RA.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is no denying the legendary status of Black Sabbath. They are all Rock n Roll superstars, defining what Metal was as a lifestyle. Without Sabbath, we would not see the likes of the Metal acts today like Slipknot and Tool or fellow legends like Motorhead and Megadeth. Front man, Ozzy Osbourne, however, does not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3329,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1417],"tags":[1418,1861,979],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2551"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2551"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3576,"href":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2551\/revisions\/3576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}