Being in the crowd for Ozzy Osbourne’s Back To The Beginning show, I felt incredibly privileged to watch his final performance.
Like the 42,000 fans who packed Villa Park in Birmingham to see his Black Sabbath reunion on 5 July, I knew this was a goodbye – but had no idea the farewell would come so soon.
Osbourne sang from a throne, encrusted with skulls, of course.
But despite the seated performance, his voice carried across Villa Park and he was more than capable of giving the crowd a few flickers of the Prince of Darkness – rising up on to the stage as the ominous O Fortuna soundtracked a montage of footage from his career.
“Let the madness begin!” he cried as he started the show. Singing fan favourites including Mr Crowley and Crazy Train, and Iron Man and Paranoid with Black Sabbath, he conducted the crowd to sing “louder, louder”, and “go f****** crazy”.
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On stage earlier on, there were performances throughout the day from the likes of Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Slayer, Yungblud and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler.
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“Without Sabbath, there would be no Metallica,” frontman James Hetfield put it simply during their performance. It was a sentiment echoed by many other artists on stage.
In the crowd, the love and gratitude was also palpable.
Ben Sutton, 24, from Chester, told us beforehand: “I feel like it’s important – we’re of the younger generation – for us to see some of the heritage and history of the genre we love, metal in general. It’s such an honour to say goodbye to him.”
Steve Townson, from Lincolnshire, said: “I saw him the first time round and the fact that he’s still going is incredible, isn’t it? I was there at the start, I’m happy to be here at the end.”
But perhaps Anthrax’s Scott Ian summed it up best. “We’re not here to say goodbye. We’re just here to say thank you.”
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It’s the kind of show that for many others might well have been organised with the bands he loved following his death.
But Ozzy’s determination to perform one final time, despite his health problems – and with his wife Sharon behind him every step of the way, making sure it happened – meant he got to star and conduct his own tribute.
A truly heavy metal farewell.
