"Sharon Osbourne picked the wrong people to start a fight with. Yeah, Insane Clown Posse has a big fan base but it's not a fan base that spans twenty-five years. And we're all crazy." That was LCG's answer on Monday when I called him up and said, "Didja hear?"
In case you haven't heard, Sharon Osbourne called my beloved Bruce Dickinson a pr-ck. At first I thought, "Them's fightin' words," but, you know. I love Bruce Dickinson as much as a legal adult can love the lead singer of her favorite rock band but I do understand this: it is widely accepted that Bruce Bruce is a jerk. My good friend the Cowboy thinks Bruce is a jerk. He also told me that as a singer and frontman, Bruce has never let him down. The Cowboy appreciates the fact that jerk or not, Bruce kicks ass.
As I hear it, people don't like Bruce's Bender-style in-your-face attitude. I happen to like the fact that he yells at members of the crowd. He believes that audiences should be enjoying themselves and if they aren't having a good time, they should not be there. I love that! He can't be the only singer who thinks that, but he is the one who says it and it makes me swoon like Bugs Bunny.
However, I do understand that people dislike Bruce Dickinson. I do not understand why Sharon Osbourne would decide to go onstage after the last appearance of Iron Maiden at Ozzfest and say that Iron Maiden is a good band but Bruce Dickinson is a pr-ck. As you can well imagine, I have an opinion on this. Before I state any opinions, I would like to present a few facts.
Fact: Ozzy Osbourne cannot play back-to-back dates. Even Linda Lou, who is just ten years older than me but nowadays pays attention to the MTV only to monitor what my cousins are watching, knows this. It all started when Ozzy had to cancel his set in New Jersey. Iron Maiden stepped up to the plate and played two hours. The same thing happened in Indianapolis. He cannot play two days in a row.
My friends and I were hopeful because the Minneapolis date was the day after the Alpine Valley (Milwaukee area) date. We were calling each other up after every new cancellation. "Our show is after Alpine! Full set!" We wished Ozzy no ill will but we all are aware that he cannot play two days in a row. He's tired! He also ended up cancelling in Columbus, which was shortly after Indiana. He was still tired, we assumed.
I was telling this to LL and when I said he couldn't play two days in a row she said, "I saw that on his show! He was yelling at Sharon for scheduling shows too close together." LL knows, we know, and we know good and well that Sharon knows. We saw Ozzy tell her so.
Fact: This was the ten-year anniversary of Ozzfest. Up until this year, do you know how many times I had attended an Ozzfest? Zero. Not once in ten years did the lineup call my name. If there had been a band I wanted to see, I still would not have gone. I live in a pretty good market so the odds of a band coming through on their own tour at some point have always been decent. I didn't need Ozzfest.
Do you know how many Ozzfest shows I had tickets for this year? Three. The Minneapolis show eventually got cancelled so I only saw two, but I fully intended to attend three Ozzfest dates. I got on a motherfucking plane to see an Ozzfest. This was because Iron Maiden was on the bill. Both Ozzfests, I left before Black Sabbath. To me, Ozzfest was a very expensive Iron Maiden ticket.
Fact that I have a bit fuzzy: LCG has been to Ozzfest for the last six years. (It could be more which is why this fact is vague). The first year he went he did stay for Ozzy. The next four years he went with a different person each time. He told every single one of them that they didn't need to stay for Ozzy. The first three years, people insisted on staying. After a couple of songs, every single one of them turned to LCG and said, "You were right. Let's go." Last year his friend believed him so they left before Sabbath and this year it never occurred to me to suggest staying.
Opinion: On Monday CEB started flooding me at work with news items from the fabulous Blabbermouth. Well, I think it's fabulous even though I don't go there regularly. CEB does and sends me the items that interest me. Thanks CEB! So, the show in San Bernardino was the last Ozzfest that featured Iron Maiden. They couldn't do the entire tour because of prior commitments in England.
During their set, bad things happened. Their intro was meddled with (someone chanting Ozzy over the PA), their power was cut multiple times, and people in the pit were throwing eggs. There was also beer thrown, and on top of that, someone spit at Bruce Dickinson. You do not spit at Bruce Dickinson. Soon eyewitness accounts started coming out, ones that indicated that the people in the pit had Ozzfest credentials and one looked like Kelly Osbourne. After the set Sharon came out on stage and said that Iron Maiden was good but Bruce Dickinson is a pr-ck. Yeah, and?
Here's the thing: when you hire Iron Maiden you know what you are going to get. You are going to get a kick ass band with a lippy lead singer. Apparently she had taken offense at something Bruce said in Detroit. I was there, and I heard what he said. He ripped on reality shows (he said they didn't need one) and my first thought was, "Hey! I think that INXS show is a dumb idea too!" It never occurred to me that he was talking about The Osbournes specifically, because there are ten billion reality shows currently on television.
She also claimed to be offended by the Union Jack that Bruce waves during The Trooper. She thought it was a slight to Americans. Again, the flag should not have been a surprise. It's his prop for The Trooper, which is a song about England battling Russians and has nothing to do with current events. I understand when they get booed for waving the Union Jack in Ireland (that happened on the Dance Of Death tour) but that is a whole nother issue.
Also, it is widely known that Bruce doesn't particularly like American audiences because many of them quit buying their records after Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son. Onstage he likes to mention that they aren't some reunion band. I saw him do that in Chicago two years ago, and he still is saying it. If she thought that was a direct shot at Black Sabbath, well, I think that shows she didn't do her research. Another one of her complaints is that Bruce kept pointing out that people had to come see a real Iron Maiden show where they had their own PA and played a full set because their PA is superior. Sorry, but that is also true. I saw two full Iron Maiden sets and two Ozzfests and Iron Maiden had a better sound on their own.
I am especially annoyed because I have spent quite some time defending Sharon to the Sharon-haters of the world, and there seem to be many. I always referred back to the Ozzy Behind The Music, where she talked about being so poor when they were first married that they had to stay on the road because they had nowhere to live. They had the baby's crib set up in the bus! I always believed that the memory of being that poor kept them working, although I did think she sometimes overscheduled Ozzy.
Well, she overscheduled him this year and it backfired. Iron Maiden stole the show. Even more annoying to me, she busted up my rhythm. I am in the (slow) process of talking about my Iron Maiden-based vacation and this incident is messing up my carefully scheduled chronological order. Here I was planning to talk about the thrills of going to the Hockey Hall Of Fame and seeing Iron Maiden in the same day and she had to go and have eggs thrown at Iron Maiden. In the end though, I don't think that Iron Maiden will be the ones with egg on their faces.