Tonight I was poking around looking to see if I could find any information out about who is playing keyboards for Black Sabbath on the Ozzfest 2004 tour. There’s been no official statement about this on the Ozzfest site, and my queries about whether Geoff is involved were given a polite “no comment”. OK, so something’s up with keyboards.
So I’m looking around tonight, and I ran across some information that seems to indicate that there is a keyboardist in place. I found the tourdates for Ozzfest 2004 listed on Adam Wakeman’s website here (in the news section). Anyway, the following text appears above the list of tourdates..
Adam will be playing Keyboards with Ozzy Osboune on the OZZFEST shows around America at the following venues.
Now I must state that neither Adam’s website, nor the Ozzfest website state that Adam will be playing keyboards with Black Sabbath on the tour, but given that (at least officially) Geezer came over with Ozzy from Ozzy’s solo band, as did Mike Bordin (at least until Bill formally signed on), I have to think that Adam Wakeman will be coming over from Ozzy’s band as well to play keyboards for Black Sabbath on the tour. Once I get some sort of official confirmation of this, I’ll be sure to post it. If you head to Adam’s site, check out the pictures – he’s definitely younger looking than the other guys in the band – no doubt.
Also, for the record, Adam is the son of Rick Wakeman, longtime Yes keyboardist, and the man who handled the keys on Sabbath’s 1973 disc, “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath”.
Interesting news, this is. If true, it would be the first time since Don Airey handled keyboards for Sabbath back in 1978 on the Never Say Die album that anyone other than Geoff has been behind the ivory. Geoff Nicholls has been a very long standing member of the band, so I hope it’s something he’s got commitments for and can’t do it, as I think it would be a shame for Geoff not to be invited back.
UPDATE: When I got up on Saturday morning, I checked my email and saw that Adam’s website had been changed from saying that he was playing with Ozzy on Ozzfest to saying he’s playing with Black Sabbath on Ozzfest – I guess that sort of means it’s official, eh?
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