Ozzy Osbourne fan recalls when heavy metal icon filmed music video in Kansas City
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Ozzy Osbourne filmed part of 'The Ultimate Sin' video in Kansas City in 1986.
- Kansas City fans recall Ozzfest's heat, mud and Osbourne’s enduring charisma.
- Osbourne died at 76 in 2025, sparking tributes from fans and music venues alike.
Ozzy Osbourne walks into a bar.
No joke.
In April 1986 Jeff Mann of Kansas City worked as a waiter at the Vista International Hotel — now the Marriott — in downtown Kansas City. He was serving drinks at Lilly’s Restaurant and Wine Bar inside the hotel.
On Easter Sunday, in walked heavy metal star and Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne, guitarist Jack E. Lee, drummer Randy Castillo and bassist Phil Soussan. They were in town for the third U.S. stop on Osbourne’s “The Ultimate Sin” tour, supporting his new studio album.
They “hung out in that restaurant all but a couple hours, drinking, eating,” Mann, who is 56 and works for UPS, recalled in a post he shared on Osbourne’s official Facebook page a few weeks ago.
The next day, he wrote, Osbourne filmed scenes for “The Ultimate Sin” music video at the hotel, around downtown and at a farm on the Kansas side.
Osbourne died Tuesday at age 76, surrounded by loved ones in his hometown of Birmingham, England, just two weeks after reuniting with Black Sabbath for what was billed as their last concert.
In 2020 Osbourne disclosed he had Parkinson’s disease and in February 2023 he said he was retiring from touring.
His death prompted an immediate outpouring of grief and shared memories from fans in Kansas City and around the world.
The T-Mobile Center paid tribute on social media Tuesday: “RIP Ozzy! Thanks for letting KC go crazy in 2007 and 2011 and for rocking this planet to its core.”
The video Osbourne made in Kansas City was heavily influenced by “Dallas,” the popular ‘80s TV drama about the Ewing family of Texas and its oil empire, Ewing Oil.
Wearing a white cowboy hat and cowboy boots with a three-piece business suit, Osbourne played a long-haired version of J.R. Ewing, the dastardly oldest son of the family.
The beginning of the video mimicked the opening of the TV show. Osbourne’s “office” appears to be a hotel room with a view of downtown Kansas City.
He takes a meeting in a conference room, where a sign reading “Ozzy Oil” hangs on a lectern.
In the rest of the video, the Kansas City Convention Center can be seen as Osbourne rides away from the hotel in a white limo. The scenes are interlaced with footage of him singing the song at Kemper Arena.
“Then I had front seats to the show on Tuesday night,” Mann recalled in his post. “Will never forget that day with Ozzy, serving him beers all day, then Baileys and coffee until we closed. Was one of the coolest days ever!!”
Ozzfest: ‘Metal music festival of the summer’
Vincent Woska Sr. listened to his favorite Osbourne album, “Ozzmosis,” as he fed the dog and got ready for his day Wednesday at his home in Lee’s Summit.
In the hours after learning of Osbourne’s death, “it was kind of a melancholy moment,” said Woska, 63, who owns a consulting company.
“I got a little doughy, which is weird because I’m not a hero worshiper,” he said. “So it was kind of strange to get that feeling. It’s weird to realize that I was listening to him before I even went to high school, I was in junior high. And now, I’m getting cards from AARP.”
Woska went to his first Osbourne concert when he was 14 and kept going back to shows locally and out of town. He saw Van Halen open for him once.
“He came through here a lot, it really seemed like it was a lot. It always did feel like there was a connection with the Kansas City audience that wasn’t in existence somewhere else,” said Woska.
Kansas City fans like Woska have strong memories of Ozzfest, the heavy metal and hard rock music festival Osbourne created with his wife, Sharon Osbourne.
From 1996 to 2018 it was the must-see summer concert for his fans. The lineups were a cross-section of genres, well-known and new acts — including Megadeath, Limp Bizkit, Incubus, Rob Zombie, Judas Priest, Marilyn Manson and Motorhead.
It held court in Bonner Springs, Kansas for seven summers between 1998 and 2007.
Woska was at every one.
Kansas fans recall the heat.
Oh, the heat.
“They called the paramedics on my brother one time, but he woke up. I should say he came to,” Woska said.
One year a local reviewer noted that every performer who walked out on stage when the temperature soared past 100 degrees yelled, “it’s (bleeping) hot.”
“In 2002 I had the opportunity to go to Ozzfest in Kansas City. It was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen. I was 14, and when he came on stage I broke down in tears, I was so star struck,” one fan wrote on Facebook Tuesday.
“I’ll never forget after each song he went and got drenched with a bucket of water cuz was 114° that day! I don’t care what anybody says Ozzy still rocks and he always will!”
Sometimes, there was mud. Lots of mud.
“There was one year that it rained and it was quite muddy,” said Woska. “It was kind of like a mudfest. The back field, people were just covered in mud and I was sitting up on in the reserved seat area and I looked back and I remember seeing the sun set in the east and just a wall of mud in the air, people were throwing mud everywhere.
“It was just absolutely off the hook. That was a crazy one.”
Last July the venue Azura Amphitheater, took music fans down memory lane by posting a photo of a ticket to Ozzfest 1998, back when the music venue was known as Sandstone.
“Over the years, a variety of bands have made up the yearly lineups of Ozzfest. In the summer of 1998, Sandstone Amphitheater welcomed the legendary Ozzy Osbourne and other amazing artists to the stage for the metal music festival of the summer!” the concert venue wrote.
Woska saw Osbourne perform at Municipal Auditorium, Sprint Center and Memorial Hall in KCK.
“I think it was really the charisma and the energy and his ability to connect to an audience … the fact that he was affable,” he said. “He wasn’t like a guy that could dance really well or do anything like that.
“It was kinda funny to watch him tromp from side to side of the stage with his head down and clapping his hands. He wasn’t necessarily always in time. It was just something else to watch him do it.
“But it was something about his voice, that voice booked up with me, it just resonated with me and I chased that voice all of my musical life.”
Woska posted an emotional tribute on his Facebook page.
“You were the thunder in my youth, the howl in the dark that echoed through my soul since that first night in ’74 — Municipal Auditorium, Kansas City — where Sabbath baptized me in sound,” he wrote.
“Through every solo scream, every ‘last’ tour that never truly ended, through Ozzfest’s mud chaos of ’98, to the heavy grace of the 13 Tour, and finally The End in 2017 — a night I shared with my son, passing the torch of awe and reverence.
“You were more than music.
“You were a presence,
“a shadow and a light,
“a madman we loved
“through every rise and fall ...
“Thank you, Ozzy.
“For everything.”
This story was originally published July 23, 2025 at 3:37 PM.
.jpg)