Tony Iommi has spoken publicly for the first time since Ozzy Osbourne’s passing, and said he believes the singer was committed to putting everything he had left into Black Sabbath’s final show, even if it would be the death of him.
Osbourne died a little more than two weeks after the Back to the Beginning concert. The blockbuster show was arranged as a final send-off for both Black Sabbath, who performed with original drummer Bill Ward for the first time in nearly 20 years, and Ozzy Osbourne, the solo artist. Playing to a sold-out Villa Park in their hometown of Birmingham, coupled with livestream ticket sales, raised $190 million for charity.
Much of the buildup to the show was dominated by question marks hanging over the heads of Ozzy, Ward, and their ailing health. Ozzy hadn't performed at his Rock Hall induction last November and remained seated on a throne throughout. He later said he would only be “doing little bits and pieces” in Birmingham.
“The worrying thing for me is the unknown,” Iommi had said. “We don't know what's going to happen.”
Yet, Iommi says that despite having the odds stacked against him, the vocalist did everything in his power to ensure the show went ahead with him front and center.
“I think he must have had something in his head that said, ‘Well, this is gonna be it, the last thing I’m ever gonna do,’” he tells U.K. broadcaster ITV. “Whether he thought he was gonna die or what, I don’t know. But he really wanted to do it; he was determined to do it. And fair dues, he’d done it.”
“I think he really just held out to do that show. I really feel — me and Geezer were talking about it — that we think he held out to do it, and just after that, he’s done it and said goodbye to the fans. And that was the end of it.”
Iommi also revealed that the band had done as much as they could to limit his involvement in rehearsals to avoid taking too much out of the 76-year-old, who was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2019.
“He’s not looked well through the rehearsals. We didn’t want him there every day, because it’s too much. He just wouldn’t be able to stand it,” he details. “So they’d bring him in and he’d sit down and sing a few songs, and then we’d talk about some rubbish old times or whatever, have a laugh, and then he’d go.
“The gig was for him, really, and for us, to say goodbye. It was the end of the band, and to have Bill drum with us as well after all these years. I can’t believe it’s 20 years, to be honest.”
I think he must have had something in his head that said, "Well, this is gonna be it, the last thing I’m ever gonna do"
Tony Iommi
Ozzy may have gotten his final wish of saying goodbye to his fans the proper way, especially considering that Sabbath’s 2016-17 The End tour happened without Ward, and that his farewell No More Tours II run was ultimately axed amid ongoing health concerns. But Iommi could sense that he wanted to give me than he was able to.
“I think he was moved and frustrated as well, ’cause he wanted to stand up. You could see he was trying to get up. But it meant everything to him. This is what we built up for, for that big ending where he could see all the people and we could all see all the people, and close it in that way.
“[After the show], he came around before he was leaving on a wheelchair that brought him in to say goodbye and have a little chat,” he adds. “And he seemed all right. He enjoyed it. And he said, ‘Oh, it went all right, didn’t it?’ I said, ‘Yeah, it did.’”
Just a few days ago, Ozzy had texted the guitarist saying he was feeling extreme fatigue. But the guitarist didn’t see his death coming.
“It was a shock for us,” he says. “When I heard yesterday, it couldn’t sink in. I thought, It can’t be. I only had a text from him the day before. It just seemed unreal, surreal. In the night, I started thinking about it: God, am I dreaming all this? We didn’t expect him to go that quickly.”
Tributes to the singer have continued to pour in from around the world, with Slash guitarist Frank Sidoris sharing a letter he received from the metal icon after his failed audition in 2017.
“[The letter] proves that he was truly everything that you would hope he was as a person,” he says. “It was an honor to be in his welcoming presence and feel his genuine warmth in person.”
