Black Sabbath: Back to the Beginning – Fragile Ozzy Osbourne casts one final dark spell

Ozzy Osbourne performed seated in a black throne adorned by a bat - ROSS HALFIN

On July 5, Ozzy Osbourne played to a packed stadium in Birmingham, in a show that was billed as a farewell to his fans. Following his death at the age of 76 we have republished Neil McCormick’s review of that final concert.

The rock Prince of Darkness has made his final exit from the stage. It was bombastic, dramatic, sentimental, joyous and a little bit tragic.

Ozzy Osbourne was there in body, in spirit, but barely in voice as a stadium full of devoted heavy metal fans sang and roared their hero out.

At 76, debilitated by Parkinson’s disease, this was Osbourne’s final farewell to a wild career. His manager-wife Sharon oversaw a spectacular, star-studded celebration of his career staged at Aston Villa’s football stadium in Birmingham, close to where the young Osbourne grew up and where he formed pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath.

Everyone wore black, but then everyone at heavy metal gigs always wears black. The 45,000-strong crowd was in celebratory form, soaking up fantastic music all day, but everything was pointed towards Ozzy’s last stand. Rumours abounded about whether he was able to stand or, more importantly, sing at all.

In the event he appeared in the final hour, seated on a black armchair decked out like a hellish throne, with a bat at the top presumably in case the star should feel peckish mid-show. All in black, with dyed long hair and kohl eyes, Osbourne looked like a wizened old wizard from a dark fantasy, summoning up demonic forces to cast a final spell.

Osbourne treated the 45,000 fans to nine songs - ROSS HALFIN

His frailty was impossible to disguise, his lips trembled, his arm movements were weak. He fiddled with what looked like a medicine tray between songs, drinking water from a plastic bottle and spraying an aerosol into his mouth. But at least he was there, and gave it whatever he has left in the box. Mostly his singing fell flat, but the quality of the musicians around him and the energy of the crowd carried him through.

“Aston Villa, it’s so good to be on this stage,” he croaked. “I’ve been laid up for like f---ing six years, and you’ve no idea how I feel.” The crowd roared their affection. It was emotional. And that emotion was the key to the whole event, and the reason why nobody cared that the star of the occasion could barely hit a true note. If Ozzy couldn’t sing any more, his fans were more than willing to take up the slack.

The massive crowd paid tribute to one of rock music’s icons - UNPIXS

Osbourne performed five songs with his solo band and four with Black Sabbath, the original lineup reunited for the first time in 20 years. On Friday night, Oasis reunited after 16 years and it was greeted with a fervour that suggested it was a pivotal moment in British pop history. But here was a band who can genuinely claim to have shaped music history, back together for one final blow out, and they absolutely made the most of it.

The combination of Geezer Butler’s nimble, gnarly bass and Tony Iommi’s distorting, warped guitar remains phenomenal. Returning drummer Bill Ward joined it all together with his thunderous and complex style, and managed to look even more scary than his frontman when the bald, wrinkly and flabby 77-year-old took his shirt off and squatted behind his kit like Jabba the Hutt. They played War Pigs, N.I.B., Iron Man and Paranoid, their biggest anthems, and the band just got harder and heavier as their frontman grew flatter and weaker.

Rock was never meant to grow old, but of course it has, and so here we are. Ozzy is not the kind of character to shuffle off quietly, so he gave it one last shot, and the result was a cracked triumph.

Ronnie Wood joined the star-studded line-up - ROSS HALFIN

The mood in the stadium was fantastic. It was packed all day long with fans keen to see everything on offer, and bands honoured to play tribute to the original heavy metal hero. We were rewarded with blistering, impactful and unusually short and direct sets from such metal monsters as Pantera, Slayer and Tool, rock giants Guns ‘N Roses, and a brutally brilliant Metallica, with everybody adding Black Sabbath covers to their sets.

Metallica lit up Villa Park - ROSS HALFIN

There were slickly rehearsed supergroup sets featuring members of Rage Against The Machine, Smashing Pumpkins, Van Halen, Judas Priest, Living Colour, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Aerosmith and a sprightly appearance by Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones, who has never knowingly missed an opportunity to whip out his slide guitar. An energetic Steve Tyler ripping through Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love with Chad Smith on drums and Tom Morello on guitar was phenomenally good fun.

And then there was Ozzy as heavy metal’s mad King Lear, raging against the inevitable end. It was sad. It was glorious. We really will not see his like again.

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