The vocalist Rob Halford and Ozzy Osbourne were really good friends for decades and the Judas Priest frontman even replaced him in 2004 when the musician wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be able to perform with the original line-up of Black Sabbath during the Ozzfest in 2004. Halford was really close to Ozzy and his family and told WRIF radio that he cried for hours in a hotel room after he learned about Ozzy’s death last month.
Judas Priest, band that like Sabbath was also formed in Birmingham, England, couldn’t make it to the “Back to the Beginning” festival because of their touring schedule.
Rob Halford says he cried for hours after learning about Ozzy Osbourne’s death
“Oh, man. I got a call the day (that) happened. I just put the phone down in my hotel room in. I think I was in Leeds, in England, and I just curled up in a ball and bawled my eyes out for hours. I just couldn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it now. I’m still grieving, like so many people. And then we had a show the next day. So, God, how do you process all of this tragedy, all of this love, because I’ve never seen such an outpouring of love. And we did the show and we came to the song that we’ll be playing when we come to see you guys — it’s called ‘Giants In The Sky’, from the ‘Invincible Shield’ album — and that song talks about people that we love in music that have moved on to this beautiful place.”
“We reference Lemmy (Kilmister) and Ronnie (James Dio) and Paul Di’Anno and Jill (Janus) and Chris (Cornell) and all of these greats, Janis Joplin, Freddie Mercury. And then for that show we added Ozzy at the end. And I said to everybody, this just so much to try and comprehend and so tough, but Ozzy would say, ‘Let’s party. Let’s rock and roll. Let’s live it up. Let’s enjoy.’ That was in his heart, his soul, and his spirit.”
He continued:
“Whenever we did shows together, he would always say that to me after, ‘Did you have a good time?’ ‘Yeah. Yeah.’ ‘Did you have a good time? Did you really have a good time?’ The stuff he pushed out from himself to his fans to everybody, the generosity, the caring, all of the incredible things that he did in music, he was the embodiment of kindness in that respect.”
“So it’s great that we are talking about him now and we should keep talking about him forever, like I always talk about Ronnie, I talk about Lemmy. These are all friends of mine. And we have to celebrate — we have to celebrate. That’s the way of helping you through the grief. You think about the memories, you think about the joy, you think about the good times, and that’s what we will always do with Ozzy,” Rob Halford said. (Transcribed by Blabbermouth).
During the same conversation, he said that he and Ozzy used to text each other occasionally, and that he was always in awe of Osbourne whenever they had the chance to be together. Halford also said he was really happy to have fronted Sabbath twice (he also filled in for Dio in the early 90s) and that Judas Priest recently covered “War Pigs.”