Hear JUDAS PRIEST's 'Charity Version' Of 'War Pigs' Featuring OZZY OSBOURNE
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JUDAS PRIEST's "charity" version of the BLACK SABBATH classic "War Pigs", featuring SABBATH frontman Ozzy Osbourne, has just been released and can be streamed here.
All profits of Sony Music Entertainment UK Ltd and Epic Records in the U.K. from audio streams, downloads, and physical sales of the recording will be donated to The Glenn Tipton Parkinson's Foundation and Cure Parkinson's.
In a recent interview with Full Metal Jackie's nationally syndicated radio show, JUDAS PRIEST's Rob Halford reflected on Osbourne's recent passing. Asked if he had a story in his experiences with Ozzy that spoke to who he was as a person beyond the concert stage, Rob said: "He gave everything on stage. When he walked out on the stage, he was always beaming. He loved his fans with such an extraordinary passion, but that existed offstage as well. Whenever I'd see him, if I went to see a show, the first thing he would say to me was, 'Did you have a good time? Did you enjoy yourself? Was it great?' And so that part of him as a person — he was always giving stuff. He was always giving out. He wasn't a taking kind of a guy. He was always pushing stuff forward, paying it forward, whatever that expression is. So that part of Ozzy that we probably didn't see much of existed when he wasn't on stage."
Halford continued: "He was an extraordinary man. And I think that opportunity that you had through Sharon [Osbourne, Ozzy's wife and manager] and working with 'The Osbournes', which was the first-ever reality TV show, he became our friend. You may not have ever met Ozzy, but you knew him as a family guy, and you knew him as being — he's like us. There's Ozzy on stage, but look at him at home. And I think that that's what drew him even further into us with our love for Ozzy Osbourne and everything that he's left us with."
In early July, PRIEST released a cover of BLACK SABBATH's "War Pigs" ahead of the "Back To The Beginning" concert, which marked the original SABBATH lineup's last-ever performance.
PRIEST was unable to appear at "Back To The Beginning" on July 5 in Birmingham, United Kingdom because the band was scheduled to perform at SCORPIONS' huge hometown 60th-anniversary concert at the Heinz Von Heiden Arena in Hannover, Germany on the very same day.
"It was a really difficult thing to say, 'I can't do it,' but that was just the way the chips fell on that particular event," Rob told Full Metal Jackie. "However, we were there in spirit, as we said in that brief little thing that we said for Ozzy on the big video screens. And probably even more important, the PRIEST homage to BLACK SABBATH with our — it's not really a version; it's JUDAS PRIEST playing BLACK SABBATH's 'War Pigs' to about as close as we possibly could. 'Cause you don't mess with a song like that. You give it the sounds that you have with your guitars, with your drums, with your bass, with your voice, and you do it in respect, and you do it in a way of saying thank you for BLACK SABBATH and what they did and what they leave us with with their great music."
Speaking in more detail about PRIEST's rendition of "War Pigs", Rob said: "It's close to five million views on the BLACK SABBATH official site, which is very generous of them to put us on there. 'Cause we're friends. We've been friends forever. What is cool and what is kind of waiting in the wings is Ozzy singing with me doing 'War Pigs' together. We've been able to do that. So that's just kind of — it's there. We're just having to go through all the rigmarole of legal clearance and so on and so forth. But when Sharon said, and this is just so beautiful, when she approached me with this idea, she said, 'I love your version of 'War Pigs'. Is there a way we can get Ozzy [on it as well]?' I said, 'You're asking me? This is gonna happen.' So we were able to make it work. So you get Ozzy singing a line, and then I'm singing a line and Ozzy's singing a line and I'm singing a line, and it's the first-ever time in my entire life that I've been able to do a duet with Ozzy. And I'm so eternally grateful and blessed and grieving that I was able to do that. But when you hear it, it's just colossal. If you think that you've heard the one experience of PRIEST's 'War Pigs', but when you hear PRIEST's 'War Pigs' with Ozzy singing on that track, it's just going to a really special place.
(Source: www.blabbermouth.net)
