The Tourist Inn will change hands and has a century of history
Annette Fullerton describes running the Tourist Inn in Hallam for the past 20 years. The music venue has been in operation since at least the 1930s.
Lzzy Hale owes a lot to Ozzy Osbourne.
The guitarist/songwriter/frontwoman of Halestorm remembers hearing Black Sabbath growing up in Red Lion, songs like “War Pigs” and “Iron Man,” formative and iconic tunes in the heavy metal songbook. A child of the ’90s, she recalls watching “The Osbournes,” a reality TV show that chronicled the exploits and hijinks of Osbourne, his wife/manager Sharon and their brood.
The very first guitar riff her dad taught her was the opening of Sabbath’s “Heaven & Hell,” which, to be fair, was the first record to feature vocalist Ronnie James Dio, who replaced Osbourne in 1979.
Still, the influence of Black Sabbath and Osbourne were huge in her development as a musician. “Every aspect of my life was touched,” by Ozzy, she told SiriusXM radio DJ Eddie Trunk on Wednesday.
Right down to the spelling of her first name. When the band was starting out, playing gigs at the Tourist Inn, the iconic York County music venue, they had a fan who was trying to get them on the bill at Osbourne’s annual festival, called Ozzfest, changing the spelling of her first name to Lzzy to attract Ozzy’s attention. “I thought it was funny,” Hale, who was 16 or 17 at the time, said. “I thought it was funny.”
More recently, her band – which has a new album, Everest, coming out on Aug. 8 – was on the bill of Black Sabbath’s farewell concert, called Back to the Beginning, on July 5 in Birmingham, England, playing three songs, including Osbourne’s “Perry Mason.” (She was the only woman on the bill.) She recalled being brought to tears watching Osbourne perform that night. She didn’t have a chance to speak to him.
“He was kind of getting wheeled in and out and doing the thing,” she told Trunk, referring to the 76-year-old rock icon’s health problems, including suffering from Parkinson’s. “And I spent some time with Sharon. She’s so incredibly sweet. And then [Black Sabbath guitarist] Tony Iommi and everybody. One of our regrets that we had said right after the show is, like, man, we should have spent more time with Ozzy. But again, this is how life goes, and we were just absolutely grateful to be there and to experience all of it.”
So when she heard that Osbourne died on July 22, she was in shock.
“Obviously, we just saw him, and (he was) hungry till the end,” Hale said on Trunk’s show Wednesday. “I mean, the guy was just ready to be on that stage and clapping. There was such joy in his face even then. But we just didn’t think it was gonna be that fast. So I don’t know. There’s so many emotions. We’re so grateful to have been there, but at the same time it’s so sad to see one of the greats go. I mean, it’s Ozzy. He’s supposed to always be here.”
She recalled looking around at Sabbath’s last concert and seeing Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler and members of metal icons Metallica and thinking “everybody had the same feeling, that same childlike wonder and really just kind of looking around and saying, ‘Look, none of us would’ve existed in a band if not for these men.’ So it was really wonderful to be a part of that.”