Back to the Beginning – Brendan’s Thoughts on Ozzy and Black Sabbath’s Farewell
As anyone within the rock and metal world knows, Ozzy and Black Sabbath bid us farewell at Villa Park on the 5th July 2025 in Birmingham titled Back to the Beginning. A star studded (in our community) one day festival of celebration, gratitude and goodbyes to honour, and celebrate the decades of music and influence Black Sabbath and Ozzy had on our little niche in this testing world.
I should start off by saying that I wasn’t there. A combination of ticket prices and other commitments meant it was never really on the cards, but I did watch the live stream and fully immerse myself in what I found to be a tasteful and classy demonstration of the best of rock and metal. Not just from a music perspective, but also from the bits in-between. The ads on the stream during changeovers focused in on hospitals and local establishments in Birmingham were a nice touch, as were many of the video messages and the often cringy, but who cares, fan videos.
Seeing the wide range of people, from different nationalities, genders, races and religions tearfully displaying their love for Black Sabbath and Ozzy, really helped you understand quite how global this band’s reach truly was. That was inspiring alone.
Musically, there was a lot to love and enjoy. From Mastodon, to Pantera, to Metallica, Lamb of God, Slayer, Tool and the super group stuff, it felt fitting and special. I’m not reviewing the event here, just wanted to put down some thoughts so here are my highlights from a musical perspective.
Lamb of God were brilliant with Randy Blythe absolutely energising everyone, whether you were there or were at home. Gojira really upped the heaviness sounding immense and I loved that they had Marina Viotti with them for Mea culpa (Ah! Ça ira!). Pantera sounded great and their cover of Planet Caravan was immense. I really liked YungBlud’s cover of Changes which packed a lot of emotion – they guy can sing. Of course Metallica sounded immense – they always do. Supergroup wise, I mean what’s not to like – it’s all pretty cool. David Draiman aside who can certainly sing, but has questionable morals might be the only “I’m not sure how I am meant to feel about this” moment but everything else was fun. From Travis Barker on drums, to all the amazing guitarwork of Nuno Bettencourt to Steven Tyler to Lzzy Hale, all sounding phenomenal.
Of course the legends is where a lot of the love lies so the perfect performances of the likes of Jake E. Lee, K.K. Downing, Sammy Hagar – what a celebration it is.
From a video perspective, the Jack Black version of Mr Crowley was awesome and had a School of Rock vibe, what with him singing alongside some of the kids of their famed parents like Tom Morello’s son, on guitar. I even liked Fred Durst’s rendition of Changes, at least a bit.
Away from highlights and more for medium lights, I have never been a huge fan of Tool or Alice in Chains but they both perform really well. Guns’ N’ Roses are okay – Axl sounds terrible, at times, but not all the time and certainly has his energy back with a lot of movement and running around. Perhaps he should stand still, and he wont be so out of breath for the singing? They weren’t terrible though and I’m sure, with a few beers in me I would have been jumping around and singing along to Welcome to the Jungle.
I enjoyed seeing the video messages and the wide spectrum of reach Ozzy and Black Sabbath had too here at Back to the Beginning. Messages from Elton John to Cyndi Lauper to Dolly Parton to Jonathan Davis to Judas Priest to Ricky Gervais. I mean the reach is mad. The influence, unbelievable. There was another “but he’s a bad person” moment of course with Marilyn Manson also leaving a video message but to be fair, he has every right to if Ozzy and he had a relationship.
Before I get on to the main point and purpose of Back to the Beginning and my ramblings here, let me just point out that the stream itself wasn’t ideal. It was reasonably stable aside from some drops in audio which were usually fixed very quickly. What I didn’t like though was the changeovers in bands being cut for ads. I get those ads were probably on screens there too, and they were poignant and powerful with the children’s hospice one really getting me emotional, but from what I read, other things were happening, like Sid from Slipknot DJing between sets. I would have liked to see that too, and just had a constant stream from the event. The biggest negative with the stream was the quick cut off after the event, when Black Sabbath ended.
The stream did not show things like Geezer bringing out the cake for Ozzy. It just went off.
So, to Ozzy Osbourne and the end of his solo career live. I have seen a lot of comments about his voice and vocals, and I think people are mental. Taking into account everything his frame has going against it, I thought he sounded fantastic. I actually thought he sounded better here than in some performances from a few years back. It was sad, and scary to watch his eyes twinkle like he was a younger man stuck in a broken body but I also thought it was the most touching and emotional way to close a curtain. Kudos also to Zakk Wylde who was awesome alongside him but I will forever be marked by the emotional rendition of Mama I’m Coming Home. I watch videos back of that now and never fail to cry.
Mr Crowley sounded perfect, Crazy Train was great and while Ozzy expects a lot from people – damn Ozzy, our arms can only be raised so many times before they get tired – it was inspirational to see the great man look like he was exactly where he wanted to be.
Black Sabbath with Ozzy, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward together for the first time in 20 years. Man, where do I start. How perfect was this? Tony Iommi doesn’t age and still plays that guitar like the master here is. Geezer was fired up, Bill Ward giving it his all on the drums. You felt transported back in time, Back to the Beginning. N.I.B, War Pigs, Iron Man and Paranoid are the final songs we will ever here from Black Sabbath live and while I’m sure we all have other tracks we would have loved to hear, you can’t argue that these are probably the biggest hits of their career overall.
They also seem well selected to highlight each band members strength with War Pigs allowing Bill Ward to shine, N.I.B having a big Geezer Butler bass intro and Iron Man really showcasing the talent and riff mastery of Mr Iommi. As Ozzy shouts, just before the start of the final track “Go fucking crazy this is the last one!”, it starts to feel real. This is the last one.
Ozzy said, multiple times, “thank you, from the bottom of my heart, thank you” and this celebration, the feeling inside watching this or, I imagine, being there can only be the exact same in return. To Ozzy, and Black Sabbath – Thank you!
So that’s all the love and admiration out of the way. Here are a couple of “fuck yous” to go with them!
Fuck the mainstream media who barely registered the fact this event was going on, at least anywhere I saw. Local media was a bit better, but this event is huge culturally, and raised a ton of money for UK Hospitals, Hospices and Charities so when I saw the BBC cover Oasis for about 3 minutes, then just mention the fact that an event was happening in Birmingham where Black Sabbath were ending in a sentence, before going back to Oasis. So once again, as we seem to have to say constantly these days, Fuck You, BBC.
Finally, to the toxic social media warriors, sharing memes around the idea that Ozzy was forced to do this by Sharon. To the social media warriors finding moments where Ozzy doesn’t sound his best and sharing them. To the commenters who feel the need to post things like “never liked them anyway” or “Ozzy who?” show some respect. This is a band of icons, of legends who didn’t just influence our rock and metal scene. They created it.
So, one final time, negativity moments now put away, I thought the whole Back to the Beginning event was tasteful, fitting and the right way to honour and thank a band, and a man, who changed the world forever. Thank you Black Sabbath and thank you Ozzy.
