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The calm before the storm ...
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'Everybody thinks, 'Oh, these bands are partying.' Nope ... '
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'It never gets any less amazing.' ...
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— by Chris Harris
AUBURN, Washington — On a warm Tuesday afternoon, Ozzy Osbourne is sprawled across the couch in his backstage dressing room.
His bus rolled up to the White River Amphitheatre just 15 minutes ago, and already Ozzy is the absolute picture of relaxation. He's calm, barefoot and impervious to the sort of pre-gig jitters that some of the other artists on this summer's Ozzfest are no doubt suffering. He's watching the 1974 comedy western "Blazing Saddles" with the volume on his huge television turned up to an almost ear-splitting level.
Over at the main stage, it's just as calm. A breeze blows through the barren rows of red seats, and the huge speakers give off a hissing sound like air leaking from a tire. Hundreds of Bandit-brand lights of all different hues twinkle, rotate and turn back and forth in unison in a synchronized ballet of luminosity and technology.
This is the calm before the storm.
And it doesn't last long: Within a few minutes, Ozzy's guitarist, Zakk Wylde, begins wailing on his double-neck Gibson as drummer Mike Bordin thumps his kit. Bordin's wife and two daughters — with earplugs firmly in place — are sitting in the vacant venue, the sole audience to an impromptu rehearsal jam between these two maestros. The young girls wave and call out "Daddy!" He smiles back at them and, later, invites them onstage, where they gawkily pound away on the toms and cymbals.
For the musicians, it's all very relaxed — the tour doesn't launch for two days, after all. But a horde of people you'd never recognize — without whom the show could not be — are working furiously to make sure Ozzfest's fury unfurls on time and in tune.
Each summer, it takes a village of lighting and sound technicians, riggers, guitar and drum techs, caterers, and a whole host of folks with countless odd jobs — the production team — just to get Ozzfest on the road and running smoothly for the 26 stops along the tour's route.
"It's like a circus," says Feelie, Ozzy's drum tech for more than a decade. "You roll into town, you do the show, you tear down, and you move — every time. It's just constant movement. There aren't many tours that carry 20 bands, but it works well. It's a well-oiled machine. It's gone on for 11 years running now, and flawlessly."
While Wylde wails, a bunch of stocky, heavily tattooed men in black T-shirts — each of them packing a walkie-talkie — run around, making sure Zakk's onstage cooler is brimming with ice-cold brewskies, that the strings on his dozen-plus guitars are wiped down, that his mic stand is lined with enough guitar picks to get him through a set.
Meanwhile, the tapping of a hammer is just audible above the din — a part of the stage needs to be reinforced so it can safely bear the weight of many amps. A man climbs a rope ladder to the lights suspended about 50 feet above the stage to make a few minor adjustments. Hundreds of miles of cables snake across the stage, wrapped with color-coordinated tape, looking like thick strings of licorice as they dangle out of the back of amplifiers. The Ozzfest logo has replaced the color bar that's occupied the giant video screen behind the stage for most of the afternoon; the screen flashes brightly, at seizure-inducing speed, with Ozzy's timeless call to arms: "Go F---ing Crazy."
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"[The set] is monstrous, and it takes a lot of hands carrying a lot of stuff."
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"It is monstrous, and it takes a lot of hands carrying a lot of stuff," says John Fenton, Ozzfest's associate producer. "It's a big production, but being that it's our 11th year, everyone has it down. It oddly runs like clockwork, as long as everyone's on time."
A large white quartz clock adorns the wall backstage — accompanied by a sign that says, "Official Ozzfest Time (We don't care what time your watch says)" — to make sure everyone is, well, "on time."
"Ozzfest time is 10 minutes faster than everyone else's time," explains Jane Holman of tour promoter Live Nation. "We don't violate curfews. We start when we say we're going to start, and we end when we say we're going to end."
Meanwhile, in the Ozzfest production office, several people are organizing the hundreds of laminates they'll be passing out to the bands on this year's bill (and their respective crews) when they arrive the following morning for the full rehearsal, which will familiarize the bands with the tour's near-military operation and pace.
"It's become more of a machine each year," reflected Moby, who has been Wylde's guitar tech for several years, as he cleans off Zakk's axes. "They've tried different ways of running it, with different stage setups. It's a good blueprint of how a festival should run — I don't know if they've discovered the blueprint yet, but they're close."
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Photo: MTV News
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