With Ozzy’s final show ever at Back To The Beginning in Birmingham quickly approaching, I thought I would go through some of the newer records I had on my shelf that I hadn’t listened to yet that feature the Prince of Darkness. Out of quite a few different ones, I found myself to be the most curious about Werewolves In Tokyo. First of all, XeRocks is usually pretty good when it comes to material selection and pressing. I have quite a few of their records, but I think I have only reviewed an AC/DC one here on the site. Out of all the bands I normally write about, it seems that somehow, AC/DC is by far the least popular of them all, which is why you don’t hear me talk about them as much. XeRocks covers a lot of bands though, and they really do put out some great stuff.
Werewolves In Tokyo is a double LP set, primarily showcasing the famous Nakano Sun Plaza show of July 6th, 1984. This show, of course, took place in Japan during the Ultimate Sin Tour, and featured Jake E. Lee on guitar. The rest of the record is made up of five other tracks, also recorded in Japan, but performed 18 years later with Zakk Wylde on guitar (and a whole new band, of course). I have always loved the 1984 show and have it on various CD and vinyl pressings. I have always been happy with my copies of “Bark At The Soundboard” as it’s typically been known, but this XeRocks release is claiming to be the “Definitive Soundboard Edition”. I would say that this is a pretty bold claim considering the quality of the existing versions of the show, but I’m always willing to give something new a shot.
One thing that should be said right up front about this show is that this soundboard version is actually incomplete. I’m not sure why, but every existing version of it that I’m aware of cuts out some songs and the Tommy Aldridge drum solo. I can do without the drum solo, but the missing songs are “Centre Of Eternity”, “Crazy Train” and “Paranoid”. Probably not the ones you’d want to cut, so I’d be curious to know what happened there. With that being said, we can’t really dock the label points for not having them. Thankfully, if you end up liking this show as much as I do and want to hear there whole thing, there is a CD version floating around that’s commonly referred to as “Bark At The Audience”. While it’s obviously not as great as a soundboard, it’s still the complete show, and the sound quality is great considering it’s an audience source.
As usual, I remember being impressed when this record came in the mail. XeRocks is what I would call an “affordable” or maybe even “budget” label, but they never cut corners with print and press quality. The yellow wax looks great, and both of my records were totally flat and free of defects. They also came in heavy poly-lined sleeves. The print quality of the jacket and labels are very high. One thing that some folks might not like (me included), is the bad AI generated artwork that makes up the back cover. Like most of us, I’m primarily here for the music, but bad artwork bothers me. As a bonus, we also get a small 12×12-ish printed insert, but it too has some crazy looking AI, guitar-playing werewolf pictures along with some photos of Ozzy and company. The back cover is a bit overwhelming with photos and large yellow text but is certainly not the worst I’ve seen.
Werewolves In Tokyo is apparently limited to 500 copies, and they printed “/500” on the back lower right corner of the jacket, as if these were supposed to later be numbered by hand. However, it looks like someone forgot to do this before the sets got sealed, and by that time, it was too late. There probably are 500 copies, but as far as I can tell, none of them were ever actually numbered. Another error with the jacket can be found with the date of the show. The information here claims that the second half of the recording was made on February 16th, 2002 in Yokohama, Japan. This would have been one day after the Live at Budokan album was recorded in Tokyo, but a show was never played on this date. On the 16th, Ozzy was likely traveling between the Tokyo and Yokohama gigs, which would make February 18th, 2002 the date these tracks were actually recorded.
