Free Ozzfest kicks off

Ozzfest kicks off on Thursday (July 12th) with a show in Auburn, Washington, just outside Seattle. All the tickets for the entire tour are free, with fans obtaining them through the festival's sponsor web sites via a marketing strategy that has been labeled both brilliant and potentially disastrous. Ozzy Osbourne will headline the entire trek this year, with Static-X, Lordi, Lamb Of God, Hatebreed, 3 Inches Of Blood, Mondo Generator, Circus Diablo and others also on the bill.

Ozzy told us that Ozzfest started in 1996 as a handful of dates after his wife and manager Sharon couldn't get him a spot on another well-known festival tour: [ Click to listen if you have a backstage pass] "She tried to get me on Lollapalooza, and they turned around to Sharon and said, 'You know what, we don't think there's a spot for Ozzy in this music anymore.' So she came home, pissed off, and she said, 'We'll do our own damn show.' So she booked me a few shows, it sold out overnight, and everything after that Sharon did on her own, you know."

Sharon Osbourne told Billboard.com last week that about 3,000 tickets at each of the festival's 24 stops have been held back to provide upgraded seating. Fans arriving early at the show will have a better chance to win the upgrades by entering a lottery at special designated booths.

Ozzy was inducted into the new Birmingham Walk of Stars on Friday (July 6th), the first native of the British city to get his own brass star installed in the sidewalk of Broad Street.
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