Justin Hawkins has posted a video defending his brother’s comments about Yungblud’s role in the Ozzy Osbourne tribute at last weekend’s MTV VMAs.
Yungblud took part in a three-song medley that paid homage to the Prince of Darkness, where he was joined by Nuno Bettencourt, Aerosmith duo Joe Perry and Steven Tyler, and Black Sabbath keyboardist Adam Wakeman.
As we reported, Dan Hawkins, one-half of the Darkness’s brotherly guitar tandem, took offense at what he perceived as artists jumping on the Ozzy bandwagon to boost their own careers. He responded the next day with a scathing Instagram post in which he called it "another nail in the coffin of rock n' roll" and referred to the performers as "a bunch of bellends" (that's Brit slang for the tip of the penis for all you Yanks).
Hawkins' comment drew both praise and criticism, but Justin has made it clear he has his brother's back. In his new video, he calls Yungblud a "poser" and attacks the young singer for behaving as if he's "a natural heir to the Ozzy legacy," considering how little his music has in common with Osbourne's.
"There has been some discussion this week regarding my brother's comments on the Ozzy tribute and Yungblud at the VMAs," Justin says. "Was it really necessary to refer to anyone as a 'Bellend'? Let me try to explain."
“The tribute to Ozzy extends to what [Yungblud] was doing on the red carpet. The minute he got there, he was like 'Okay, this is for Ozzy.' One difference, though: Ozzy was fucking hilarious, he really was funny.
“I suppose one of the things that irks musicians of a certain age is to watch Ozzy invent heavy metal, then turn into this household name with the television series and his decades of being brilliant, and then you kind of think, What the fuck does all those decades of having this incredible legacy have to do with Yungblud?
“It feels like he's cynically positioned himself as a natural heir to the Ozzy legacy, having nothing to do with the really important stuff.”
The fuss over Yungblud goes back to his standout performance of the Black Sabbath ballad "Changes" at Back to the Beginning. Ozzy not only praised it but told him he reminded him of his younger self.
Yungblud’s career has undoubtedly taken a bump since then — which doesn't hurt seeing as his time in the limelight coincides with the release of his fourth album, Idols.
But it’s his attention-seeking enthusiasm that has placed him in the Hawkins brothers' crosshairs.
“All of this posturing is Jim Morrison meets the bloke from Stone Temple Pilots [Scott Weiland] meets everybody else who's ever owned a pair of leather trousers," Justin says. "It's 101 School of Rock stuff. For seven minutes, the world is looking at rock, and this is what we've given them?”
“It's like what a male stripper would do. It doesn't ring authentic,” he continues. “It's rock and roll, but not as we know it. It kind of has this Disney veneer. That's what makes it galling to the people who have tweeted their disdain.”
Of course, Hawkins has himself performed topless and delivered performances with a sexualized swagger — it’s in the spirit of rock n’ roll. But he feels the Ozzy tribute was more like a pantomime than something from the pantheon of rock greats.
Safe to say, he had no complaints about Bettencourt, whom he described as “the eighth to eighteenth wonders of the world.” Speaking on the red carpet at the VMAs, Bettencourt revealed how he turned down an offer to become Ozzy’s next guitarist in the mid-’90s, making him, according to the Black Sabbath frontman, the only guitarist that ever said no to him.
