Michael Anthony Watched Ozzy Osbourne Light Bill Ward on Fire

Michael Anthony has detailed a memorable – and weird – early touring expertise, when he watched Ozzy Osbourne gentle his Black Sabbath bandmate Invoice Ward on hearth.

It was 1978 when Van Halen, then considered one of rock’s quickest rising acts, was touring with Black Sabbath. “We had one of the best time opening up for Black Sabbath,” Anthony recalled throughout a current dialog with Sirius XM’s Eddie Trunk. “We got here out like gangbusters each evening.”

By all accounts, Osbourne’s group was in tough form on the time attributable to alcohol and drug abuse, however Anthony famous that the metallic legends “nonetheless knew learn how to have enjoyable offstage.”

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“Ozzy, Invoice Ward and myself could be sitting on the bar on the lodge after the present having a beer,” the bassist recalled, detailing considered one of his favourite reminiscences from the tour. “Ozzy would elbow me and go, ‘Hey, Michael. Verify this out.’ And he’d simply flip over and decide up a lighter and lightweight Invoice Ward’s beard on hearth.”

To Anthony’s shock, Ward didn’t appear fazed by the spontaneous ignition

“He simply snuffed it out,” Anthony remembered, “and did not even skip a beat.”

The Van Halen bassist quickly deduced that Ward was used to those sorts of shenanigans, even when such an act appeared wild to everybody else.

“[Ward] did not even flinch,” Anthony famous. “He simply saved ingesting his beer.”

Michael Anthony’s Favourite Tour Prank

Whereas Black Sabbath appeared to take pleasure in hearth play, Anthony revealed his personal prank of selection was fairly the alternative.

“My forte was hearth extinguishers. Simply form of taking pictures them off the place I should not be,” the bassist confessed. “I’ve cleared a few motels out my time. Needed to pay the police off, stuff like that.”

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As Anthony defined, trashing motels was seen as a ceremony of passage for rock bands on the time.

“We would learn what like Led Zeppelin would do, what Sabbath would do, what all these individuals would do on tour,” he recalled, earlier than admitting “there was numerous shenanigans that went down” on Van Halen’s early excursions.