Tony Iommi has been talking about his own experience at last year’s Back To The Beginning show and how shocked he was at the severity of Ozzy Osbourne’s condition.
Speaking to Guitar World, the guitarist said he found the gig “difficult”. Indeed he was reluctant when the idea was first floated: “Initially, when it was mentioned to me, I said no, because we’d done The End Tour (from 2016 to 17) and I didn’t want to be like, ‘Here we are again, another tour.’”
“But when it was mentioned about it being for charity, then yes, I was into it. Still, I thought, ‘What’s it going to be like? We haven’t played with Bill (Ward) for years.’”
Iommi hadn’t seen Ozzy since they had played together at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games Closing Ceremony in 2022. “When he came over, and we met for rehearsals, we were floored, because he was carried in, basically. I couldn't believe how he’d deteriorated.”
The guitarist even offered to go through the whole set instrumentally. “We were all in shock, really,” he remembers. “He sat there, and I said to him, ‘You know, you don’t have to sing, we’ll just run through it instrumentally,’ but he said ‘No, I’ll have a go’ and he’d sing for a bit.”
“And then we’d finish for the day and I said, ‘Don’t bother to come in tomorrow, we’ll just run over the songs instrumentally with Bill.’ He said, ‘All right,’ and then he might turn up the next day – or not.”
Of course, in the end Ozzy was able to perform, albeit sat in a throne. Iommi was at the back, and so wasn’t able to see much of the singer. “It was very difficult, because I was so used to Ozzy jumping around and running up to me and grabbing me,” he remembers. “It was just a terribly different thing altogether, and it was very hard to do it.”
“But, you know, I’m glad we did it, because it was the original band and we won’t be doing it again. I’m really glad we did it for Ozzy and for the fans.”
Iommi was speaking ahead of the concert film of Back To The Beginning, which hits cinemas on 28 October.
