PHILADELPHIA – Did you know that late music icon Ozzy Osbourne’s mark on music history began locally?
Black Sabbath, the band that Osbourne famously fronted, played their first U.S. gig at Rowan University.
The school shared a flier from the band’s inaugural stop in the states and a cheeky story about the gig.
What we know:
Black Sabbath played their first U.S. gig on Oct. 30, 1970 at the then-Glassboro State University.
The band was late for the 8 p.m. gig at the Esby Gym, which cost at most $2.50 to attend.
The school said it took the notoriously loud rock band 10 minutes to knock out the power campus-wide.
The backstory:
Born John Michael Osbourne on Dec. 3, 1948, in Birmingham, England, Osbourne would go on to be one of the most prolific musicians in recorded history.
Once he left school, Osbourne held odd jobs before finding his way into music which would eventually lead him to form the band Black Sabbath and subsequently be nicknamed the godfather of heavy metal, according to IMDB.
The “Prince of Darkness” rose to prominence during the 1970s as the lead singer for the band, scoring iconic hits such as “War Pigs,” “Iron Man,” “Paranoid” and many more. But after a tumultuous on-again, off-again relationship with the band, Osbourne would officially leave the group in 1978. He ventured out on his own to become a solo artist in the 1980s.
Even as a solo artist, Osbourne was wildly successful. He produced over a dozen albums, many of which went multi-platinum, according to Rockcelebrities.net.
Osbourne would eventually team back up with his old bandmates on several occasions in the late 90s and early 2000s. Black Sabbath was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006 and the band is still credited to this day as creating heavy metal.
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