1208. Ozzy Osbourne / Live & Loud [Live]. 1993. 5/5

By the time Ozzy Osbourne had released his “No More Tears“ album, an episode of which you can listen to on Season 1 of this podcast, he had decided that he had become jaded and sick of touring, and that he would go out on one final world tour, calling it the “No More Tours” tour, and that a resulting live album recorded on that tour would be his final album. Looking back now, thirty years ago, it seems like a facetious remark, given that even into his 70’s now and suffering from a number of ailments including Parkinson’s disease, he’s still out there making live appearances. And given that there have been a number of things said over the years that appear to be more of a promoting of Ozzy and his music, and things including reality shows and series made which, in the long run, come across as brazen promotion of the artist and his music, is it so wild to believe that the whole “No More Tours” thing was just a way of selling out more shows and selling more albums? Or was it simply a case that once he had gone on a break following this tour, that he realised how bored he was, and that it was making music that was keep him going? In the long run, it probably doesn’t matter, that even if it was a promotional tool it turned out to be a good one, but other things that went into it did create some ructions.
As it was going to be his last time out, Ozzy invited the other three original members of Black Sabbath to come out on his final night and have a reunion for the encore, and asked the band to play as support for that night. At the time, Sabbath was touring on their “Dehumanizer” album with Ronnie James Dio back as lead singer. When Iommi and Butler agreed to this, Dio dead set refused, saying that to be considered as a support act for Ozzy was degrading for the band and not what their status demanded. It caused this second formation of this lineup of Sabbath to dissolve immediately (although the band played the support slot with Rob Halford filling in on vocals), and also eventually led to a reunion of the original foursome for a tour in 1997, though a new album did not eventuate from this.
All in all, lots of consequences came from the tour that this live album was recorded on. Most of all, it produced a cracking live album of some of the best music Ozzy and his bandmates ever produced.

The “No More Tours” tour stretched through the back half of 1992, and the songs from this live album were taken from several shows on that run, including from Orlando, Atlanta and Cincinatti.
The first thing to consider here are the performances. And they don’t miss a beat. Ozzy is in fine form, no doubt standing in front of his autocue to make sure he doesn’t forget the words, but he sings everything terrifically. Zakk Wylde on guitar is as awesome as ever, every nuance of every song is found with the correct ting of the string, from the ferocity of “War Pigs” and “Bark at the Moon” to the mood swings of “Mama I’m Coming Home” and “Goodbye to Romance”. He was truly on a prominent rise at this stage, before his journey into Black Label Society, when this was the dream gig that he had been waiting for. Mike Inez finds all of those wonderful Bob Daisley written bass runs perfectly through each song, and Randy Castillo is as powerful as ever on the drums. The performance of the band here is second to none.
The song set list is also a who’s who of the best that Ozzy has to offer. The Sabbath tracks “Paranoid” and “War Pigs” are as bombastic as always. The mix of tracks for the rest comes from all six of the studio albums to that point in time, with the focus remaining on the album they were touring on at the time, “No More Tears” with five songs from that album. Only one song appears from each of the mid-era albums, represented by “Bark at the Moon”, “Shot in the Dark” and “Miracle Man”, while the Randy era albums get the six classic tracks played, as one would expect.
At the end of the album we have the aforementioned reunion of the original four members of Black Sabbath performing that title track, which, while it was a somewhat momentous moment at the time, has paled into insignificance in the years since. And for all the grief it caused at the time, with Dio leaving Sabbath again and Tony Martin returning to Sabbath again, and Ozzy deciding he WASN’T going to retire after all and in fact go on for another 30 years of albums and tours, including one more with Black Sabbath again... it feels more and more like an Ozzy promotional exercise than any other possibility. But in the long run, the people behind Ozzy’s career were always looking for those angles.

The most annoying part of this album’s recording and release was that, once again, Australia got looked over for a tour by the band, and as it had been ‘the final tour’ we believed we were never going to get to see him perform these songs live, which was very frustrating.
I got the album on its release and played it on rotation over a long period of time. The live versions of all the songs were just fantastic. Sure, perhaps the Randy era versions on the “Tribute” album were better, but not by much. And it was great to hear songs like “Bark at the Moon” and “Miracle Man” get the live treatment.
And as I’ve said before here when reviewing live albums for this podcast, live albums really all should be brilliant, because you are getting the best songs in their best environment, and that is absolutely true of “Live & Loud”. Great songs, performed by a great band. And there is probably no better way to “finish” your career than for it to be with this song.