Memories of Ozzy: Hosed at Ozzfest

We all have memories of Ozzy. Ozzy Osbourne was the rock star we all knew. He was the rock royalty that was banned from the Alamo. He was the star of reality television that bit the head off of a bat. Ozzy a guest of U.S. presidents and a guest in jails.

Ken Settle has been capturing iconic moments in Detroit concert history for decades. Not only is Ken an excellent photographer, he has kept track of all the great stories that go along with them. The following story is Ken's encounter when Ozzy was feeling particularly mischievous.

With great respect and admiration, I would like to share my very humorous memories of Ozzy. Though it was anything BUT humorous at the time!

The Ozzfest '97 tour carried with it some pretty big news. It would be the first time that Ozzy and Black Sabbath would reunite for a tour since Ozzy left the band nearly twenty years earlier. Drummer Bill Ward did not join the band on this tour, however. Mike Bordin of Faith No More sat in for him. I was the only photographer credentialed to shoot the Black Sabbath set at Pine Knob on June 12, 1997. I felt particularly honored.

At Ozzy shows, he usually had buckets of water lining the edges of the stage and the backline. During the show, Ozzy would douse members of the audience in the front rows. He always took great delight in soaking the photographers as well. But to my relief, I didn't see the buckets of water. Maybe Ozzy was going to leave that bit behind?

Black Sabbath took the stage with Ozzy wearing a Black Sabbath T shirt. The crowd was going nuts right at the start of the reunion set. I turned my attention to Tony Iommi for some photos, and when I looked back over at Ozzy, he was brandishing a steel, high power, riot control water gun, complete with a heavy duty hose that trailed back to a huge compressor unit! WTF!

I thought the buckets of water was bad, but you could at least dodge those a little bit. I watched as Ozzy took aim toward the audience with the water gun and let me tell ya, that thing shot all the way to the back of the pavilion! Surely Ozzy wouldn't turn that hydro-AR-15 on yours truly... the only photographer in the pit. Just to be sure though, I zipped the weather flap on my camera bag sitting near the foot of the stage.

Ozzy stalked the stage purposefully, heading over to stage left. He passed by me, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Ozzy had second thoughts. He turned around, with a gleam in his eye and a maniacal grin on his face, heading directly for me. I knew what was coming, so I turned my back to him and tried to huddle over the two cameras hanging off of my shoulders.

Sure enough, I felt the cold blast of water right in the small of my back. Not pleasant, to say the least. It was actually painful. But Ozzy kept the water on me. It felt like it was drilling a hole in my back and it was stinging but good at this point.

Still not satisfied, Ozzy began exhorting to the fans in the front row to grab me and turn me around so he could really cause some water damage. "Spin that *#!ker 'round so I can soak 'em good!" Ozzy hollered. I found myself having to fight off the clawing grasp of front row fans trying to grab me and turn me around for their icon to blast.

Finally, Ozzy turned his attention away from me. My cameras and I were totally soaked from head to toe. I looked like I had been walking in a monsoon. I thought that I should get out my 35mm wide angle lens from my camera bag to get some shots of Tony and Ozzy together if possible.

Unzipping the weather flap on my bag, I reached in for the lens, only to find that there was a half inch of standing water inside my camera bag despite the weather flap being sealed! I pulled my wide angle out, turned it upside down, and water literally streamed out of the lens.

Ruefully mounting the lens to my camera, I had just enough time to capture the shot that you see here of Tony Iommi and Ozzy together with Ozzy jumping. The other photos here from that show were taken with my 85 1.2L lens and it too was dripping water.

After I was done shooting and checked out the damage....man....was I p!ssed! For a second, I fantasized about going backstage and throttling Ozzy but good. All I could do was head for home and start tallying up how much the damage was going to cost me... those were not the most pleasant memories of Ozzy, but things did work out.

I ended up sending both of my F-1 cameras and all my lenses to Canon. They took everything apart and cleaned and dried it all thoroughly and got all the equipment back to me in three days. That equipment was already a good fifteen years old at that point in time. I am proud to say that I used that very same gear for another thirteen years. It worked flawlessly through all that time. When I finally switched over to digital, I retired the equipment Ozzy has soaked at Ozzfest.

The day after the show, I got a call from Sharon Osbourne and I let it go to voice mail. I was still pissed. I never did return the phone call.

Ozzy was a one of a kind character! The stuff that legends are made of. Though I think Ozzy DID get a particular glee from creating havoc, but I think he felt that getting the audience soaked (and the photographers too) was all part of making the audience and performer come together as one.