By Steve Newton I did my first interview with Ozzy Osbourne back in June of 1982, when he was touring behind his Diary of a Madman LP. Just a few months earlier he’d lost his guitar player, the legendary Randy Rhoads, in a bizarre plane crash. At one point in the conversation I asked Ozzy … Continue reading That time I asked Ozzy Osbourne if “Crazy Train” was an autobiographical song
By Steve Newton Back in January of 1984 I did my first interview with Tony Iommi, while Black Sabbath was touring behind its Born Again album. Fourteen months earlier Sabbath’s former frontman, Ozzy Osbourne, had released a double live album, Speak of the Devil, which hit stores just two months before Sabbath’s own double live … Continue reading That time Tony Iommi told me that he didn’t think Ozzy Osbourne needed to record Sabbath tunes for his live album
By Steve Newton I interviewed heavy-metal guitar hero Zakk Wylde for the second time back in August of 1996, when he was touring behind his debut solo album, Book of Shadows. That acoustic-based disc was a lot less raunchy than Wylde’s previous work with Ozzy Osbourne and Pride & Glory, so when he called in … Continue reading That time I asked Zakk Wylde if he thought his hard-rock fans would accept the less-raunchy sound of his new Book of Shadows CD
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON DEC. 16, 1983 By Steve Newton It looks like Ozzy’ll be laughing all the way to the bank when the royalty cheques for his new album Bark at the Moon come rolling in. The raunched-out guitars, pounding drums, and madman vocals that made his first two albums, Blizzard of Oz and Diary … Continue reading Album review: Ozzy Osbourne, Bark at the Moon (1983)
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT, JUNE 14, 2007 By Steve Newton If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s an Ozzy Osbourne ballad. Let’s face it, Ozzy’s not a slow-burn kinda guy, he’s a “let’s go fuckin’ crazy!” kinda guy. I don’t buy it when, on the new ballad “Lay Your World on Me”, … Continue reading Album review: Ozzy Osbourne, Black Rain (2007)
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT, AUG. 5, 1994 By Steve Newton It comes as somewhat of a surprise that Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde is a dyed-in-the-swamp southern-rock maniac, but the New Jersey native is at the forefront of the current trend toward repopularizing the style epitomized by the Allman Brothers Band. On its … Continue reading Album review: Pride & Glory, Pride & Glory (1994)
By Steve Newton In April of 1990 hard-rock drum legend Tommy Aldridge called me up from the road in Minneapolis, where he was playing that night with his latest band, Whitesnake. The group was touring behind its eighth studio album, Slip of the Tongue, the one with “Fool For Your Loving 89”. I actually preferred … Continue reading That time Tommy Aldridge called me up from the Whitesnake tour and explained how it was different working for David Coverdale than Ozzy Osbourne
By Steve Newton Forty years ago, around this time, I was livin’ the dream–if the dream was to be a journalist specializing in heavy metal. I’d recently found work as a freelance music writer/proofreader with the Georgia Straight, a weekly Vancouver newspaper. The cool thing was, within a span of six weeks, I got to … Continue reading Metal mayhem in the summer of ’82: scoring cover stories on Ozzy, Maiden, and Scorps
By Steve Newton A couple of weeks ago I posted a blog telling of a new partnership between me, the Newt in Ear of Newt, and The Tapes Archive, a U.S.-based podcast that focuses on releasing previously unpublished interviews with rock legends. That blog included a link to a YouTube video The Tapes Archive’s Alan … Continue reading Ear of Newt and The Tapes Archive present Ronnie James Dio: The Sacred Heart Interview, 1985
By Steve Newton Back in March of 2007 I did my second interview with Tony Iommi, who was about to kick off a nine-month global tour with the Ronnie James Dio-fronted Heaven and Hell. (The band had changed its name from Black Sabbath, which it had previously recorded and toured under, to differentiate it from … Continue reading That time Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi told me what he thought of Megadeth, Metallica, and Pantera
The DDs in Montreal last Wednesday By Steve Newton Any Vancouverites up for a rowdy evening of ’80-style hard-rock tonight? The Dead Daisies, a guitar-rock collective originally formed in 2012 by Australian businessman-turned-rocker David Lowy, plays the Hollywood Theatre in Kits tonight (Saturday, September 2). In previous incarnations the group has included such old-school rock … Continue reading The Dead Daisies–featuring ex-members of Whitesnake, Mötley Crüe, Dio, and Pride & Glory–play Vancouver tonight
By Steve Newton I did my first interview with Ozzy Osbourne in early June of 1982, ten weeks after his beloved guitarist, Randy Rhoads, perished in a fiery plane crash at the age of 25. No wonder he sounded bummed out. Rhoads’ place on the Diary of a Madman Tour had been taken first by … Continue reading Ten weeks after Randy Rhoads’ death Ozzy told me that the fallen guitar hero could do anything
By Steve Newton Jason Newsted is best known as the bassist who played with Metallica for 14 years, during the peak of their popularity, on discs like …And Justice For All and The Black Album. I interviewed him back in July of 2013, when he was fronting his own group, Newsted, three weeks before it … Continue reading That time Jason Newsted told me that Black Sabbath were “the inventors” and they could do anything they want
