Ozzy Osbourne announces Ozzfest New Year's Eve in LA w/ Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson, more
Ozzy Osbourne recently had to reschedule the four remaining West Coast shows on his “No More Tours 2” farewell tour due to his hand surgery. The shows now happen in July 2019, but you won’t have to wait that long to see the Ozzman on the West Coast. He’s throwing a one-day edition of Ozzfest on New Year’s Eve in LA at The Forum, and he’ll be joined by Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson, Jonathan Davis (of Korn), and Body Count. There’s also a second stage with Black Label Society (the band of Ozzy’s guitarist Zakk Wylde) and four bands TBA outside.
“Ozzy hates the holidays,” Sharon Osbourne tells Rolling Stone. “He hates Christmas and he hates New Year’s Eve. He’s always saying, ‘Let’s do a gig.’ And I’m always like, ‘There never is one.’ So this year, we said, ‘All right, let’s do an Ozzfest, because we never did it this year.’” Tickets go on sale Friday (10/26) at 10 AM Pacific.
Rolling Stone also interviewed Ozz about the three staph infections that led to his surgery:
They put him on drip and pill antibiotics, which knocked him out. “I could hardly move,” he says. “I really had no energy.” The thing that “got [him] out of the blues” was eating ice cream, he says. (He even posted a picture of him doing just that to social media while under doctors’ care.) After spending a little less than a week in the hospital, he was sent home with a special soap for his hand and was told to soak it twice a day for about 10 days. “I said to Sharon, ‘What the fuck am I gonna do for the gig?’” he recalls, before they postponed the first show. “Then the doctor said, ‘You must be fucking crazy. You get another staph infection, and you could die.’ He said, ‘One’s enough. You’ve got three individual ones.’”
Once he made it home, he realized he had a whole other set of problems. “I haven’t been able to do anything,” he says. “I’m right-handed. You can’t wipe your own ass. And I didn’t have many fucking volunteers who would do it for me.” Osbourne laughs.
He started visiting with his specialist three times a week (he’s now down to one visit a week). Asked when he started to feel more like himself again, he laughs. “I don’t think that’s possible,” he says. “To be honest with you, I didn’t feel that bad all along. I said to the doctor at one point, ‘When can I work out?’ He said, ‘You can do whatever you like, but I don’t advise you to for at least 10 days.’ I tried working out for two minutes and I thought I was gonna fuckin’ die, because the antibiotic knocks the wind out of your sails big-time. So I went, ‘You know what? I’ll let the doctor be the doctor and I’ll be the patient.’ So now compared to what I was like, I feel about 85 to 90 percent better. So I’m well on the mend.”
You can read more here.
