In the summer of 2002, Queen Elizabeth II was celebrating 50 years since her ascent to the British throne, and it was a summer strewn with all kinds of batshit celebrations. Tower Bridge was illuminated to look gold, while 200 towns up and down the country played the Beatles’ All You Need Is Love at the same time, for some reason. Most random of all, though, was The Prince Of Darkness getting summoned by royal appointment to perform Black Sabbath’s Paranoid at Buckingham Palace.
Ozzy Osbourne played for the Royal Family as part of the Party At The Palace mini-festival on June 3, 2002. Other performers across the day included your expected UK pop figureheads, from Annie Lennox to Emma “Baby Spice” Bunton and Paul McCartney, making the bat-biting and potty-mouthed Double O a major outlier. And boy did he know it.
