In the late Nineties, Ozzfest wasn’t just a tour — it was a traveling demolition derby of distortion, testosterone, and barely contained chaos. Bands weren’t just competing for crowd reaction; they were competing for oxygen. Somewhere in that smoke-choked ecosystem of pyro, mud, and Monster Energy before Monster Energy, (Hed) P.E. carved out a reputation as one of the wildest live acts on the bill. And behind the turntables — sometimes on a skateboard — was DJ Product.
By the time (Hed) P.E. hit the early Ozzfest runs, the band was already volatile. Product remembers those years as a blur of aggression and adrenaline. “Our band was like just very wild in those days as well,” he says. “I just saw a video the other day from that tour and I was like wow we were nuts on stage man. Like just every every member one of us like just going off.”
The chaos wasn’t theater — it was instinct. “(Hed) P.E. is very explosive like there’s like a lot going on. There’s like guitars flying and amps exploding and like bottles being broken on stage and it’s like it’s not really planned out. It was just that’s kind of how that band was.”
That unpredictability made them perfect for Ozzfest’s side stage — and occasionally a liability.
Product had already built friendships across the tour ecosystem before Ozzfest ever rolled through. “We had known all these bands like the Deftones and System of a Down prior to all these tours, right? We were like doing little clubs with them all,” he says. It was during that run that he formed a bond with Slipknot’s Sid Wilson — “we both are crazy DJs in bands” — and a particularly close friendship with Jack Osbourne.
“Jack was on our tour bus every day,” Product says. “He was really cool. He was very young little kid.” This was pre–reality show, pre–tabloid caricature. Just a kid soaking in backstage noise and learning how touring life worked.
Ozzy himself remained more myth than hangout buddy — but not entirely unreachable. Product recalls one moment with the Prince of Darkness that feels almost absurd in its simplicity.
“One time I was like skateboarding behind behind his bus or something one day and he signals to Jack, his son. He’s like, ‘Hey, give this that skateboarder a my six-pack of beer.’ He gave me like a — he gave me a six-pack of beer, man.”
It wasn’t a handshake or a long conversation. “I never like I never shook his hand or nothing, but I was kind of within, you know, I was in his company a lot.”
If Ozzy represented the benevolent monarch of Ozzfest, Sharon Osbourne was its iron-willed enforcer. And DJ Product — skating across stage decks mid-set — eventually collided with that authority.
“The last day of tour, I remember skateboarding on stage and Sharon was watching our set and she was kind of shaking her head,” Product says. In true (Hed) P.E. fashion, the set was escalating. “I was like knocking the side fills down,” he admits.
The result? Immediate consequences. “I think she had security escort me off the property on the last show,” he says with a chuckle.
It wasn’t personal — it was Ozzfest. Controlled chaos only works when someone’s controlling it.
The message was reinforced later that year when (Hed) P.E. landed on Ozzfest England. “There was like all these signs on stage says no skateboarding on stage,” Product says, laughing at the memory. “There’s only one person that was doing it so it’s like they were directing it at me, you know. Like they knew I was coming and they like made an effort to like kind of go out of their way to like tell this guy not to do that again.”
To Product, none of it wasn’t malicious. “I was like trying to bum anybody out,” he says. It was simply an extension of the band’s ethos — movement, impact, combustion.
And Ozzfest thrived on exactly that.
The early tours were relentless: warped schedules, international legs, mornings that started at 10 a.m. sets and nights that ended in bus parking-lot debauchery. “Some of those years were very blurry,” Product admits. But the magnitude of it remains clear. “We toured that whole year like we went around the world. We went to Europe. We did like the States and then we went to Europe, Japan, Australia. Like we did the whole globe in one year off that Broke tour.”
If Ozzfest was a rite of passage for heavy bands in the late Nineties, (Hed) P.E. didn’t just pass through — they detonated.
And DJ Product? He was the guy scratching between riffs, dodging flying bottles, skating across stage decks, getting handed beer by Ozzy Osbourne, and escorted out by Sharon — all in the span of a single festival run.
In hindsight, it feels almost poetic. Ozzfest was never about safety rails. It was about spectacle. And for a few summers, DJ Product embodied exactly what that spectacle demanded: unpredictable, unfiltered, and impossible to ignore.
DJ Product will be performing on the Sublime Cruise alongside Sublime, Yelawolf, Amigo The Devil, Common Kings, Codefendants and more.
Watch The Full Interview With DJ Product Below!
