While Metallica's twenty-two-show Lollapalooza summer 1996 tour grossed a respectable $16 million, the former Bay Area bashers had no intention of reinventing the festival as a roaring heavy metal summit. That job was taken by Ozzy Osbourne -- himself snubbed by Lollapalooza promoters the previous year. Although Ozzy saw 10 million CD sales in the 1990s, compared to 6 million albums in the 1980s -- the alleged heyday of heavy metal -- the beloved singer's career was due for a face-lift. His public antics during the 1990s included stumbling comatose across a WWF wrestling ring, demonstrating exercise equipment to befuddled magazine editors, and recording a romantic duet with the Muppet Miss Piggy.

In the second half of the decade, the long-lived madman put his enduring charisma to better use. Ozzy's band played over a hundred dates in 1996, anchored by a spectacular pair of minifestivals in Phoenix, Arizona, and San Bernardino, California. Dubbed "Ozz-fests," the two shows brought Ozzy Osbourne together with top-metal acts such as Slayer, Sepultura, and Biohazard, plus the unconventional wild cards Neurosis, Powerman 5000, and Coal Chamber. These all-day happenings drew tens of thousands of metal rats out of the woodwork and resurrected the prominence of the slightly doddering Ozzy. After suffering metal neglect in recent years, a popular culture scene was starved for exactly such an iron-plated celebration of excess and power chords...