‘That is his full cease’

Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath are reuniting for one final time, to play a fund-raising live performance in Birmingham on 5 July.

The heavy metallic pioneers will headline a spectacular one-day pageant at Villa Park, that includes dozens of bands they impressed, together with Metallica, Pantera, Slayer, Gojira and Anthrax.

The live performance will mark the primary time that Black Sabbath’s unique line-up – Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Invoice Ward – have performed collectively in 20 years.

Osbourne, who has largely been compelled to cease touring on account of a mix of Parkinson’s and spinal accidents, will play a brief solo set earlier than becoming a member of his bandmates.

His spouse, Sharon, instructed BBC Information he was decided to placed on one remaining present.

“He is doing nice. He is doing actually nice,” she stated. “He is so enthusiastic about this, about being with the fellows once more and all his mates. It is thrilling for everybody.”

Nevertheless, she stated the live performance would definitively be the 76-year-old’s remaining present.

“Ozzy did not have an opportunity to say goodbye to his mates, to his followers, and he feels there is no been no full cease.

“That is his full cease.”

The live performance, dubbed Again To The Starting, was introduced at Villa Park on Wednesday by Sharon, and Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi.

Rage Towards The Machine guitarist Tom Morello, who’s serving because the occasion’s musical director, stated it might be “the best heavy metallic present ever”.

Proceeds from the present will help Remedy Parkinson’s, the Birmingham Kids’s Hospital and Acorn Kids’s Hospice, a Kids’s Hospice supported by Aston Villa.

Different acts on the line-up embody Alice In Chains, Halestorm, Lamb Of God and Mastodon.

As well as, the live performance will function a “supergroup”, with stars like Billy Corgan, Slash, Fred Durst, Wolfgang Van Halen and Tom Morello.

“It is an countless quantity of individuals,” stated Sharon Osbourne. “They are going to be performing some Sabbath songs, some Ozzy songs, and so they’ll all combine collectively.

“Totally different little teams might be approaching, however they’re all icons.”

Black Sabbath fashioned in 1968, and held their first rehearsal at Newtown Neighborhood Centre, a stone’s throw from Villa Park.

They beforehand performed a farewell present to a offered out viewers of 16,000 folks on the metropolis’s NEC Enviornment in 2017.

The set consisted primarily of songs from their early days – together with Struggle Pigs, N.I.B and Black Sabbath – earlier than ending on their breakthrough hit and signature tune, Paranoid.

The live performance got here on the finish of an in depth, 81-date world tour, and Osbourne thanked the followers for his or her help over the band’s profession.

“I’ve received to inform you one thing, what a journey we have all had,” he stated.

“We began this in 1968 and now it is 2017 – I do not consider that, man. However what? We would not survive if it wasn’t for the fan base. So when you’re a veteran fan, nice. In the event you’re new, welcome. However I am unable to inform you sufficient how grateful we’re to your help.”

Following that live performance, Osbourne launched two solo albums – Strange Man and Affected person Quantity 9. Nevertheless, he suffered a spinal damage in 2003 after a crash involving an ATV, exacerbated by a late-night fall in 2019, that required a number of rounds of in depth surgical procedure.

He revealed his Parkinson’s analysis in 2020 and largely stepped again from touring after taking part in the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Video games in 2022.

Nevertheless, he lately instructed Rolling Stone UK of his want to return to the stage.

“I am taking it at some point at a time, and if I can carry out once more, I’ll,” he stated. “However it’s been like saying farewell to the most effective relationship of my life.”

He added: “I am not going to rise up there and do a half-hearted Ozzy searching for sympathy. What is the [expletive] level in that? I am not going up there in a [expletive] wheelchair.”