The First Ozzfest - 1996
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On October 25 and 26, 1996, the first "Ozzfest" festival was held in Phoenix, Arizona, and Deborah, California, the event that forever changed the face of "heavy" music and transformed it from a humiliating rejection into the largest and most influential metal empire in the world.
The mid-1990s were a complex and challenging time for the world of classic heavy metal. The Seattle grunge revolution and the rise of alternative rock dominated radio stations, MTV, and magazine covers, while the metal giants of the 1970s and 1980s were seen by the mainstream music industry as anachronistic dinosaurs whose time had passed. Ozzy Osbourne, the prince of darkness and the father of the genre's food, also found himself at the beginning of the third act of his career. After announcing his retirement from touring following 1991's "No More Tears," Osbourne realized that he could not live without the stage, and returned in the fall of 1995 with the successful studio album "Ozzmosis" and the "Retirement Sucks!" tour.
The historic turning point was born out of a stinging insult. In 1996, Sharon Osbourne, Ozzy's wife and tough personal manager, approached the organizers of the Lollapalooza festival, then considered the glittering and prestigious bonfire of alternative rock in the United States, and offered to include Ozzy Osbourne in that summer's lineup. The response she received was arrogant and dismissive, with the festival producers claiming that Ozzy was no longer relevant and that his inclusion would damage the event's alternative and current image. Rather than swallow the frog and settle for a routine tour of closed venues, Sharon Osbourne, along with her young son Jack Osbourne, who served as her musical advisor for selecting new bands, decided to fight back. If the alternative establishment refuses to give metal a foothold, the Osbourne family will establish its own festival dedicated entirely to fans of heavy, extreme, and outcast music.
Many people don't know this, but in its first year, "Ozzfest" wasn't a traveling tour across the United States, but a daring two-day experiment in the Southwest. The first day took place on October 25, 1996, at the Blockbuster Desert Sky Pavilion in Phoenix, Arizona, and the second day was held the next day, October 26, 1996, at the huge Glen Helen Blockbuster Pavilion in the town of Devore, San Bernardino, on the outskirts of Los Angeles, California. Under a scorching desert sun, nearly fifty thousand hungry metalheads flocked to the two venues, making the two days a dizzying commercial success with full ticket sales and proving to the stunned music industry that the metal crowd was alive, kicking and thirsty for a home of its own.
The artistic vision that Sharon and Jack Osbourne crafted for the thirteen bands that performed on the festival's two stages was a strategic brilliance. Rather than relying solely on nostalgia, they created a rare intergenerational bridge that connected established thrash, groove, and heavy metal legends with the industry's furious new generation, from industrial and hardcore bands to the fledgling nu-metal pioneers.
Headlining the main stage was, of course, Ozzy Osbourne himself, accompanied by a virtuoso and powerful ensemble that included guitarist Joe Holmes, a former student of the legendary Randy Rhoads, bassist Robert Trujillo from the bands "Suicidal Tendencies" and "Infectious Grooves" who would later join Ozzy and the band "Metallica", drummer Mike Bordin from the band "Faith No More" and keyboardist John Sinclair. Ozzy delivered an electrifying show that combined his greatest solo anthems with timeless classics from his parent band "Black Sabbath", including "Perry Mason", "Crazy Train", "Bark at the Moon", "Suicide Solution", "I Don't Know", "Paranoid" and "War Pigs".
Alongside Ozzy on the main stage was a host of metal monsters who turned the entire day into a non-stop sonic assault. Thrash metal giants Slayer, who arrived at the festival just months after the release of their punk covers album Undisputed Attitude in May 1996, took to the stage with vocalist and bassist Tom Araya, guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman, and drummer Paul Bostaph. The band crushed the desert with relentless renditions of classics like "Angel of Death", "South of Heaven", and "Raining Blood", in what became the opening shot of a close relationship with the festival that they would return to again and again in the years to come.
