Phil Soussan Recalls How METALLICA ‘Exploded’ While Opening For OZZY At Major Turning Point

Former Ozzy Osbourne bassist Phil Soussan recalled the time Metallica opened for Ozzy’s “Ultimate Sin” tour, saying the whole experience was “unbelievable”.

During a recent talk to the “Scars And Guitars” podcast, Soussan said:

“I was familiar with (Metallica), being a Brit because they broke in Britain a long time before they broke in America, and so they were frequently in England. And at the time, I’ll be honest with you, I was, like, ‘Wow. This is kind of very out of left field; it’s very extreme compared to the sort of stuff that was mainstream.

”But it was cool. My friend, actually, a guy I grew up with in England, was Cliff’s roadie; he was his tech. And we actually did a radio show together. Anyway, so later on there we are in the States.

“Ozzy had a reputation at the time that if you could open on an Ozzy tour, that was pretty much a guaranteed slam-dunk success move, whether it was going to be Motley Crue, whether it was going to be… And in this case, it was Metallica. And we just saw them explode.

“But we definitely had different audiences. If you went out there during the Metallica show, then you’d see all these denim jackets in the front few rows. And then, all of a sudden, they stopped playing and the whole crew goes out on stage and they start changing all the gear around.

”And correspondingly, the audience, the entire first three rows would change to completely different-looking people. And it was, like, girls. I mean, it was undeniable what was going on.”