QUESTION OF THE WEEK: WITH WHOM DO YOU SIDE IN THE NEWLY RE-HEATED OSBOURNES VS. DICKINSON FEUD?

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

Inspired by Ozzy Osbourne’s recent declaration that Bruce Dickinson “needs a fuckin’ psychiatrist,” this week we decided to ask our writers:

WITH WHOM DO YOU SIDE IN THE NEWLY RE-HEATED OSBOURNES VS. DICKINSON FEUD?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

It’s a tough question, ’cause Bruce was being rude, but Sharon was being ruder, but Bruce was really just pointing out that Ozzy hasn’t been cool in awhile, which is true, Ozzy hasn’t been in cool in awhile, but then maybe Bruce shouldn’t have agreed to be on Ozzy’s tour, y’know? Still, I’m going to have to side with Bruce, because I’m reasonably certain that he could kick my ass, whereas I have heard a convincing rumor that Ozzy has been legally dead for the past twenty years, and they just run an electrical chord up his pant leg and keep zapping the corpse to give it the appearance of movement (thus, the frog hop).

-Axl Rosenberg

My gut says Ozzy on this one. In his defense, 1) I would assume 5 years between incident and response is pretty much how the man’s brain works at this point, and 2) that he’s kind of right: if Dickinson had such an issue with sharing a stage with Ozzy, he shouldn’t have accepted the tour and subsequently cashed their checks. And if his story is to be believed (which is to say that Ozzy didn’t do something to piss him off at some point at the beginning of that year’s Ozzfest, which maybe Ozzy will realize in another few months), Bruce is a little like a shitty teenager here: taking someone up on a great opportunity, then whining when it doesn’t go the way he wants, trying to come off cool but in the end coming off like kind of a douchebag. No matter how legitimate his complaint (cutting the PA and rallying fans to act like assholes is admittedly pretty shitty) nor apt his ragging (the less said about post-Ozzmosis Ozzy, including everything he’s done as a musician and as a dude, the better), Bruce sort of comes off like a supremely shitty guy in this scenario. Yes, The Osbournes worked pretty hard to destroy the lifetime pass Ozzy earned for himself with his stint in Black Sabbath and his first couple solo albums; Dickinson accepted the invitation to play on a successful package tour in lieu of his band touring on their own, then tried to one-up said tour’s headliner in an incredibly childish way. The sight of Ozzy waddling along like my 78 year old grandmother with replacement knees hurts me as much as it does the rest of us, but if this situation is as cut-and-dry as it seems, yeesh, put a sock in it, Bruce Dickinson-from-5-years-ago.

-Sammy O’Hagar

Dio.

-Gary Suarez

Do I really have to side with one of these six-year-olds posing as metal gods? This feud seemed like a bunch of schoolchildren flinging sand in each other’s eyes back in 2005, and it seems no less silly now. It still hasn’t really been explained why Dickinson felt the need to mouth off onstage in the first place; we know that Sharon’s a draconian guardian of the Sabbath brand and will do anything to deflect against Ozzy being shown up (as he was nightly), including puerile stunts like egg-flinging and power-cutting. Neither is in the right in how they handled it, and I’m sure if asked how the beef began, it’d just devolve into some he-said/she-said bullshit. If I have to be sympathetic to anyone, it’d be with Ozzy himself and the non-Bruce contingent of Maiden, neither of which really understand what the hell was going on and why. Although really it’s the fans that suffered the most, because they were forced to endure Velvet Revolver after Iron Maiden bailed on the tour.

-Satan Rosenbloom

-Leyla Ford

If you ever get a good look at my bare ass, you’ll notice an oval section of my left buttcheek that is enclosed by teeny velvet ropes and staffed by a clipboard-wielding micro-bouncer. This exclusive stretch of assflesh — if my bum were a cracked-open globe, we’d be talking Brazil here — is reserved for the lips of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne only. They can totally kiss my ass, no waiting, no cover, VIP all the way. They earned the full treatment. See, to me Ozzy is about to wrap up his second decade of running on fumes. And because he hasn’t released a single relevant piece of music since that album whose title borrows a shampoo slogan, he needs a tireless, godless PR army to keep him in the spotlight and all his familial mosquitos plump with blood. Bruce Dickinson represents a convenient and productive target, cuz as a non-fuckhead, Dickinson is most likely disgusted by Ozzy’s sub-Gallagher levels of dignity and taste. It’s unlikely that in any Ozzfest 2005-related encounter Bruce would stoop to civility with those two dunces. (Oh, and he fronts the band that Sharon has been unsuccessfully competing with for years. Sales may be comparable, but not creative standards: Even though Ozzy is the only old person in his own band, the aged Iron Maiden absolutely craps on Ozzy’s sorry semi-live event. And as for new albums, um, don’t make me fucking laugh. That comparison doesn’t even deserve a sentence. Brave New World vs. Down To Earth?!)

Anyway, Bruce is an intelligent cat, so I feel it’s doubtful that back in 2005 he would not notice that the idea of Maiden on Ozzfest amounts to little more than Sharon Osbourne charging admission to a short, poorly mixed Maiden gig. Fuck that shit, right? Right. Iron Maiden doesn’t need Ozzfest, while Ozzfest needs Iron Maiden and anything and everything because it hardly goddamn exists. So throw a professional complaint on top of the general effrontery.

Now, if Bruce brought out any negative stuff on stage during the tour, or engaged in any anti-Ozzy grumbling, that’s kinda against the rules, I agree. Or, wait, at least it would be against the rules if the victims weren’t the least justifiable music industry leeches of the past twenty years. Look, even here in 2010, Iron Maiden is a summer tour slam dunk, and now Ozzy’s dusting off this tardy (and retard-y) non-feud? And it’s all to pump up his buzzless quarter-tour and flimsy new committee record, ‘cuz his previous media gambit (the deliberately rocky replacement of Zakk Wylde) registered about a four on the shrug scale. Fuck, this doesn’t even bear discussion. Let’s all go back to our regularly-scheduled viewing of Weekend At Ozzy’s and put another notch on the scoreboard for the Spruce Bruce and Iron Maiden.

-Anso DF

Okay, kiddies, now it’s your turn! Weigh in with your answer to the question of the week below.