I had tickets for a rock show. Black Sabbath in Oakland. Bloody amazing, as I imagine Ozzy might say. I can’t really describe how incredible it was to see them play. Sabbath is the soundtrack to so much of my life. They put on an unbelievable show, especially considering that Ozzy, Tommy and Geezer are all about freaking 70 years old. Thank you guys.
The end of the show was very emotional for me. I saw how affected the band was by their performance and the massive love from the audience. I looked around and saw every fucking person in the hall stoked out of their brains and just pouring love and rock sweat out in all directions. And I thought: what a crying shame it was that I had never seen them play in all those years when I was younger, when they were younger, when they were some of my idols. I wanted to go to those shows. I went to some – I saw Van Halen play at the same arena in 1983 – but I didn’t go to very many. Why? Partly because I wasn’t sure if I was cool enough. I had some cool friends and some of them went to a lot of shows but I didn’t get invited to the coolest shows. I didn’t realize at the time that all I had to do was show up.
But most of all because I was simply too fucking wasted too much of the time. Growing up here in SF was incredible and it was also an unholy mess in a lot of ways. Last night I simply got in my car and drove to Oakland, parked, went to the show, drove home. When I was 16 or 18 or 20 I could have done the same, except I would have been trashed before, during and after the show, unable to drive to or from, not to mention unable to remember much of what I saw or heard anyhow. And taking the bus or BART to Oakland or the Cow Palace is a lot less attractive when you know you’re going to be super fucked up. Getting wasted was standard operating procedure for all of us in those days, and it caused me and a lot of my friends to miss out on a lot of living. It also killed a lot of us. I have way too many dead friends from those days.
So it was heavy – and it could be no other way. Black Sabbath is the heaviest cornerstone there is. The soundtrack to my darker side, yes, the side of wasted youth, but that is long ago and now the dark side is just part of who I am. Now it’s dark joy. I was there with a million friends – my old college buddy Dave Pehling who I ran into in the crowd, the guy to my right who passed me a joint, the two screaming-hot chicks in the row behind us, and everyone else who was there to receive and re-transmit Sabbath’s unique rock message. A day and a night to remember – and this time, I will.