Rob Zombie will never forget the first time he met frequent touring-partner Ozzy Osbourne.
Zombie says while the two heavy metal veterans -- who are 16 years apart in age -- have toured together about five times since 1999, they first met about four years before that.
"I mean it was '95 maybe or something maybe before then, and I went over to his house," Zombie, 43, tells Sun Media during a conference call with music writers leading up to a string of eastern Canadian dates. He'll be Osbourne's special guest during the tour that begins tomorrow night in Quebec City.
"Not the house that they had on the TV show The Osbournes, but the house they lived in before that, the house next door to Pat Boone, and I don't even know why I was going over. I know that my manager, Andy Gould, had been friends with Sharon Osbourne for a long time and, I don't know, I'm not even sure what it was all about.
"Sometimes you just meet people and hang out for no reason. And it was great, I'd always loved Ozzy, loved Black Sabbath, and that point it was very funny because it was me and Ozzy in his house and he played me the entire album he had made with Mark Hudson that was very Beatles-sounding and it's never been released but it was fantastic."
The Prince Of Darkness meets The Fab Four, go figure.
For the record, Zombie -- who began making music as the leader of White Zombie in 1985 before going solo in 1998 -- says he has never had to discard an entire CD or songs that didn't work with a particular disc.
"Not really. I mean, it's really funny. A lot of bands, they're always like, 'Oh, we wrote 50 songs and we whittled it down to the best 12,' " Zombie says. "I mean, literally every record that I've ever made -- those are all the songs we ever wrote ... There's never any leftover, and it's always been a problem because people are like, 'Oh, we need some B-sides. We need this for Japanese import.' "
Zombie is currently touring in support of his first live collection, Zombie Live, which was culled from four recorded shows, while Osbourne is plugging his first solo record, Black Rain, in six years.
Zombie, who has become a horror filmmaker in recent years with a 2007 hit remake of Halloween now under his belt, says the timing was right for the live collection.
"I had been wanting to do this for many, many years and then recorded a lot of shows over the years. I would always do band lineup changes and different things would happen and so I would always shelve it," he says.
"And this time, everything seemed very solid. I knew the band wasn't going to change and I knew it was probably the best-sounding band I'd ever had. If there was ever a time to record a live album it was at that point. So we recorded it last summer and now it just seemed right to put it out. And if you wait much longer, no one's going to buy records anymore anyway, so there's no point."
Zombie says he wasn't sure what kind of impact his recent success as a horror director was having on his music career, other than drawing younger fans to the concerts, but he has no intention of giving up one for the other.
Music projects still to come include a documentary-style DVD as a companion to his live album, and a White Zombie box set.
"The only thing is I'm disenchanted with the music industry, not with music," Zombie says. "And I love being in a band. I love touring and I love doing all that. It's just the industry has kind of destroyed itself through greed and stupidity. But, no, I still love doing music and that's why I'm still here and I never really stopped at all. I love doing movies, too. So as much as I can I try to balance the two."
In the meantime, Zombie says opening for Osbourne hasn't lost its lustre for him. Although, it is now a very familiar experience.
"It seems as if about every two years I tour with Ozzy and, basically, it just makes it seem like it's that time of year again," he says. "I love touring with Ozzy. He's always been super nice to me. He's a really nice guy. I like all the guys in his band. It's always a very pleasant experience."
Just don't expect to see Zombie and Osbourne engage in some late-night bar hopping together.
"Well, nobody ever hangs out," Zombie says. "It's really funny. I see him sometimes, but it's like he's in his room, we're in our room. We do our thing, they do their thing, boom, boom, boom. It's amazing how often you don't see anybody. You can literally go for a week and not even see anyone -- except for onstage. The shows are so consuming that you're not really hanging out. You're kind of doing your thing and trying to get it together..."
Zombie, whose live show includes an eight-feet devil head riser, giant video screens, pyro and his own wife, Sheri Moon, as one of the dancers onstage, says he has never considered casting Osbourne in a film despite directing the music video for Osbourne's single Dreamer, from his 2001 album Down to Earth.
"No," Zombie says. "Acting is not a joke for me, and not everybody can act. There a lot of people who have great personalities, but that doesn't mean they're actors. Acting's hard and it's hard on the actors and that's why musicians are usually terrible actors because they have their personality and persona, but it doesn't mean they can act."
Still, Zombie admits that making the video for Osbourne, "was probably the favourite video I ever got to do because usually when I'm making videos and I'm in them, that's very difficult."
