Fifty-five years since they roared out of Birmingham and helped birth heavy metal, Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath are returning to Aston for one last show, where it all began, before they retire for good. Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Slayer and an eye-watering cast are coming to help with the send-off. Gig of the year? As Sharon Osbourne puts it, it’s going to be “impossible to top…”
“It’s like if you asked people to dream up the greatest day in music ever,” beams Sharon Osbourne. “We’ve got it.”
On July 5, Ozzy and Black Sabbath will return for one final, final wave-off. In a full-circle moment, at Aston Villa’s ground in Birmingham, a stone’s throw from where they all grew up and where the most important band in the history of heavy music began, Ozzy, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward, back for the first time in 20 years, will play together one last time.
Then there’s the supporting cast of bands and one-off supergroups, curated by Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello that’s basically a roll-call of rock’s greatest and goodest. There’s Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Pantera, Slayer, Tool, Gojira, Halestorm, Alice In Chains, Mastodon, Lamb Of God and more. There will be team-up turns from legends like Billy Corgan, Jonathan Davis, Fred Durst, Ghost’s Papa V Perpetua, Sammy Hagar, one-time Ozzy band members Rudy Sarzo and Mike Bordin. Aquaman beefcake and metal maniac Jason Momoa – a man who, says Sharon, “reminds me of Zakk Wylde” – enquired about getting a ticket, and has found himself compèring the whole day.
As retirement parties go, it’s better than the cheap gold watch Ozzy saw one old boy get for a lifetime of factory toil when he was a teen. As Sharon says, “If you’re going to make it the last time, you have to make it impossible to top.”
This has been a dream for a while. Five years ago, standing in the hallway at Ozzy and Sharon’s house in Los Angeles, Mrs O mused to K!. Wouldn’t it be great, she asked, to do one final big show, somewhere in England, with loads of people he’s played with throughout his career?
Of course it would, we answered. What a lovely idea. Then wondered exactly what the hell that would entail should it ever come to pass.
Now we know. And it’s bigger than even Sharon had in mind. And why not? Sabbath may have done a victory lap, once again ending up, appropriately, in their beloved Brum in 2017, but the Double-O’s own luck hasn’t been so neat.
In 2018, a staph infection in his thumb meant having to ice the remaining dates, ironically, on his No More Tours II jaunt. In early 2019, a fall while going for a whizz in the middle of the night aggravated an old neck injury from his 2003 quad bike accident, necessitating the thick end of a year “staying on the fucking couch all day, bored off my arse” as he told us. Then he got pneumonia.
Dates were booked in support of 2020’s excellent Ordinary Man album (a record in which a similarly keen band of mates lent a hand to the final show when asked, including Duff McKagan, Chad Smith and Elton John), but between the arrival of the pandemic, and his diagnosis with Parkin 2, they never came to pass.
“Fucking hell,” he laughed. “I’ve fallen down the stairs drunk, I’ve fucking crashed cars, I’ve fucking nearly died in aeroplanes, and this stupid fucking thing, falling over going for a fucking piss – it’s not exactly Ozzy going out in a blaze of fucking glory, is it?”
No. And to end this career with such a disappointing, ignominious final chapter would have been horrible. Ozzy, and the rest of us, would have been robbed of the chance to say farewell, to draw a line under things correctly, to board the Crazy Train one last time.
So we’re back, right where it started – “It wouldn’t be right anywhere else, like Wembley,” Sharon points out – with something you’d be called mad for suggesting were it not literally booked to happen, and which could never possibly happen again.
“It’s like nothing I’ve ever been part of,” says Live Nation promoter Andy Copping, who has, with Sharon and Tom, spent the past two years piecing the puzzle together. “From every perspective, it’s unique. It makes Download look easy!”
Indeed, the only comparisons one can realistically make are to Live Aid, or the Freddie Mercury and Taylor Hawkins tribute gigs.
“It’s not really been done this way before,” says Sharon. “It won’t be two or three-hour sets, or we’d be there for days! But that’s what makes it interesting, seeing what people are going to do. And then Ozzy’s going to perform – again, not a full concert – but just having him onstage will be really special.”
For those grumbling that this means 2017’s The End farewell tour wasn’t actually the end, and bands keep getting back together every few years now, the line-up and mechanics of it all have effectively sealed the deal: you couldn’t possibly repeat the trick. It is going to be, frankly, one of the greatest rock gigs of all time.
“We wanted it to be a one-off,” says Andy. “People ask, ‘Why don’t they do more shows?’ But it was all about doing one really big gig so Ozzy can say goodbye and thank the fans.”
“The thing that is so amazing is that everyone’s here for Ozzy,” adds Sharon. “We asked and people went, ‘Yep!’ No egos, no nothing, everyone’s just coming to celebrate. That’s what is so fantastic: the spirit of it is so pure. It’s brilliant.”
It’s a measure of just how beloved and respected Ozzy and Sabbath are that this whole enterprise is even happening at all.
The last time Metallica didn’t headline a show was 20 years ago, and that was opening for The Rolling Stones. Guns N’ Roses’ Not In This Lifetime… reunion tour has grossed over half a billion dollars since the reunion of Axl Rose, Slash and Duff McKagan in 2016. Tool, the reinvigoration of Pantera, and the reunited Slayer, could all buy themselves new houses with one big, festival headline show.
But this isn’t about cash – and what money it generates is admirably going to charity: Cure Parkinson’s, the Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Acorn Children’s Hospice. For all involved, this is about their mate, their hero.
