Everybody who watched Ozzy Osbourne play his final present, at Villa Park in his hometown of Birmingham on Saturday, July 5, has their very own vivid reminiscence of it.
“As quickly as he hit the stage, all the things modified,” says Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor, whose band had opened the Again To The Starting gig eight hours earlier. “So long as he sat there, it didn’t matter if he didn’t sing a notice, as a result of everybody was doing it for him. It was a phenomenal factor to be part of, everybody weeping and hugging. The Mr. Crowley intro got here on and everyone was simply executed.”
For Lamb Of God’s Randy Blythe, it was simply as emotional. “Everyone round me crying, that’s my strongest reminiscence,” says Randy. “I keep in mind [US festival promoter] Danny Wimmer being so caught up in all of it, with tears simply coming down. Throughout Sabbath, I used to be out with [Living Colour guitarist] Vernon Reid and we had been simply stood there watching like, ‘Holy shit!’ We hung off each phrase.”
Halestorm guitarist Joe Hottinger likewise remembers the electrical ambiance in Villa Park, and the sense of togetherness that got here with it. “Whenever you’re in the midst of 45,000 individuals, everyone simply will get into it,” he says. “Ozzy would clap and I’d suppose, ‘That is the final time I get to clap with Ozzy, so that you clap, rattling it!’ So everyone did! We had been all singing alongside and crying – particularly throughout Mama, I’m Coming Residence. So many individuals, feeling the identical emotion. It was intense and magical.”
Again To The Starting’s musical director, Tom Morello, had promised that it will be “the best day in heavy metallic historical past”, and the day delivered on that promise. This was a tribute to Ozzy and Black Sabbath, going down a stone’s throw from the place they grew up, shaped the band and solid the sound that may change the world.
However it was greater than that: this was a celebration of a neighborhood, one which had been born within the pubs and rehearsal rooms of Birmingham greater than 55 years in the past and gone on to unfold across the globe. And on the centre of all of it was John Michael Osbourne.
After the enjoyment, got here the sorrow. On July 22, simply 17 days after the Again To The Starting present, the Osbourne household launched a press release.
“It’s with extra unhappiness than mere phrases can convey that now we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has handed away this morning,” it learn. “He was along with his household and surrounded by love.”
The outpouring of emotion that greeted the announcement of Ozzy’s loss of life was a measure of the person and all the things he’d achieved. His Black Sabbath bandmates Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Invoice Ward paid heartfelt tribute, as did everybody from Metallica, Judas Priest and Jack Black to Elton John, Oasis and even Celine Dion. However it was a short, two-word submit on Black Sabbath’s personal account that really summed up what everyone was feeling: ‘Ozzy Perpetually’.
Ozzy Osbourne was the worst retiree within the historical past of music. He introduced his first retirement in 1992 on the age of 43, after being misdiagnosed with a number of sclerosis (that retirement lasted three years). Black Sabbath themselves performed no less than two farewell reveals earlier than bowing out in 2017 with their The Finish tour, although even that wasn’t the final we noticed of them.
And whereas Ozzy’s personal farewell tour, No Extra Excursions 2, was curtailed after one leg by Covid and well being points, he nonetheless returned to the studio to make two extra albums, 2020’s Peculiar Man and 2022’s Affected person Quantity 9. His reluctance to give up might be traced again to his personal father. Jack Osbourne had retired in 1977 on the age of 63 and died just a few months later.
“‘I’m gonna have a while to do the backyard now,’ he’d informed me,” wrote the singer in his 2010 autobiography, I Am Ozzy. “So he did the backyard. However as quickly as he’d executed the backyard, that was it. Recreation over.”
However Again To The Starting was completely different. It actually did really feel like Ozzy’s ultimate bow. The consequences of spinal accidents sustained in a near-fatal 2003 quad bike accident, the aftermath of a severe fall in 2019 and a Parkinson’s prognosis had mixed to make standing troublesome, therefore the gothic black throne he was seated on throughout his two performances at Villa Park.
He was a frailer determine on the night time than he had been in earlier years, however these bodily illnesses had been surmounted by an iron-willed need to say goodbye to the followers who had made him who he was. That and the truth that 45,000 individuals had been roaring him on.
“It was such an unbelievable alternative for everybody to say goodbye to Ozzy,” says Brann Dailor. “And an opportunity for Ozzy to say goodbye.”
The Again To The Starting present couldn’t have taken place wherever however Birmingham. Ozzy could have spent a lot of his time in current a long time in Los Angeles, however he remained a West Midlander to his bones.
“Ozzy by no means misplaced his accent, by no means misplaced contact along with his roots,” says Lisa Meyer, founding father of Birmingham’s Residence Of Steel, a venture that celebrates town’s legacy of heavy music, and Sabbath particularly. “He was at all times repping Birmingham. You couldn’t ask for a greater consultant, somebody who embodies the sense of humour and the authenticity.”
England’s second metropolis was central to Black Sabbath. Ozzy at all times shot down options that the clanging coming from the native factories impressed Sabbath’s groundbreaking sound, however the band and their singer had been undeniably a product of their working class background.
