Ozzy Osbourne‘s Black Sabbath bandmate Tony Iommi reflects on his final performance with the late Prince of Darkness in a new interview with the U.K.’s ITV News.
Iommi reunited with Ozzy, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward for the massive Back to the Beginning concert on July 5, which was promoted as the final live performance by the original Sabbath lineup, as well as Ozzy’s last-ever show. Just over two weeks later, on July 22, Ozzy’s family announced that he had died at age 76.
“I think [Ozzy] must have had something in his head that said, ‘Well, this is going to be it, the last thing I’m ever gonna do,'” Iommi says of the concert, which was held in Sabbath’s hometown of Birmingham, England.
“Whether he thought he was going to die, I don’t know,” Iommi continues. “But he really wanted to do it and he was determined to do it.”
Iommi says that hearing that Ozzy had passed “was a shock for us.”
“It couldn’t sink in,” Iommi says. “I thought, ‘It can’t be.'”
Meanwhile, Lita Ford, who collaborated with Ozzy on the 1989 hit “Close My Eyes Forever,” has written an essay for Rolling Stone remembering him.
“‘Close My Eyes Forever’ is something a lot of people play at funerals,” Ford writes. “A lot of people have love for that song because it’s beautiful. In Ozzy’s name, keep rocking. Great rock stars never truly die.”
Additionally, artists are continuing to pay tribute to Ozzy during their concerts, including Judas Priest, David Lee Roth and Rod Stewart.
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