The BLACK SABBATH story will end definitively on July 5, when the band conclude 57 years of sui generis heaviosity and tragi-comic conflict at an epochal mega-gig at Villa Park. Or will it? With less than a month to go, it's still unclear quite how these gallant yet frail septuagenarians make it to the stage... or off it. "We'll probably keel over after two songs!"

they tell KEITH CAMERON.

Heroes and Villains: Black Sabbath (from left) Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Bill Ward, 1972.

Portrait by KEVIN GOFF.

THE LAST TIME BILL WARD WENT THROUGH THE GATES AT VILLA Park he was 15, and The Beatles were at Number 1. He doesn’t recall much about the football match, apart from local hero Mike Tindall playing at wing-half for Aston Villa. But Ward does remember the half-time entertainment.

“I was at the Witton End, and it was so fucking cold that night we got some Oxo to stay warm,” he says. “Then, they played She Loves You. And I thought, Man, The Beatles sound so good through those loudspeakers…”

Hearing The Beatles’ landmark hit record crackle through the wintry chill of an old football stadium in Birmingham changed Bill Ward’s life. That same year, 1963, he began playing drums in rock’n’roll bands with his guitarist friend Tony Iommi. In 1968, the pair hooked up with fellow Astonians Terence ‘Geezer’ Butler and John ‘Ozzy’ Osbourne to form Earth. Soon renamed Black Sabbath, within 10 years Butler, Iommi, Osbourne and Ward reconfigured rock’s DNA, turning the raw heavy metal ambience of industrial Birmingham into a new music, and tearing themselves apart in the process. This summer, after 20 years sundered, those same four sons of Aston will play together on-stage once again. This time – and, all agree, for the final time – it will be the sounds of Black Sabbath blasting out of loudspeakers at Villa Park.

“We all lived around that Villa ground,” says Ward. “On match days, I used to mind cars on Grosvenor Road, where I was born. ‘Mind your car, mister?’ What we were really saying was, ‘I’ll scratch your fucking car if you don’t give us sixpence.’ You had to learn blackmail at six years old! But I feel blessed to have that place in my life. Even though I live in California now, I’m still an Astonian, we all are. So it’s just nice to be going back home – back where we were born.”

Kevin Goff

DUBBED ‘BACK TO THE BEGINNING’, THIS FINAL BLACK SABBATH show is remarkable for a number of reasons. Most obviously, that Ozzy Osbourne is able to take part. Now 76, the singer’s last full concert performance was the December 31, 2018 OzzFest in Los Angeles. The following February he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease after a fall at his home, which exacerbated neck vertebrae injuries sustained in a 2003 quad bike accident and led to a succession of surgical procedures. In February 2023, after several cancellations of the European leg of his farewell No More Tours II go-round, he announced his retirement from touring, and subsequently withdrew from the Power Trip festival in California, suggesting that even one-off shows were beyond him. Yet on July 5, not only will Osbourne perform with Black Sabbath at Villa Park, he’s also billed as the main support act.

“Magic!” smiles Sharon Osbourne, Ozzy’s wife and manager, when MOJO enquires how this can be possible. “No, he’s working. He’s working with his team of people that are getting him up and moving around, working on his breathing, doing weights to build muscle… Ozzy’s had five back surgeries in six years, it’s hugely debilitating. So this is not something he undertook lightly. But he kept saying: ‘My one regret is I can’t say goodbye and thank you for the life I’ve been given’. And I thought, Well, why don’t we just do one big show and you can thank everybody? So we’ve been working on it for nearly two years. You know, Birmingham has given Ozzy so much, he’s so proud of where he was born. He’s working his little old arse off to get there.”