Sharon Goes Lights Out for Ozzy

Sharon Osbourne has just added to her multihyphenate--wife of Ozzy, organizer of Ozzfest, Emmy-winning matriarch of The Osbournes, ex-talk show host, cancer survivor and now Iron Maiden basher.

The missus has admitted in a statement that she cut power to British metal icons Iron Maiden during an Ozzfest concert this summer. She says she pulled the plug after the band's lead singer, Bruce Dickinson, let loose a litany of anti-Osbourne sentiments from the stage.

In a press release written as an open letter to Maiden manager Rod Smallwood, Sharon Osbourne explained why she unplugged his band during its set Aug. 20 near San Bernardino, California.

"For 20 shows we were forced to hear Dickinson's nightly outbursts from the stage," she writes.

She then recounted some of what Dickinson said of her husband, including an alleged dig at Ozzy requiring a TelePrompTer to perform live.

"Dickinson got what he deserved," she added.

In a posting on Iron Maiden's Website, Smallwood had claimed the band deserved an apology "from a number of people, and you know who you are."

And Dickinson told Britain's Sun, "We could tell there were a lot of disgusted fans who had paid good money to see us."

But Osbourne was unrelenting.

"Was Dickinson so naive to think that I was going to let him get away with talking s--t about my family night after night? I don't think he realizes who he's dealing with."

She signed her letter: "the real Iron Maiden."

Indeed, long before Sharon Osbourne became a household name in America thanks to MTV's hugely successful Osbournes, she was known in music industry circles as one of the fiercest managers in the business.

She conceived the massive Ozzfest tour as a vehicle to introduce younger fans to her number one client, and the tour has become possibly her most successful business venture.

The traveling summer show, which rakes in upwards of $25 million and attracts nearly 500,000 fans, is built around Ozzy as the headliner, with typically younger metal bands warming up.

Iron Maiden found itself badmouthing the wrong clan when he spoke ill of Ozzy's brood--fans reportedly pelted Maiden with eggs and other projectiles on Aug. 20, roundly booing the band before Sharon went lights-out.

Fans appeared particularly offended at Dickinson's remarks about Ozzy's declining health following a lifetime of hard living.

Earlier this month, the Osbournes released a statement saying this would be the 56-year-old Ozzy's final Ozzfest as the headliner.

Some fans who were at the Aug. 20 show posted messages to blabbermouth.net that Sharon may have been behind the anti-Maiden episode. "There is NO WAY any fan could have snuck in 36 f---ing eggs," one concertgoer vented. "They patted us down so good, I felt like asking for a cigarette afterwards."

If Osbourne did egg on fans, she is uncharacteristically staying mum.

Regardless, Maiden is off the tour--their last gig on the currently-touring festival was Aug. 20. Velvet Revolver will fill out the remaing Ozzfest dates.

Ozzfest touches down next at the Starwood Amphitheater in Antioch, Tennessee, on Wednesday.

Source:
Sharon Goes lights Out for Ozzy, Viewed at 31st August 2005

Duff, Slash Gunning for Axl

The bad blood among the ex-members of Guns N' Roses has boiled over into a federal case.

Duff McKagan and Slash filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles Wednesday against Guns ringleader Axl Rose, accusing their former frontman of trying to cheat them out of royalties to the song catalog of the iconic hair band.

Duff and Slash, now part of Velvet Revolver, say they are still partners with Rose when it comes to the old Guns tunes like "Sweet Child O' Mine" and "Welcome to the Jungle." They contend that Rose, without their consent, signed a multimillion-dollar publishing deal with the U.K.-based Sanctuary earlier this year that included the lucrative Guns N' Roses back catalog.

Because of Rose's "arrogance and ego," per the suit, he has failed to "acknowledge the contributions of his former bandmates in [creating] some of rock's greatest hits."

"Rose's actions were malicious, fraudulent and oppressive, and undertaken in conscious disregard of [Slash and Duff's] property rights." They say that a $92,000 royalty check covering the first quarter of 2005 went directly to Rose "and his accomplices," instead of being split three ways.

The former Gunners are accusing Rose of fraud, copyright infringement and breach of fiduciary duty.

There was no immediate comment from Rose's reps. Deke Arlon, chairman of Sanctuary's publishing division, told E! Online he couldn't discuss the dust-up because "the matter is subject to legal hearings."

The original members of the Los Angeles band drifted apart in the mid-1990s--leaving the band's legacy in dispute. Rose was eventually awarded rights to the Guns N' Roses moniker and continues to play (or not play, as is more often the case) under the GNR banner. But Duff and McKagan sued Rose in April 2004 to determine control of the back catalog.

That breach-of-contract lawsuit, which is still pending, specifically alleges Rose unilaterally blocked the others from licensing Guns music for movie soundtracks, effectively shutting off potential revenue streams to Slash and Duff. The duo claimed Rose "whimsically refuses to license Guns and Roses Music" even though he, they allege, dropped out of the partnership in 1995.

Even with the feuding, the band's studio albums have all gone multiplatinum, and Guns' songs are still among the most requested in the publishing biz. The band's tunes recently turned up--along with Rose's vocal acting talents--in 2004's biggest videogame release, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

What hasn't turned up is Rose's forever-in-the-works album, Chinese Democracy, with his revamped version of Guns N' Roses.

Earlier this year, the New York Times ran a lengthy feature examining how the seemingly mythical Chinese Democracy has failed to surface, despite being finessed in various studios for the better part of the last decade. The article concluded that the delay was due in part to Rose's fabled eccentric and reclusive nature.

