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Listen to the Ozzy Osbourne interview.

When they got together last month, Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, and Geezer Butler reminisced about growing up in Birmingham, England, and their days in Black Sabbath. But did they rehearse for their reunion at Ozz-Fest?

Nah. “We did try rehearsing,” Osbourne says, “because Sharon(Osbourne, his wife and manager) said, `Why don’t you have a jam and see if you can still play together?’ Not being cocksure here, but I had a little smile to myself and said, `We don’t have to have a rehearsal. We just have to see each other, turn around and play.’ “

Fans here will find out Wednesday whether Sabbath can pick up where it left off. That’s when Ozz-Fest stops at Deer Creek Music Center.

The 10 1/2-hour show features Osbourne performing as a solo artist (which he’s been since 1979) and with Black Sabbath. Also on the main stage: Pantera, Type O Negative, Fear Factory, Machinehead and Powerman 5000. Marilyn Manson joins the tour June 15.

But the Ozz- Fest buzz centers on the Sabbath reunion. Osbourne expects them to perform enduring hits such as Iron Man, War Pigs and Paranoid, as well as some songs they’ve never played.

Demand for Sabbath reunion

“Every time I walk out my bloody door, somebody says, `Will there ever be a chance of seeing you guys?’ ” he says by phone from his Los Angeles-area home. “Unfortunately, it’s not quite Black Sabbath because Billy’s not there. But it’s a good part of Black Sabbath.”

Billy is drummer Bill Ward, who wasn’t invited to rejoin the group, which reunited for Live Aid in 1985 and briefly again in 1992. Mike Bordin, the drummer in Osbourne’s solo band, will fill in.

“It’s nothing personal that I have against Bill Ward,” Osbourne says, taking great pains to explain the situation and sometimes speaking so fast that he sputters. “It’s just that when I go onstage, no matter what I’m feeling, I’ve got to give the best show I’ve got and leave petty – I call them petty, but they may be pretty serious to the people involved – problems in the dressing room.

“It’s professionally not acceptable in my opinion to bring your problems onstage. The audience don’t want to know your likes and dislikes. All they want to do is bang their heads and reflect on the past.”

Osbourne says the decision wasn’t his, anyway; Iommi and Butler didn’t want Ward. “They have to play the music,” he says. “It would have been great for me to get up there with Bill and everybody. I’m not going to start slagging Bill off. I don’t have anything bad to say about the man. But Tony and Geezer had played with him since I’d left and they said it just wouldn’t work. I don’t want to repeat what they said because it’s not my place to.”

Representatives for Ward, who now records for Cleopatra Records, did not return a phone call requesting his side of the story. Even without Ward, Osbourne says the reunion thus far has been “like going back to see your family.”

How it all began

This family was founded in 1967 as the blues band Polka Tulk before becoming Earth. In 1969, it changed the name to Black Sabbath and began creating much of the foundation for today’s heavy metal. Slow down your Metallica discs a bit and you’ve more or less got Black Sabbath.

Death, destruction, apocalyptic visions, and crushing heavy metal – that was Sabbath. But behind the scenes, it was four school chums who’d grown up within two miles of each other in a working-class British industrial town.

When they found themselves in the same room again after several years, “we just talked about how each other’s moms and dads were,” Osbourne says. “Unfortunately, Tony’s mom just passed away last year, which is very sad. But we spent most of the time just reflecting on the old times. It was great to talk old war stories.”

Such as? “I remembered when we first went to the States (in 1970) and we got on the plane from Heathrow Airport,” he says. “We were freaking out that the plane was in the air for seven hours without stopping for gas. We thought, `This thing is the size of a house. It’s got to stop for petrol somewhere.’ “

Osbourne left the band 18 years ago and has sustained a hugely successful solo career since. (His 1996 Ozzmosis tour drew more than 14,000 at Deer Creek Music Center.)

Ozz- Fest part of a plan

Still, at 48, he realizes this can’t go on forever. Ozz-Fest is part of his long-range planning – he wants it to go on after he stops performing – as is his new record company, Ozz Records. The label just released the live album and video from Ozz-Fest ’96, two days of metal that took place in Arizona and California. Osbourne doesn’t intend to quit anytime soon. He still gets a thrill from the stage and the audience. He tried to retire in 1992 – but couldn’t – and made a comeback with his Retirement Sucks tour.

“I’ve got such a love for them people,” he says of his fans. “It’s like a love affair. It’s like when you wait for a girlfriend and you’re all bubbly and all excited to see ’em. You get that nice feeling inside when you see the person you really want to be with.

And that’s what I feel with my audience, you know? It’s better than any drug, anything I’ve ever had.” So that’s why retirement “sucked”?  Absolutely,” he says. “I missed my girlfriend.”