In a new interview with Matt Bingham of the Z93 radio station, GREAT WHITE rhythm guitarist and keyboardist Michael Lardie paid tribute to Ozzy Osbourne, who died late last month at the age of 76. Asked if he has any Ozzy memories to share, Michael said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “A couple of things. We did do [the] Roskilde [festival] in Denmark, and they were the headliner — Ozzy solo. So we were able to see him — not really talk to him so much. But the best story I have is we were both on a flight to London together, the band and Ozzy and his solo band. And he was walking around the plane, saying hi to [original GREAT WHITE singer] Jack [Russell], and we were talking and chatting and all that stuff. And he’s got a DAT player. I don’t know if you remember those, the digital cassettes. And he’s going around to the guys in the band and our management at the time, and he goes, [adopts British accent] ‘This is my new record. Would you go take a listen to it?’ And it was ‘No More Tears’. And when you first put the headphones on and you hear that riff, you’re just, like, ‘Oh, my…’ To me, that was kind of the height of his prowess as the Prince Of Darkness. He had a great guitar player with him, and it was just a great marriage of everything. And that record just had so much toughness and energy. And it was a treat to see him on the plane, for one, but then to be able to listen to that record before pretty much anybody else did, certainly the general public…”
Reflecting on Ozzy‘s legacy, Michael said: “You think about people that have been so important to our genre of music. He was pretty much the guy that made this style of music with SABBATH, and it kind of leapt on to… And I don’t know how it couldn’t be in anybody’s DNA that plays hard rock. You’ve gotta have SABBATH in your thing. I mean, I remember listening to ‘Master Of Reality’ when I was like 12 and learning ‘Sweet Leaf’. So that that part of what he meant to all of us is an incredibly cool thing. And the fact that we actually had some up-close-and-personal stuff with him as well is something I’ll always treasure.”
Asked by Bingham if the passing of some of these rock legends, like Ozzy and Jack, makes him “start to wonder” about GREAT WHITE‘s future at all and how long he and his bandmates want to stay out on the road, Michael said: “Well, it’s hard to say. It all feels pretty good for us still at this point. And we were clocking the number of years — like Audie Desbrow, the [GREAT WHITE] drummer, and I have been in the band since ’85, so this year is our 40th year. So when you look in those terms, of course you see your mortality on some level. You don’t know how much longer you can actually do this, but at this point I can say that everybody’s healthy, happy and still loves doing this. So it’s hard to say — five, seven, ten years. It’s hard to say, but we are blessed with having a catalog of music that people seem to respond to, and they wanna keep coming and seeing us. So, it’s kind of that push-[and]-pull between the audience and us. If we have the ability to go out and play and we’re still healthy enough to do it well, which is obviously very important to us, we’re gonna keep doing it. The only thing that’s probably difficult for what we do, the way we travel now, it’s a different thing because we’re like the weekend warrior. Like for this weekend, we’re gonna come and see you guys. We’re gonna be in Bay City [Michigan] on Friday and Morton, Minnesota on Saturday, which is like an hour and a half out of Minneapolis. So we got a back-to-back coming. So it’s early flights. So that’s probably the only downside I could possibly come up with. I mean, the fans have been fantastic. We’re still getting 45 to 50 shows a year.”
Ozzy died the morning of July 22, his family announced in a statement.
“It is with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning. He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time,” the family said.
No cause of death was given, but Osbourne had battled a number of health issues over the past several years, including Parkinson’s disease and injuries he sustained from a late-night fall in 2019.