6 standout Ozzy Osbourne moments from 50 years of Twin Cities concerts

Unlike our Upper Midwest neighbor Des Moines, the Twin Cities cannot brag about being where Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off a bat or anything as crazy-train as that. But, we still have a lot of memorable moments to chew on.

With Tuesday’s news that the legendary Black Sabbath singer and one-time MTV reality star died at age 76 — just two weeks after raising almost $200 million for charity with his final performance — fans started loudly cranking out memories from Osbourne’s long history of performing in Minnesota. Here are some of the standout moments.

(July 5, 1971, St. Paul Auditorium)

It wasn’t so much the smashing performance that folks remember. It was the smashed windows. For reasons never quite made clear, some attendees started busting up glass and chairs at the venue. Perhaps fans foresaw the decades’ worth of poor-sounding concerts to come at the venue that would later be renamed Roy Wilkins Auditorium. St. Paul city attorney Daniel Klas wrote a letter to the city council urging no more concerts there, alluding to “numerous persons under the influence of drugs and alcohol … walking in a daze with very glassy eyes.” And so it began.

(May 25, 1981, Minneapolis)

Osbourne’s first-ever solo tour after being fired from Sabbath was booked for a short-lived festival along East River Flats Park by the University of Minnesota campus, with Motörhead opening. Ozzy arrived with his “Blizzard of Ozz” band, including guitar wiz Randy Rhoads, who would die in an airplane crash a year later. Bill Lindsey, frontman of the veteran St. Paul metal band Impaler, said of Osbourne, “He was on fire. And seeing Randy for the first time was incredible. Plus, Rudy Sarzo and Tommy Aldridge, what a band. Ozzy was in the greatest band on the planet twice in his lifetime.”

(Float-Rite Park, Somerset, Wis., July 18, 1998)

Osbourne himself was fairly coherent and after years of iffy performances, earning praise from Star Tribune critic Jon Bream for “carrying on like a madcap rock showman” and for the simple fact he “could be understood.”

(July 2, 1992, Target Center, Minneapolis)

After his 1991 hit “No More Tears,” he billed this supposed farewell outing as the No More Tours tour. Edina-reared fan and guitarist Jeff Litman remembered attending at age 13: “He was still spry enough for frog jumps, and he mooned his middle-aged ass to the crowd more times than I could count,” Litman said.

Kent Militzer of Roseville, another local guitarist, also remembered the “Ozzy hop” and other colorful details from those ’90s shows: “Kind of a frog hop. No idea where that came from. And all the F-bombs to get the crowd going. And the fact that during the long solos he’d go off to the side and drink tea. The Prince of Darkness likes tea!”

Clearly, Osbourne wasn’t really done with touring yet, but it helped sell tickets.

As was documented on the hit MTV show “The Osbournes,” which showed off his family life, Ozzy still struggled with drugs and alcohol addiction into the 2000s but finally cleaned up for this tour for the album “Scream.”

In an interview with the Star Tribune before the concert, Osbourne said, “I don’t want people to think that I’m anti-drugs, or anti-alcohol. If you have a good time and you’re not harming anybody, it’s all good. But, I just don’t choose to do it right now. It’s just amazing the whole transformation that me and my family have had from the [recovery] program.”

His newfound energy was amplified by it being Halloween night with Rob Zombie as the opener. He sprayed down the audience with a foam hose and voraciously bit into tellingly titled new songs such as “I Don’t Wanna Stop” and “Not Going Away.” He probably would not have made it another decade on the road if not for this turnaround.

(Jan. 25, 2016, Target Center)

After first reuniting with his old band on tour, Osbourne made another Sabbath album in 2013 and then announced The End, as this tour was billed. It’s too bad Sabbath drummer Bill Ward wasn’t there because of a contractual dispute with Ozzy’s wife/manager Sharon Osbourne, but otherwise fans got one last mighty fix of the quartet’s devilish power.

That Sabbath show wound up being Osbourne’s last date in either Minneapolis or St. Paul. He did slip in another solo headlining date at Treasure Island Casino Amphitheater in Red Wing in before announcing a 2018 date at St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center on the No More Tours II tour in 2018. Sadly, that final outing was postponed and then outright canceled due to Osbourne’s Parkinson’s disease diagnosis.