“I think it shows what somebody like Ozzy and Sabbath mean to people,” says Andy. “Sabbath started this genre, and Ozzy in the ’80s became even more of an icon. And between them, and with Ozzfest, the amount of support they’ve given for acts over the years is incredible. Ozzy took Korn on their first big tour in the ’90s. A lot of these bands were like, ‘If we get the call from Ozzy, we’re going to be there.’”
Let’s get the ball rolling there, with Kirk Hammett. “It’s a real opportunity to say thank you to Ozzy and Tony and Geezer and Bill, ’cause they fricking wrote the book on the genre,” is how the Metallica guitarist succinctly summed it up in a recent chat with Heavy Consequence. “They developed it, they fleshed it out so that we can use what they did as a stepping stone to other ways to do this.
“If it wasn’t for those four guys, we might still be just wandering around in the dark. But the fact that they created a genre – then developed it and turned it into a few different things over the course of their career – is completely awe-inspiring to me and my peers musically. How do you thank someone like that?”
How, indeed? Among those in line to top his mitre is Ghost’s Tobias Forge. Usually a man unshakably in charge, such is his love for the band that he had to roll with his new identity as Papa V Perpetua being revealed earlier than originally planned to accommodate the concert announcement.
“Black Sabbath and Ozzy were so important to me growing up, and have always been a big influence on Ghost,” he tells us. “Not just the heavy stuff, but the melodic songs as well. I loved Sabbath Bloody Sabbath especially, and Ozzy’s Bark At The Moon and Diary Of A Madman albums are so melodic, but so dark and twisted at the same time. And just in general, the influence they had touches everyone that came after them. It really can’t be measured.”
Tom Araya from Slayer says that, “I was hanging out with my brother and his friends during my junior year in high school, and we would play Sabbath all the time, so I am a big fan. Black Sabbath were the originators, people call them the godfathers of metal music.”
“Being on the Sabbath bill means the world to me, because these are my uber-heroes,” echoed guitarist Kerry King. “And to know that their camp thinks enough of us to offer us a spot is flattering and humbling.”
Even Sleep Token broke their usually unassailable wall of silence (sort of), when drummer II took to Instagram “with great reverence and great honour” to announce his participation. Black Sabbath are, he wrote, “A band whom from the beginning ignited my passion for heavy music and creation at its core.”
It is on Tom Morello’s shoulders that fitting all this together falls.
“We’ve known Tom since he was a little boy,” says Sharon. “He was always such a huge Randy [Rhoads, late Ozzy guitarist] fan. The first time we ever met, we spent an hour talking about Randy, so he was the most natural person for the task.”
Fan’s dream as it is, he’s got a hell of a job. As well as getting bands on board (easy with the right phone book), Tom has to co-ordinate who’s actually doing what (much, much harder). Not least, every band and jam outfit are down to do an Ozzy or Sabbath song each. This is where the likeable six-stringer’s good vibes come into their own, when he has to tell some of the world’s biggest rock stars someone else has already bagged Into The Void.
“Tom’s such a chill guy,” enthuses Sharon. “He has a calming effect on people. It’s not easy at all, because you want everybody to be happy who’s performing. So if they have a particular song, and two other bands want to do that, he’s very good at getting through that.”
Even fitting everything into one day is the sort of operation more organised than most armies.
“It really is quite the challenge,” admits Andy. “We’re changing bands around in less than 10 minutes. There’s not going to be a lot of waiting time. Once you’re in there and the bands start playing, it’s going to be relentless.”
And even on such a massive bonanza of a ticket as this, things aren’t final until the day. “There’s some pretty great surprises that are not posted anywhere,” Tom told The Guardian. There’s already quite the list of ‘notable absences’.
Not that anyone’s letting the cat out of the bag…
“You can’t rule anything out. You might see some people turn up to blast a song,” is Andy’s answer.
“You’ll just have to wait and see,” adds Sharon.
And what of the men of the hour? Tony Iommi says his initial uncertainty has given over to excitement, partly swayed by the charitable nature of it. Geezer Butler – a lifelong Villa fan, who Ozzy says will at least be kept happy by the gig’s location – admits he’s getting nervous.
“I’m already having palpitations,” he told The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis. “In fact, I had a nightmare last night. I dreamed everything went wrong onstage and we all turned to dust. It’s important that we leave a great impression, since it’s the final time that people will experience us live. So it has to be great on the night.”
For Ozzy, this is a bigger deal than anyone else. Preparation has been going on for months. And though he’s said he’ll be sat down, that you’re not getting a full set, it’s still going to be a heart-melting moment to see The Prince Of Darkness up onstage one last time. That he’s having to climb such a big hill to get there is something to be rightfully proud.
“This has given him a reason to get up in the morning,” beams Sharon. “Instead of saying, ‘I wish I could do this…’ he’s actually going to. It’s a reason to get up every day and do his physio and get himself together.
“To quote him, he says his greatest love affair is with his fans. He also says it’s the only thing he’s any good at. But what a thing to be good at. And he’s really excited to see everyone again and do this.”
It’s going to be quite the moment. And an emotional one. But one for which we can be grateful where, when such celebrations usually take place as a memorial, here it’s going to be a proper goodbye to a life of rock’n’roll from Ozzy and the lads, with them all there feeling the love.
And it will, definitely, be the end.
“This is it, full-stop,” says Sharon. “We’re gonna go home, close the door, get all our animals together, and that’s it. But before that, it’s going to be very special.”
Oh lord, yeah, it is. Ozzy, Sabbath, here’s to you. Let’s go fucking crazy.
Black Sabbath’s Back To The Beginning takes place on July 5 at Villa Park. This feature originally appeared in the summer 2025 issue of Kerrang!.
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