One of the most charged, emotional and historic performances at the festival was that of Brazilian metal giants Sepultura. The band arrived in the United States at the height of their artistic success following the revolutionary masterpiece album "Roots", released in February 1996, but behind the scenes, things were already going wrong. Just two months earlier, in August 1996, while the band was in England for their performance at the Monsters of Rock festival in Donington, Dana Wells, the stepson of vocalist and guitarist Max Cavalera and son of band manager Gloria Cavalera, was killed, and the rift between Cavalera and the rest of the band deepened. Sepultura's performances at the first Ozzfest, where they shook the earth with songs like "Roots Bloody Roots" and "Attitude" accompanied by tribal percussion, were definitely among the last times that American audiences got to see the classic lineup with Max Cavalera, who left the band in December of that year and formed "Soulfly."
Also on the main stage was the band "Danzig" led by the dark and charismatic Glenn Danzig, from the band "Misfits", which at that time presented the industrial and gloomy direction of its fifth album "Danzig 5 Blackacidevil" and provided mesmerizing performances of songs such as "Her Black Wings" and "Mother". Alongside her stood out the Brooklyn hardcore metal giant "Biohazard", which arrived with the explosive street energies of the album "Mata Leão" and raised huge pogo circles with the song "These Eyes Have Seen", and the Los Angeles industrial death metal pioneer "Fear Factory", which rode the huge waves of success of the groundbreaking masterpiece album "Demanufacture" from 1995 and captivated the audience with the mechanical and precise combination of Burton C. Bell's roars with Dino Cazares' cutting riffs and Raymond Herrera's cybernetic drumming in songs like "Replica". The main stage was completed by the band "Narcotic Gypsy", while on the first day of performances in Phoenix, the avant-garde post-metal and sludge band from Oakland "Neurosis" also played, mesmerizing the audience with the dark powers of their album "Through Silver in Blood" and especially with their rocking live performance of the song "Locust Star".
But the real magic that made "Ozzfest" an unprecedented cultural phenomenon also happened on the second stage. There, in the hot parking lot and within touching distance of the audience, five young and hungry bands were set up to represent the new subgenres of the end of the millennium. The most prominent of them was the young Los Angeles nu-metal band "Coal Chamber" led by vocalist Dez Fafara, who even before the release of their debut album became a sensation thanks to the festival and performed their debut anthem "Loco" with a frenzy of senses, when at the concert in Debor, adult film star Ron Jeremy was invited on stage to introduce the band.
Alongside "Coal Chamber" on the second stage was the Boston industrial metal band "Powerman 5000", led by Spider One, Rob Zombie's younger brother, who excited the audience with the song "Organized" ahead of their big break. In the extreme and ideological sector, the vegan hardcore band from Syracuse "Earth Crisis" stood out, led by vocalist Karl Buechner, who brought the militant and heavy gospel of straight-edge to the stage with the song "Broken Foundation" from their album "Gomorrah's Season Ends". The second stage was completed by the Californian band "Cellophane" with the song "Ride Thy Neighbor" and the band "King Norris", which was the house band of broadcaster Howard Stern's popular radio show.
The artistic and commercial success of these two days was immortalized in April 1997 with the release of the joint concert album and official videotape "The Ozzfest Live" produced by Thom Panunzio, which included ten selected live segments recorded and filmed during the festival and became a must-have item in every metal fan's home in the 1990s.
Israel also has a place in the story of "Ozzfest". On September 28, 2010, during the Sukkot holiday, the festival arrived at Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park, produced by Shuki Weiss. Ozzy Osbourne headlined with his first-ever performance in Israel, joined by "Korn", "Soulfly" and Israel’s own "Betzefer". For one evening, the global festival became a local celebration of metal, connecting Israeli fans and the local scene to the legacy born over those two days in 1996.
Looking back, those two days in October 1996 in Arizona and California were much more than just another successful rock festival. The first Ozzfest proved that heavy music didn't need the grace of commercial radio or mainstream music critics to thrive. The following year, 1997, the festival became a massive national tour that included a historic reunion of "Black Sabbath" alongside bands like "Pantera", "Type O Negative", "Fear Factory", "Machine Head" and Marilyn Manson, and over the next decade it became the central incubator that launched bands like "Slipknot", "System of a Down", "Linkin Park", "Disturbed", "Incubus", "Deftones", "Godsmack", "Lamb of God" and "Mudvayne" to global fame, with over five million viewers and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. That Lollapalooza postponement turned out to be the greatest gift the modern metal world has ever received, and the most magnificent monument to Ozzy Osbourne's vision and enduring legacy.
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