On August 8, 2022, Ozzy Osbourne took to the stage at the Commonwealth Games in his hometown of Birmingham, England for what would prove to be one of his final ever performances. Flanked by his old Black Sabbath comrade Tony Iommi, the Prince Of Darkness headlined the Games' closing ceremony at the Alexander Stadium, belting out two Black Sabbath classics in Paranoid and Iron Man. It was Ozzy's first show in almost four years following a series of health complications.
In his recently published memoir Last Rites, Ozzy looked back at that show with fondness, noting the power he still felt from performing Iron Man live and adding that a certain other rock legend had a particularly emotional reaction to watching the show.
"That first note of Iron Man gets me every time, man," Ozzy wrote. "You feel it in your bowels. Your teeth. Your bones. It’s like the gates of hell grinding open. Like the groan of the Heinkel bombers as they dipped below the clouds to try take out the Castle Bromwich Spitfire factory, night after night. Like the thunder of the heavy machinery our fathers used to operate. And their fathers before them.
"I’m looking out over Perry Barr… over Aston," he added. "Over the place I grew up, sixty, seventy years ago. Over a crowd that seems to stretch halfway to Wolverhampton. We’re live on BBC One. Prince Charles is here. All I can think is, what an honour. What a life. What were the chances it would turn out like this?"
Ozzy also confirmed that his wife and manager Sharon Osbourne had revealed to him soon after the set that Queen guitarist Brian May had got a little teary watching him and Tony perform.
"Later, as we were getting into the limo-van that was taking us to the airport, Sharon told me Brian May of Queen had posted on Instagram that he was in tears watching the performance," he revealed. "I’d shed a few tears myself as all those fireworks went off. Tony probably had too, but he was wearing his shades, so you couldn’t tell. It was totally, utterly overwhelming.
"There are no words that could do any justice to what it felt like being up there. I was home. I’d made it. All the shit I’d been through in the last few years… it just melted away. I just wished we’d done more songs. We were on such a roll up there, we could have done half a set."
After the Commonwealth Games, Ozzy Osbourne would perform two more concerts: another two-song set the following month at an NFL kickoff show at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, and the epic Back To The Beginning show at Villa Park in July this year, playing both solo material and a final send-off with the four original members of Black Sabbath.
Incredibly, Ozzy would pass away just over two weeks later at the age of 76, closing the final chapter on over 50 years in rock 'n' roll.
You can read more from Ozzy's book Last Rites in an exclusive extract in the latest issue of Metal Hammer, which is on sale now. Last Rites is out now via Grand Central Publishing.