In response to the March article, Sanctuary Group CEO Merck Mercuriadis fired off a vitriolic letter to the Times, saying Rose will "have the last laugh" and that the singer is simply a "soft target for the sort of rubbish you have chosen to print."

Last we heard, Sanctuary was aiming for a late November release date for Democracy, but that was before the label's financial problems became public. The company is said to be heavily burdened by debt and is struggling to survive.

Despite their open feuding, Duff, Slash and Rose did manage to reunite last year to sue Universal to block the release of Guns N' Roses Greatest Hits. The band lost, and the album wound up debuting at number three on the Billboard 200 and ultimately sold over 2 million copies.

Source:
Duff, Slash Gunning for Axl, Viewed at 26th August 2005

NIN interview

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor has finally pulled himself out of his personal downward spiral and released the band’s first record in more than five years. And, he admits, he’s a changed man.

“The world doesn’t revolve around me, people tend to know more than I do and it helps to listen, occasionally!” Reznor reveals.

Rewind to 1995 and Nine Inch Nails were in the early stages of their ascension (thanks to the mega-selling second full-length record, The Downward Spiral). Trent Reznor’s status as a cult figure and martyr for the depressed and dispossessed increased daily, but the then-25-year-old auteur’s dog had just died, falling 50 feet from a balcony in Ohio.

“I’m happy that his dog died,” a fan told People magazine at the time. “I like it when he’s depressed. It’s good for the music.”

To paraphrase a famously dark star’s inked pelvis, it was a case of quod me nutrit, destro. If the music of NIN was cathartic for the band’s followers and allowed them to explore (and, in many cases, survive) their darkest hours, they were perfectly happy for their idol to bleed out every line for their personal benefit – even if it meant misery, self-destruction and God knows what else for Reznor.

The newly calm Reznor laughs about it today, but ten (or even five) years ago he found himself trapped in a vicious cycle of stimulus-response.

“Certainly a motivating factor in my making music was my being depressed, because I found music was a cathartic way for me to feel better, to get that out of my system,” he offers. “I learned that drawing on negative experiences – whether it be anger, or depression, or heartbreak, or gloom, or frustration, or madness… those are things that acted as a catalyst to make music. But later I started to believe that I had to be in the midst of a tormented phase to have anything pertinent to say, anything relevant or meaningful. And then that led into me thinking, ‘I wonder if I also need drugs or alcohol to maintain that state’. There’s enough bullshit writers and poets that would lead you to believe that all creativity stems from a bottle or whatever it might be.”

If you’ve been out of the NIN loop over the past few years, here are some cliff notes: on the outfit’s last large-scale tour, in 2000, Reznor overdosed on heroin. But following rehab in 2001 and some wilderness years of self-examination and creative breathing space, Reznor has clawed his way back to a semblance of normalcy.

For the droll ex-Pennsylvanian (who recently turned 40), this hard-won clarity is something of a milestone.

“For sure,” Reznor says. “I also learned that I never turned to drugs or alcohol as inspiration. If anything, that ended any sort of creativity. I just did it because I didn’t want to feel bad, I didn’t want to be in pain, and that was the only way I knew, reliably and easily, that I could do that. And it does work, for a little while. Then it leads to a place far worse than when you began.”

It was a place Reznor has only just begun to explore throughout With Teeth, NIN’s first full-length release since 1999’s The Fragile, a record Reznor now feels was overblown and misguided (even if it did contain mini-masterworks like ‘Into The Void’).

Upon With Teeth’s release earlier this year, Reznor was quick to announce it was his most personal record, though he now tempers that statement somewhat.

“I think what I meant when I said something like that was that the process of writing this record was a lot different to what it had been in the past, not just the strategy of execution – which was starting with piano and vocal, I hadn’t done that before – but the process of actual writing and creating,” he explains. “I felt a lot, as it went on, a lot freer and a lot more confident and willing to take chances, and a lot less concerned about wondering if it’s good enough or wondering if people will like it and all that nonsense.

“I know I’ve invested a lot in feeling that way in the past and feeling confident enough to say, ‘Yeah, let me try this’ [or] ‘Is this ‘right’ for Nine Inch Nails?’. [But] who cares? Do I like it? Yes. All right, [then] quit overanalysing it and quit talking about it and quit being afraid!”

It was the first time, too, that Reznor felt no pressure to succeed commercially or appease to his notoriously passionate fans.

“This time I was divorced completely from external pressure, but I had my own bar that I’d set that I had to make sure I’d pass. But going into it [not knowing] if the record label wants to even put it out, or if anyone cares, I think, in a way, that was freeing. I really achieved a sense of humility and of being humbled through the process of my own life bottoming out. It’s tough to feel real cool when you’re vomiting in a fucking toilet in rehab with junkies about to kick your ass; it’s tough to feel important in that state.”

Even though he didn’t realise it at the time, waking up in a London hospital with tubes in most orifices was, on some level, a window into a new creative mindset.

“I had a fresh well of experiences,” he laughs, “things that I’ve barely started to even sift through. I’ve had enough negative, terrible times for several more double-albums if that’s what I chose to do. It was the biggest change in my life and the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through, for sure, and the most searching… I felt like I had a loaded gun at my head saying, ‘Do this or you’re going to die’.

“But having done it, I’ve learnt more about myself and others and I learnt so many things that I was so full of shit about!”

So is this the beginning of a beautiful new relationship, a healthier way of going about things?

“Let’s see how it goes,” Reznor laughs. “I’m still learning on this process, but I have learnt an incredible amount so far.”

Source:
NIN interview, Viewed at 26th August 2005