After bassist Jason Newsted quit Metallica in 2001, he quickly joined a year-long tour with Ozzy Osbourne.
Oh, the stories he told of Ozzy.
Newsted ended up in Jupiter, Florida in his later years and spoke with The Palm Beach Post in 2022 about his time with Osbourne, who died at 72 in Birmingham, England on July 22.
The reason he left Metallica, Newsted told The Post in 2022, was because a permanent neck injury had left him addicted to pain medication, and he told the band he needed a six- to eight-month break to rest and recuperate.
He said the band wasn’t willing to do that, so he left. Soon after he became the bassist for Osbourne, then fronting his own band but still known as the Prince of Darkness, former lead singer of Black Sabbath … and legendary partier.
In hindsight, Ozzy was probably not the best person to hang around with for someone trying to get off pills.
“At one point, I remember 77 tablets (Ozzy) took in one day: meds, vitamins, supplements, Xanax and Vicodin,” said Newsted, who joined Metallica in 1986 after bassist Cliff Burton was killed in a tour bus crash in Sweden. “Folks said he must have Parkinson’s cause he was shaking. No man, no, he’s just vibrating. He’s not sick, he’s jacked up. And that’s what I stepped into.”
Newsted managed to play 62 shows in 31 days during Ozzfest, he said, joining his former band, Voivod, on the smaller stage during the day before headlining with Ozzy each night. And despite Ozzy’s incessant partying — and Ozzy’s wife Sharon Osbourne’s never-ending attempts to control it — it would not have been possible to have worked with a more enthusiastic or dedicated musician, Newsted said.
“He got his gear on two hours before stage time with Zeppelin jamming, like ‘Let’s go!’” Newsted said of Ozzy rocking out pre-show in his dressing room. “That was the real person, and no matter what kind of stuff they tried to subdue him with, that was still the essence of that person.”
So was the side of Ozzy that few ever witnessed, Newsted said, like when Ozzy saw Newsted’s Chihuahua backstage sporting a pair of giant sunglasses.
“He lost it, like a child,” Newsted said, laughing and mimicking Ozzy’s mannerisms. “He’s like, ‘Oooooh, baby!’ That’s the genuine person. There’s still this really big-hearted animal-loving dad in there, besides being the Prince of Darkness. He is that, too.”
Former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted on why he loves Florida
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Ozzy Osbourne death: Ex-Metallica bassist Jason Newsted toured with the Prince of Darkness
Reporting by John Bisognano, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
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