KISS's farewell tour may not be coming to Cincinnati, but Hard Rock legend Ozzy Osbourne will be giving his Queen City fans a proper goodbye next year. Osbourne's "No More Tours 2" tour will visit Riverbend Music Center on June 6. Megadeth is the opening act on the tour's 2019 North American run.
Tickets for the concert go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, Nov. 9 through Ticketmaster (here). Ticket prices range from $19-$571.50. The "official presale credit card" of the tour is Citi; that means if you have one of those, you can buy tickets Tuesday, Nov. 6 at 10 a.m. (click here for info).
Osbourne's group for the tour will feature longtime bandmates Zakk Wylde (guitar), Blasko (bass), Tommy Clufetos (drums) and Adam Wakeman (keyboards).
Ozzy's current jaunt will run through 2020 and is his final world tour, though he may still play one-off shows from time to time. The tour is called "No More Tours 2" because in the early ’90s he'd done a farewell tour after being incorrectly diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Between that and the fact that so many other artists have done multiple "farewell" tours on the regular (The Who were the trailblazers on that front), it's hard to completely rule out a "No More Tours 3" somewhere down the line. But given Osbourne's age (he'll be 70 by the time he performs in Cincinnati), if you want to see him live — for the first time or one last time — you should probably get tickets.
Osbourne is one of the most influential figures in Rock & Roll, beginning with his stint fronting the pioneering Black Sabbath, which formed 50 years ago this year. His place in the pop culture zeitgeist was escalated by his family's reality show, The Osbournes, which was to reality TV what Sabbath was to Hard Rock and Heavy Metal.
Ozzy's farewell tour kicked off earlier this year and the shows have received positive notices from the press. Here's a sampling of reviews taken from the tour date announcement press release:
“As Ozzy Osbourne, the main attraction, he becomes the consummate showman…Both Osbourne and his band were in top form throughout the evening. Ozzy’s voice was strong and on pitch, even during some of the songs’ impossibly high parts, and Wylde & Co. seemed to play a bazillion notes each on their instruments.”
--Kory Grow, ROLLING STONE (8/31/18)
“From the get-go, it was evident there was something special about this tour. The stage backdrop is absolutely magnificent, highlighted by a giant cross made up of video screens…As great as Ozzy sounded, his backing band deserves as much praise. This is what a metal band should look like.”
--Spencer Kaufman, CONSEQUENCE OF SOUND (9/10/18)
“The return of Zakk Wylde to Ozzy’s band made the biggest impact on the show. His energy, enthusiasm and love for the material and Ozzy raises everyone’s game, and their game was already great…But the highlights of the show were, of course, when Ozzy was on stage. Powerful version of ‘Bark at the Moon,’ ‘No More Tears,’ ‘Mr. Crowley,’ ‘Suicide Solution,’ ‘I Don’t Know,’ ‘Crazy Train’ and Sabbath’s ‘Fairies Wear Boots’ thrilled fans.”
--Brian Ives, LOUDWIRE.COM (9/9/18)
“Fortunately, Ozzy’s game is fairly tight at the moment. Tuesday night’s gig was a solid 95 minutes’ worth of entertainment. No messin’ around with iffy new stuff, just a whack of old-school favorites delivered with contagious enthusiasm by Osbourne and his band before a sold-out, 16,000-strong crowd hanging lovingly and loudly on every word and every riff. If this does indeed turn out to be Ozzy’s last visit to Toronto, we got exactly what we wanted.”
--Ben Rayner, TORONTO STAR (9/5/18)
“…the show was an exciting evening that featured one of rock’s biggest stars doing what he does best, entertaining a crowd with music that impacts generations.”
--Matt Durr, MLIVE.COM (Detroit) (9/20/18)
“This tour does just about everything right when it comes to playing to the strengths that 2018 Ozzy possesses. The setlist is pretty much perfect, focusing on the hits from his solo work while mixing in some well-times Black Sabbath classics…The band plays like a well-oiled machine…And then there’s Ozzy’s clear enthusiasm for being out on stage…Ozzy could easily sit on a throne in the middle of the stage and no one would have complained. But he’s still giving what he can, the way he always has.”
--Cory Garcia, HOUSTON PRESS (9/29/18)
“If last night indeed represented Osbourne’s last show here, the man went out with a bang.”
--Jeff Niesel, CLEVELAND SCENE (9/17/18)
“The Prince of Darkness showed that age is just a number…Osbourne lived up to his own legacy (as if he really had to) by preparing a setlist of such epic proportions, that it seemed as if he had created a tribute to himself by the end of the night…If this is, in fact, his final globe trot, The Great and Powerful Ozz gave nothing short of 100 percent of himself in Mansfield, and, in turn, further cemented his legacy as the brightest beam of darkness in rock and roll.”
--Jason Greenough, VANYALAND.COM (Boston) (9/10/18)