Soundboard Recording – Nakano Sun Plaza – Tokyo, Japan – 6th July, 1984
A1 I Don’t Know
A2 Mr. Crowley
A3 Over The Mountain
A4 Rock & Roll Rebel
B5 Bark At The Moon
B6 Revelation (Mother Earth)
B7 Steal Away (The Night)
B8 Suicide Solution
C9 Flying High Again
C10 Iron Man
Soundboard Recording – Pacifico Yokohama – Yokohama, Japan – 18th February, 2002
C11 Believer
C12 Junkie
D13 Mr. Crowley
D14 Gets Me Through
D15 Suicide Solution
Nakano Sun Plaza, 1984: Ozzy (Vocals), J. Lee (Guitar), B. Daisley (Bass), T. Aldridge (Drums)
Yokohama, 2002: Ozzy (Vocals), Z. Wylde (Guitar), R. Trujillo (Bass), M. Bordin (Drums), J. Sinclair (Keys)
With the technical specifics out of the way, let’s take a look at the actual show. As I mentioned, I really love this performance. One thing that makes it unique is the absence of keyboards. I guess a lot of people don’t think about piano, keyboards or synths when they think of Ozzy, but these elements were usually always present during his live solo performances (and even a lot of Sabbath, though the actual keyboard player was hidden backstage!). On this particular day though, there were no keyboards to be heard, as Don Airey’s mother had passed away, and he had gone back home to deal with that. Though everything sounds a bit different, Jake mostly makes up for the absence, however. This is most apparent on “Mr. Crowley”, where instead of just dropping the song from the set that night, Jake played the Clockwork Orange style synth/keyboard intro on the guitar.
Another standout track, as usual, is “Suicide Solution”. As Ozzy points out, this song features Jake playing his version of the famous Randy Rhoads solo. This is also one of the all-time great performances of “Bark At The Moon”, as far as I’m concerned. With this particular soundboard mix, the guitar really stands out, and you can hear every little detail of what’s being played. The mix is excellent overall in general, and there’s no doubt in my mind that it was an intentional recording to possibly be used for some kind of release at a later date. I suppose it’s possible that whatever happened to cause those three tracks to be missing might be the reason nothing ever came of it? I suppose we’ll never know, but not having an official and complete release of this show is a shame. Ozzy does an excellent job with vocals, and he seems to have been in a particularly great mood.
As with most soundboard recordings, one thing that might make this show a little awkward to listen to is the dead space between tracks. I’ve probably mentioned this before in other articles, but very often with these types of recordings, we can’t hear the crowd at all. This is the case here, and there’s really nothing that can be done about it. The music sounds better since it’s coming right out of the mixing board, but the engineers rarely have a microphone on the audience. If you want to hear what the interaction between Ozzy and the Japanese crowd was really like that night, you can always refer to “Bark At The Audience” to get the complete picture.
The second portion of Werewolves In Tokyo has a great selection of songs. We have repeats of “Mr. Crowley” and “Suicide Solution”, but they obviously sound very different with Zakk Wylde playing the guitar and almost 20 years in between the recordings. In addition to those, we have a couple of the more modern Ozzy tunes with “Believer”, “Junkie” and “Gets Me Through”. I think that “Gets Me Through” is an especially great song, and I’m always impressed when I hear it. If you are one of those people who will only listen to the first three Ozzy albums (you’re missing out), you just might want to hear more after listening to this small selection of the newer stuff. Obviously, the full band lineup with Trujillo on bass (Metallica) and Bordin (Faith No More) on drums compliments Zakk pretty well, and the band rocks. I don’t have a copy of this full show in my collection (that I can find, anyway), but I certainly have it on my radar at this point, since I’d love to hear the full thing.
Werewolves In Tokyo is a great set. Is it truly a “definitive” version, though? Honestly, I still prefer my old Way of Wizard single LP copy. The new XeRocks version has abrupt cuts between sides instead of smooth fading in and out, and that sort of thing always bothers me and a lot of other collectors I talk to. I also prefer the classic look of older copies of the 1984 show, simply because they don’t have the zany AI artwork. The addition of the extra tracks from the 2002 show is cool, but I would have preferred to have that whole thing as a separate release from the same label. The pressing itself is top notch (10/10), and the physical quality of the packaging is great as well. Just because of the artwork though, I’m personally calling it a 7/10. If you like the art, this could very well be a 10/10 for you, though. The actual audio quality for both shows is 10/10, which isn’t surprising since they are both soundboards.
Overall, I’m really happy to have this set in my collection, even if it’s just for the extra tracks alone. If you don’t already have a vinyl copy of the 1984 show in your collection, you should really consider picking Werewolves up while it’s still available at the retail price. I prefer my older copy, but any records on the Way of Wizard label are nearly impossible to find these days and are stupid expensive even if you do manage to track one down. This is a great pressing, and the music sounds fantastic. If you like the looks of the package, then that’s even better. There are plenty of copies still out there, so for now, this should be an easy one to track down. Enjoy!