Calls to hold an annual heavy metal festival at Villa Park might have taken a big step towards becoming reality.
Aston Villa hosted the colossal Back to the Beginning charity event in July and its success prompted a groundswell of support for a recurring event in Birmingham.
Back to the Beginning was the final bow of Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath, the iconic progenitors of heavy metal with long-standing personal connections with the club.
Osbourne grew up in the shadow of Villa Park and said a final goodbye to his legions of fans in a star-studded concert at the stadium in the summer.
He passed away just over two weeks later, leaving behind a legendary legacy of his own as well as a renewed link between himself, Black Sabbath, the city of Birmingham and the origins of the greatest musical genre known to man.
Osbourne and Black Sabbath have been repeatedly honoured over the last year by Villa, while the band’s bass player and primary songwriter Geezer Butler is a renowned Villa fanatic.
In August, Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan added his voice to mine and others in backing the idea of a regular metal festival in Osbourne’s name in Birmingham and, in my view, at Villa Park.
“I almost feel like there should be an annual Ozzy concert where we come together and we just do a charitable event,” Corgan told KROQ after the Black Sabbath singer died.
A trademark application on behalf of Monowise Ltd, Osbourne’s rights-holding company, in the United States might just have got the ball rolling.
“A UK application is reportedly in the works too, pointing toward what could be the birth of a new tribute event honouring the man himself,” reports Metal Injection.
“We don’t have Ozzfest anymore, but some sort of equivalent effort as a Back To The Beginning festival happening yearly might be a nice replacement.”
Of course, there’s no indication that Villa Park has been earmarked in any way as a possible venue for an event that could, if the Ozzfest brand is any indication, be a travelling affair more akin to Warped Tour or the early days of Lollapalooza than a fixed festival in a permanent stadium home.
Ozzfest ran across the United States of America on a touring basis between 1996 and 2008, as well as several times over the next decade. The United Kingdom hosted Ozzfest dates in 1998, 2000 and 2001.
But if a regular home is in the thinking of the people behind the Monowise application, Birmingham makes more sense than anywhere and there’s no better place to hold a stadium gig in Birmingham, no building better suited to a permanent homage to Aston’s other great global export, than Villa Park.
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