Key events
Oof, Tool now. Six hours into the liveblog I think I could do with Steven Tyler yelling in my ears again. Instead we’re going into the prog zone with Forty Six & 2, which on record is six minutes long. They really are a band for people with more than one scientific calculator.
With his resplendent beard, hair and serious comportment, Zakk Wylde looks like he might potentially be some kind of chai-drinking ascetic, but actually he’s a complete sesh-lord.
He’s been reminiscing about Ozzy tours gone by to Loudwire Nights recently, recalling a conversation with tour manager Bobby Thompson. “He goes, ‘You’ve got to stay out of the web. He’s pulling you into the web.’ And the web was going out drinking with [Ozzy] every night. No one wanted to drink with Ozz except me because I was like, he’s the best. He’s the coolest. He’s the Fonz. I’d be drinking with Ozz [and so] Bobby was like, ‘Zakky, you got to stay out of the web.’ But I like the web, you know?
“Ozz, I didn’t know, is the last person you wanted to rob a bank with because he would name names and just tell everything to Mom. Sharon would go, ‘Well, who were you drinking with last night,’ and he would go, ‘I was with Bobby, Zack, Randy and Mikey.’ He would name names. He would tell you where the money was, where the bodies were buried. I was like, how come no one likes going out drinking with us? They were like, because they wanted to keep their jobs, that’s why. Stay out of the web, man.”
There’s now 1.5m people watching the livestream, and rightly so – from fun-loving party vibes to intimations of nuclear apocalypse, we’re getting the full breadth of what heavy metal can do.
More nuclear paranoia here after Lamb of God’s take on Children of the Grave: a Pantera take on Electric Funeral. Amid all the evident nuclear proliferation and incredibly careless diplomacy around war from Trump and others, it’s worth having this horrible portent spelled out again, full of all the cruelty, stupidity and insanity of war:
Robot minds of robot slaves
Lead them to atomic rage
Plastic flowers, melting sun
Fading moon falls upon
Dying world of radiation
Victims of mad frustration
Burning globe of obscene fire
Like electric funeral pyre
Wylde is chugging like no-one else today: truly heavy playing. He’ll be putting a long shift, appearing later as Ozzy’s guitarist pre-Sabbath.
Pantera get to do the first selection from Paranoid of anyone today, going slow and cosmic with their cover of Planet Caravan. This is an amazing arrangement, with a light but insistent rhythm picked out with sticks on a couple of tiny bongos, giving space for Wylde to wig out on a long-form jolting solo.
“Black Sabbath: we’d all be different people without them, that’s the truth,” Anselmo says. “I know I wouldn’t be up here with a microphone in my hand without Black Sabbath … who’s greater?”
“Make some space for me, I’m coming in!” Momoa is going to join the pit for this one: Pantera.
“This set goes out to Dimebag and Vince,” Phil Anselmo says, referring to the late Pantera members Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul Abbott. The guitars here from Zakk Wylde are absolutely filthy, in the best way: stumbling blurts of noise stuck way at the top of the mix, lagging just a touch behind the beat to make for a really potent blues-metal.
What with Anselmo here – who gave a Nazi salute and said “white power” at a 2016 gig, which he later claimed was a joke about white wine – as well as appearances from Draiman, Tyler and Marilyn Manson, it certainly goes to show how hard it is to get cancelled in the metal scene.
Ronnie Wood emerges as a secret special guest to join Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler
This revolving-door supergroup has revolved so many times I’m dizzy, but now being hurled into the atrium of this department store of rawk is the Rolling Stones’ Ronnie Wood, along with Andrew Watt, the guitarist who produced the most recent Stones album. And now it’s Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler coming out to sing on top. Through the high-tempo blues-rock hoedown of the latter’s Train Kept-a-Rollin’, there’s room for Morello to deliver a really odd and inventive solo, using a finger slide to make all manner of oblique chords.
Now it’s Walk This Way, done with the vocal styling of the foxes that used to mate in my back yard. And you couldn’t have a bunch of Americans coming to the Midlands without hearing a few licks of Whole Lotta Love.
This was like a wedding disco band who have got a bit loose on the free cava, and it’ll be the kind of “remember when we?” story everyone concerned will tell their kids who’ll roll their eyes at hearing it for the 47th time. But I’d be lying it I said it didn’t make for extremely good times.
And Hagar in turn taps in the next starry frontman: Tobias Forge of Sweden’s Ghost, who to me very much defines the phrase “fine if you like that sort of thing” but is certainly a coup, doing a suitably theatrical stab at Bark at the Moon.
Kourtney Kardashian, Travis Barker’s other half, is here. Wonder what she makes of Aston. Hagar says he and Barker “grew up together” in the same small California town of Fontana. Good lore. Not sure how the dates stack up.
This is real Disneyland stuff compared with the – I’m sorry for the snobbery – proper rock of Gojira, but still, I’m enjoying it. Hagar is bringing a cheery charisma to Flying High Again and it feels like we’re going to only ever be 70 seconds away from some hair-metal soloing for the foreseeable future.
Nuno Bettancourt, who is Portuguese, pays heartfelt tribute to Diogo Jota in his native language, having had a spell earlier in the evening in a Jota Liverpool shirt.
Then the raunch levels are set to “embarrassing uncle” for a run through the long-aforementioned Montrose song Rock Candy. Chad Smith looks like he’s enjoying laying down the simple swaggering groove to this.
Now this lineup is covering Sabbath’s Snowblind and Morello is playing his guitar with this teeth. KK Downing does the day’s best solo: a really seething, nasty, whammy-bar-tastic groan of noise played on a very cool red Flying V that writhes around for about three minutes.
Sammy Hagar emerges to tap out Corgan in this cock-rock royal rumble, promising “fun”.
Now a power-trio supergroup emerges to join in, with Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, Adam Jones of Tool, and KK Downing, once of Judas Priest – and they’re doing Priest’s Breaking the Law. It’s very fun to hear Corgan give his full Rob Halford impression – “brekking the lauwww!” – and he’s dressed like a Buddhist yoga instructor having a personal crisis, with long tabard and funky purple trainers. I once ruined/enhanced everyone’s evening at a rock club in Alicante about 12 pints into a stag do, by demanding the DJ play this and then going full pit-dancer when he finally caved.
It’s a drum-off between Travis Barker, Chad Smith and Danny Carey
Momoa’s back! Hailing this “heavy metal boot camp”, and the promised drum-off. Travis Barker of Blink-182, Chad Smith of Red Hot Chili Peppers and Danny Carey of Tool facing off against each other.
Barker’s up first, with some limber punk-rock sticksmithery and showboating; then it’s Smith with a more jazz sensibility; and finally Carey goes heavy on the toms for a fairly rudimentary rock pummelling. Bettancourt, Morello and more provide some muscular bluesy hard rock underneath. To be honest, that should have been given an extra five minutes for each drummer to really let their freak flag fly – but it’s good fun and high-intensity.
With a combined age of 305, it’s impressive that Black Sabbath are getting back out there at all, and Tony Iommi admitted this week that the rehearsals have been a slog: “I wouldn’t say it’s been easy, it’s been tough, because none of us are getting younger and to stand there for a couple of hours is tiring.”
His comments reminded me of Michael’s brilliant recent feature for us, speaking to the ageing drummers of rock on how they keep going through this tough physical labour late in life.
