Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath: Their most memorable Long Island gigs
Ozzy Osbourne may have been The Prince of Darkness, but he and Long Island were a match made in heaven.
Whether solo or with his groundbreaking group Black Sabbath, the singer performed for his faithful followers here many times over the past 50-odd years — at least as far back as 1971 and as recently as 2018, according to dates listed under the official tour history at Ozzy.com.
Long Islanders’ first glimpse of Black Sabbath, known as the godfathers of heavy metal, came at The Rock Pile, an Island Park nightclub formerly known as the Action House, on March 30, 1971. The tour was in support of their breakthrough second album "Paranoid." A typical set list from the tour would have included the hard-driving title track, the soon-to-be-classic "Iron Man" (not inspired by the Marvel superhero, though it played over the credits of the 2008 film) and the epic "War Pigs," according to the fan website black-sabbath.com. That site also notes that the band returned the same year to Commack's 4,000-seat Long Island Arena — a dramatic leap in size in just five months.
By 1972, Black Sabbath was big enough to play the Nassau Coliseum on July 27; they’d return again in 1974 and 1978. By 1980, the group was beginning to fray [Osbourne had been fired from the band by that time and was replaced by Ronnie James Dio] but still launched a U.S. tour with Long Island's own rock favorites Blue Öyster Cult, dubbed "The Black and Blue Tour." Their show on Oct. 17, 1980, at Nassau Coliseum, was filmed and became part of an episode of "Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert," the syndicated television series, and was also released theatrically as "Black and Blue" that same year.
How big was Osbourne as a solo act? In 1982, he stopped at both Madison Square Garden in April and at Nassau Coliseum in May — a rare feat of pulling-power. That tour, to support his "Diary of a Madman" album, saw the notorious incident in which a fan tossed a dead bat on stage in Des Moines, Iowa, and the singer — thinking it was a toy — bit off its head. The gruesome moment sparked a media frenzy that surely helped fuel future ticket sales.
Over the coming years, Osbourne would return to the Coliseum — with or without Black Sabbath — at least another half-dozen times, according to the concert database Setlist.fm. Black Sabbath appears to have played its last Long Island show at Jones Beach on Aug. 17, 2016, according to Ozzy.com. Osbourne took his so-called final tour in September 2018 to Jones Beach where he performed in front of a rain-drenched crowd.
The late Osbourne has one more Long Island connection: Andrew Watt, a producer on the singer’s final two albums ("Ordinary Man" and "Patient No. 9”), grew up in Great Neck and graduated from John L. Miller Great Neck North High School.
This story has been corrected to say that Osbourne was not with Black Sabbath when they played Nassau Coliseum in 1980.
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