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Ozzfest off because of time, not money, right?
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 13 February 2009
Ozzfest has been cancelled this year. Not because of poor ticket sales or money problems though. No, those things might cause problems for other festivals, but not this one. It’s just that Ozzy Osbourne has just realised that he’s recording a new album at the moment and won’t have time to do the day-to-day admin on the event.
A statement published on the festival’s website reads: “Ozzy Osbourne is currently in the studio in Los Angeles co-producing his 10th studio album with Kevin Churko. … The two-time Grammy Award winner has decided that he will not be touring until he has a new album in-stores (currently projected to be Thanksgiving 2009). Thus, Ozzy has decided to put his namesake festival Ozzfest on hold this year”.
Despite these claims, it’s not a secret that Ozzfest has struggled a little in recent years. Formerly a travelling festival that wound its way around the US (and occasionally the UK, although not since 2002) over several months, it gave away free tickets via sponsors and pre-orders of Ozzy’s ‘Black Rain’ album in 2007, and was scaled back to a one-day event last year.
In recent years, bands such as Iron Maiden and Queens Of The Stone Age have complained about their treatment on the tour (Sharon Osbourne responded by calling Bruce Dickinson a dick and saying that she hoped Josh Homme got syphilis) and problems with the free ticketing system left some fans unable to gain entry to the 2007 shows.
