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He is considered to be the godfather of heavy metal, but after more than five decades in the game, the “prince of darkness”, Ozzy Osbourne, brings his blistering performing career to an end with a highly anticipated final concert this weekend.
Thousands of metal fans will descend on Birmingham’s Villa Park on Saturday to see the original Black Sabbath lineup reunite for the first time in 20 years, in what has been billed as the “greatest heavy metal show ever”.
The stadium, home to Aston Villa FC, is a stone’s throw from Osbourne’s childhood terrace home in the suburb of Aston. It was there that the now 76-year-old launched his career, putting an advert for bandmates in a record shop and forming Black Sabbath with schoolfriend and guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist and lyricist Geezer Butler, and drummer Bill Ward.
“It’s my final encore; it’s my chance to say thank you to my fans for always supporting me and being there for me,” Osbourne said this week. “I couldn’t have done my final show anywhere else. I had to go back to the beginning.”
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Black Sabbath transformed late-60s rock into something darker, heavier and more ominous. Their music was characterised by down-tuned, distorted guitar riffs and haunting vocals and lyrics about war, madness and the occult. The band’s self-titled debut album in 1970 is often cited as the moment heavy metal was born, and they have sold a reported 75m albums worldwide.
“Sabbath gave us the blueprint, Sabbath gave us the recipe. They gave us the cookbook, man,” Slipknot’s Corey Taylor said in BBC Radio WM’s Forging Metal documentary, which was released on Friday.
In both his time with Black Sabbath and as a solo artist (after leaving the group in 1979), Osbourne became a living embodiment of rock excess. Critics call him the first wild rock star – he was unpredictable and unfiltered, with a career defined by drug-fuelled mayhem, onstage theatrics and outrageous behaviour.
The hell-raising frontman once bit the heads off two doves in a record label meeting, snorted a line of ants on tour, and mistook a real bat for a prop and bit its head off during a concert. In 1982 he was detained for public intoxication and urinating on a war monument in Texas while wearing his wife’s dress.
Then, in the early 2000s, Osbourne and his family – including wife Sharon and children Kelly and Jack – were catapulted to new levels of fame with MTV’s The Osbournes, a pioneering reality TV show that captured their chaotic household and became a cultural phenomenon. Osbourne was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist last year.
But Black Sabbath fans have been desperate for the original band members to reunite since their last performance on the 2005 Ozzfest tour, after which Ward left the group.
Though Black Sabbath’s final album, 13, was released in 2013 and their final tour concluded in Birmingham in 2017, Ward did not take part due to a contract disagreement (which led to a public spat with Osbourne).
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But the moment has finally come to pass, and so great was the demand that tickets for Saturday’s 42,000-capacity concert sold out in just 16 minutes. Titled Back to the Beginning and curated by Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, the event will open with a solo set by Osbourne and close with Black Sabbath’s iconic songs.
In total, the concert will run at over 10 hours and feature performances from a multitude of great metal bands, including Metallica, Slayer, Pantera, Gojira, Halestorm, and members of Guns N’ Roses and Rage Against the Machine. Profits will be shared between three charities: Cure Parkinson’s, Birmingham children’s hospital and the Birmingham-based Acorns children’s hospice.
It is fitting that the event takes place in Birmingham, a city that has long revered Black Sabbath. The group were awarded the freedom of Birmingham this year, and even Birmingham Royal Ballet created a Black Sabbath dance in 2023.
And while it is true that Osbourne has announced his retirement a number of times in the past, recent health challenges, including a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis in 2020 and spinal surgeries following an accident, mean it is likely this performance will really be his swan song.
“I’d love to say ‘never say never’, but after the last six years or so … it is time,” he told the Guardian. “I don’t want to die in a hotel room somewhere. I want to spend the rest of my life with my family.”