“Flowers in your hair? Do me a favour,” he wrote in I Am Ozzy, referring to the mid-60s peace-and-love hippie motion that Sabbath had been a unfavourable picture of. “The one flowers anybody noticed in Aston had been those you threw within the gap after you while you croaked it on the age of 53 ’cos you’d labored your self to loss of life.”
Ozzy might simply have adopted his dad down that highway. His early jobs included working in a slaughterhouse, testing car-horns (“My first job in music,” he as soon as quipped of the latter), and a brief and unsuccessful profession as a burglar that landed him with a three-month stint in jail nearly instantly. However an abiding love of The Beatles impressed him to develop into a musician and escape the nine-to-five drudgery he was in any other case destined for.
It was an insane dream for a child who grew up in a two-bedroom terrace home in Aston with 5 different siblings, but when the younger Ozzy Osbourne had a superpower, it was that he wasn’t like everyone else.
“Ozzy proved that somebody from a working class background can develop into a worldwide star,” says Lisa Meyer. “He stands for the concept which you could make one thing of your life and nonetheless proudly be who you’re. Ozzy gave a voice to individuals who didn’t really feel like they fitted in, who had been completely different. I feel that’s what at all times drew lots of people within the metallic neighborhood to him and Sabbath.”
Randy Blythe isn’t flawed when he says that the world would sound very completely different if Ozzy and Black Sabbath had by no means existed.
“Ozzy is likely one of the creators of heavy metallic together with Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi and Invoice Ward,” he says. “So what he means to me is the start of a style.”
However Ozzy was extra than simply the singer in Black Sabbath. He was one of the crucial profitable solo stars of the Eighties and, because of Ozzfest, the godfather of a complete new era of metallic bands from the mid-90s onwards. In the previous couple of a long time, he occupied a singular place within the tradition, the wayward grandpa who everyone loves having spherical as a result of you possibly can assure he’d swear lots and find yourself face down within the (non-alcoholic) trifle.
But Ozzy was even greater than music. He started dabbling in movies and TV reveals, beginning with a really humorous look as a horrified TV preacher in gloriously schlocky 1986 heavy metallic horror film Trick Or Deal with, spoofing the form of spiritual wingnuts who thought he was main the Godfearing youngsters of America to Hell.
There have been equally memorable appearances within the documentary The Decline Of Western Civilisation Half II: The Steel Years (Ozzy tries to make breakfast!), South Park – Chef Support (Ozzy kills Kenny!) and even Adam Sandler comedy Little Nicky (Ozzy bites the pinnacle off a personality who has changed into a bat!). Most well-known of all was The Osbournes, the landmark actuality TV present that offered Ozzy not as a madman however as a doting household man, albeit one who existed in a nearpermanent state of bafflement.
It was The Osbournes that remodeled Ozzy from rock star into bona fide A-list superstar, launching a wave of comparable fly-on-the-wall reveals and by chance inventing The Kardashians within the course of.
“I assumed it was gonna be a bit of cake, however you have got a digital camera crew residing in your own home for 3 years and see how you’re feeling on the finish of it,” Ozzy informed Steel Hammer in 2022. “You’re feeling like a fucking laboratory rat.”
Ozzy didn’t simply cross over into the world of movie and TV. In 2009, he made a hilarious cameo look within the videogame Brütal Legend, alongside the likes of Jack Black, Lemmy and Rob Halford. The character he performed, The Guardian Of Steel, seemed like Ozzy and regarded like Ozzy, proper right down to the spherical purple granny glasses he was carrying (he additionally performed a second, smaller position within the recreation as the pinnacle of a household of bats, Dadbat).
“Diary Of A Madman was the primary album I ever purchased,” says Tim Schafer, the sport’s author and inventive director, and the person answerable for Ozzy’s look. “He’s simply the voice to me. Heavy metallic relies round two questions: ‘Am I going insane?’ and ‘Is the Satan coming for me?’ And while you’ve acquired Ozzy singing these issues, you actually consider him.”
Tim created The Guardian Of Steel with Ozzy in thoughts, then approached the Osbourne camp through the sport’s publishers, Digital Arts.
“I wrote the script for him, however when he confirmed up within the studio, he stated, ‘Sharon informed me simply to do my Prince Of Darkness voice,’” says Tim.
Ozzy’s dyslexia meant he initially struggled with the script, so Tim sat on the stool subsequent to him and spoke every line for the singer to learn again.
“And he hit all the things completely. He acquired all of the jokes, he knew find out how to ship them, he knew find out how to be that character.”
Ozzy’s Brütal Legend cameo is up there with one of the best of his IRL display screen roles. However that’s primarily as a result of nobody knew find out how to play Ozzy Osbourne like Ozzy Osbourne.
“Did Ozzy play the sport? I’m unsure he did. Perhaps [his son] Jack did,” says Tim. “However my reminiscence of him is of this humorous, candy, goofy man who spent the entire time laughing and telling tales. He was the face of a whole style, and I felt grateful to have spent that point with him.”
