It’s turning into a long, hot summer for Ozzy Osbourne. The metal god called in sick again Tuesday night and missed his third Ozzfest show.
Osbourne skipped Tuesday night’s stop at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey, with an undisclosed illness, according to a tour spokesperson. He is expected to be back on his feet in time for Friday’s show at the Nissan Pavilion in Bristow, Virginia.
Ozzy sat out a July 9 show in Sacramento after struggling through the previous night’s set in San Francisco with what doctors described as severe laryngitis. He was still suffering several days later and was forced to miss the July 12 stop in Washington state.
Shortly after he got better, Osbourne was hit with another blow, as his longtime tour manager, Robert Thomson, passed away in his sleep on July 24 in a hotel room in Birmingham, Michigan. A clearly shaken Osbourne paid tribute to his friend that night during the show at the DTE Energy Music Theatre.
As with those missed dates, Korn were bumped up in the rotation Tuesday to fill in for Ozzy. Refunds are being offered to fans who were disappointed that the tour’s namesake was not on the bill.
You may have thought Ozzy was coming down with something on Sunday afternoon, when the rocker and his wife/manager, Sharon, were invited to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” at Chicago’s Wrigley Field during the seventh-inning stretch. Ozzy stumbled his way through the ballpark standard, gleefully mangling most of the lyrics in a sometimes hoarse croak.
Despite the sick days and the losses of second-stage bands Depswa and Grade 8 last week – replaced by E-Town Concrete – Ozzfest ’03 has been one of the summer’s strongest grossers, according to Billboard magazine.
The tour winds down on August 28 at the Coral Sky Amphitheater in West Palm Beach, Florida.