Nearly each band and artist who performed the Again To The Starting present owed a debt to Ozzy. They’d both performed with him, opened for him, acquired a leg-up from him, frolicked with him, acquired pissed with him or, in just a few instances, executed the entire above.
“Metallica had been lucky sufficient to assist Ozzy in 1986 on his enviornment tour for The Final Sin,” Lars Ulrich informed Steel Hammer in an interview for the official Again To The Starting gig programme. “It was loopy being out in center America, taking part in to an viewers who, most nights, had no thought who we had been and why we’d been invited to the social gathering, however Ozzy and Sharon had been so variety and gracious to ask us onto that tour. They believed in providing a hand down to drag individuals up. It was overwhelming and thrilling and life-changing.”
That supportiveness was simply one of many traits that made Ozzy such a beloved determine. One other was his sense of humour. Generally he was intentionally humorous – choose any random YouTube interview and also you’re by no means greater than 20 seconds away from a zinger delivered in that unmistakable Brummie accent. At different instances, totally on The Osbournes, he was blissfully oblivious to the truth that he was making individuals snort (there’s a motive the none-more-Ozzy “Who’s the beer thief?” clip has develop into a meme).
“To me, other than being essentially the most hilarious man on the planet and at all times taking the piss out of one thing, his coronary heart is larger than his physique,” Zakk Wylde, Ozzy’s longtime guitarist, informed Steel Hammer forward of the Again To The Starting present.
“He needs to care for everyone and have everyone have a superb time.”
Bassist Mike Inez was a part of Ozzy’s backing band on the Villa Park present. Earlier than that, he’d been within the singer’s solo outfit from 1989 to 1992, earlier than leaving to hitch Alice In Chains. Chatting with Steel Hammer forward of the gig, he recalled breaking the information of his departure to his boss.
“I used to be actually nervous, and stated, ‘Ozzy, can we take a stroll?’” remembered Mike. “I stated, Alice In Chains has requested me to hitch the band.’ And he stated, ‘For those who don’t take the gig, now we have to go to hospital.’ I’m going, ‘Why is that?’ [And he said,] ‘As a result of it’s going to take per week to get my foot out of your ass.’”
Within the wake of Ozzy’s loss of life, varied options have been thrown round about one of the best ways to commemorate him, from the nobrainer (a statue) to the formidable (renaming Birmingham airport after him). For Residence Of Steel’s Lisa Meyer, one of the best ways to honour his legacy can be to proceed that spirit of supporting subsequent generations of musicians.
“I’m unsure an airport actually says a lot about his life,” she says. “A everlasting Residence Of Steel museum can be good, so we are able to proceed to inform Ozzy’s story. However it’s additionally acquired to be about the way forward for heavy music – a bursary or basis that helps youthful musicians, these youngsters who’re plugging in and turning up their amps and making heavy music like Black Sabbath did. Or a dwell venue, as a result of small venues are actually struggling proper now. That might be a extra becoming legacy: serving to to maintain metallic alive.”
On the finish of Black Sabbath’s closing set at Again To The Starting, after Paranoid roared to its conclusion for the final time and fireworks exploded from the roof of the stadium, the remainder of Sabbath came to visit to Ozzy’s chair to alternate heat phrases and, within the case of Geezer Butler, give the singer a cake along with his personal face on it. There have been no tears or histrionics, simply 4 males who had recognized one another for practically 60 years exchanging pleasant phrases within the data that this actually can be the final time all of them shared a stage.
In fact, the day’s most emotional second had come earlier, throughout Ozzy’s solo set. Mama, I’m Coming Residence, from 1991’s No Extra Tears album, is the singer’s best ballad – a music about distance and longing, forgiveness and connection. Its lyrics could have been written by his nice pal Lemmy, however the music was pure Ozzy, and by no means extra so than when he sang it at Villa Park.
These phrases – ‘I’ve seen your face 100 instances, day-after-day we’ve been aside / And I don’t care in regards to the sunshine, yeah, ’trigger mama, mama, I’m coming house’ – had been all of a sudden forged in a unique gentle: this was Aston’s favorite son coming full circle, and sharing the second with 45,000 of his closest associates.
It regarded from the gang like Ozzy was blinking again tears as he sang. He wasn’t alone. Ozzy at all times described himself as a power people-pleaser, and the Again To The Starting gig was simply that: one final likelihood to say thanks to the followers he at all times stated he owed his profession to. It’s no exaggeration to say that the love for him that day won’t ever be matched. Ozzy could also be gone, however he went out on his personal phrases.
“It was the best approach he might say goodbye and I’m so blissful he might have that,” says Mastodon’s Brann Dailor. “It was excellent. Whether or not Ozzy had handed final night time or a yr from now, I’d have felt the identical in regards to the present. I can’t consider a greater technique to exit.”
Sharon & Ozzy Osbourne: Coming Residence airs on BBC One October 2. Ozzy: No Escape From Now premieres on Paramount+ on October 7.
