“The greatest day in the history of heavy metal, in honor of the band that started it all.” That’s how musical director Tom Morello billed Back to the Beginning, Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath’s final-ever show. And he wasn’t kidding.
Metallica, Guns N' Roses, Slayer, Tool, Pantera, Alice In Chains and Gojira were among the acts taking part at Villa Park in the band’s hometown of Birmingham, UK.
40,000 people were in attendance, but an estimated 5.8 million tuned in via livestream (myself included) – surely making it the biggest celebration of metal music in history.
With (mostly) 15-minute sets and seven-minute turnarounds between acts, it was a breathless affair, despite being nine hours long. And it’s testament to the affection for Ozzy and Sabbath that so many big names showed up to play three songs then take a back seat.
Outside of the big bands, there was a roll call of guitar hero guests taking the lead in a series of supergroups. Jake E. Lee, Ronnie Wood, Nuno Bettencourt, Billy Corgan, Vernon Reid, Andrew Watt and Lzzy Hale all had their moment in the spotlight.
Each band tackled a classic Sabbath or Ozzy track – and you can only imagine the arguments over who played what song. Anthrax won the coin toss with Into the Void – Iommi’s Fifth Symphony – but you have to feel for Pantera and Rival Sons, who somehow both ended up covering the sludgy (and lengthy) Electric Funeral. Must have been some crossed emails.
But whatever this Rolodex of guitar royalty played, there was no mistaking the grins on their faces. This was their chance to play the riffs they grew up learning in their bedrooms in front of a stadium of fans – their opportunity to be Tony Iommi or Randy Rhoads. It was a childhood fantasy come to life.
It was also a daunting proposition. To play some of rock and metal’s most iconic tracks in front of the heroes who wrote them? And a sea of people who knew every riff, every lick, like the back of their hands? No pressure.
Every band on this bill would not sound the way they do today without Sabbath, and they each drew something different out of the originals with their own takes.
Lamb of God’s Children of the Grave was a pummeling chug fest updated for the late-Noughties metal revival. Never Say Die became a hair metal anthem at the hands of Guns N’ Roses, while Hole in the Sky sounded like something Metallica could have sneaked onto the tracklisting forLoad.
Many of the renditions leaned more into the legacy of Sabbath as metal trailblazers – upping the aggression and taming the groove. But Iommi and co were schooled in the blues, so more traditional rock outfits like Rival Sons, Guns N’ Roses (Sabbath Bloody Sabbath) and, especially, Alice in Chains (Fairies Wear Boots) were arguably most successful in their looser, more dynamic covers – and all the heavier for it.
Iommi’s influence on a spider diagram of genres is such that the lineup – while loaded with big names, albeit far from diverse – didn’t have space to tap into all the styles Sabbath spawned. You had your thrash (Slayer, Metallica, Anthrax), hard rock (Halestorm, GNR), groove metal (Pantera, Gojira), but stoner and doom weren’t represented. Some Sleep or Kyuss to break up the mid-scooped assault that dominated much of the daytime sets would have been welcome.
But Sabbath’s psychedelic side was at least represented by Tool, who lent into a bluesy Hand of God, sandwiched between an abbreviated Forty Six & 2 and Ænema. It must have been their shortest set in decades.
It was heart-warming to see Ozzy’s other right-hand axemen represented, too. Morello said he couldn’t imagine this show without Jake E. Lee, who made an emotional return after he was shot multiple times while walking his dog last year.
When you have Nuno Bettencourt bowing down before you, you know you’re in for something special, and Lee’s fluid renditions of The Ultimate Sin (with Lzzy Hale) and Shot in the Dark (with David Draiman) were a reminder that he remains an underrated player in the pantheon of Ozzy six-stringers.
Bettencourt proved, as he so often does, to be the MVP of the show’s supergroup proceedings, tackling Bark at the Moon’s acrobatic leads alongside Vernon Reid; Sweet Leaf with David Draiman; Flying High Again with Sammy Hagar; and Walk This Way/Whole Lotta Love with surprise guest Steven Tyler. Ronnie Wood even sauntered up to play a sleazy The Train Kept A-Rollin’.
Other highlights included a rendition of Judas Priest’s Breaking the Law plus Sabbath’s Snowblind with K.K. Downing and the ‘metal Yardbirds’ Tom Morello, Adam Jones and Billy Corgan (who was sadly sans guitar), plus an onscreen rendition of Mr. Crowley featuring Jack Black along with Revel Ian (son of Scott) and Roman Morello (son of Tom).
There were two moments that gave me chills. The first was when Ozzy rose up out of the floor on a none-more-black throne complete with carving of a bat/demon thing.
His voice was better than anyone could have been expecting on I Don’t Know, and his five-song set rocketed by in a blur of Zakk Wylde squealies. There was a touching tribute to fallen hero Randy Rhoads during the Crazy Train solo, where he appeared onscreen as Wylde blazed through the iconic lead.
The second goosebumps moment was hearing 40,000 people sing along to Iommi’s solo in War Pigs with equal, if not louder fervour, than Ozzy’s “Oh Lord, yeahs!” That, ladies and gentlemen, is when you know you’ve achieved guitar god status. The same can be said for Iron Man’s lumbering riff which, had it been released in a more metal-tolerant era, would have been a stadium chant long before Seven Nation Army.
Bar a brief chord fumble in the outro of War Pigs, Iommi was absolutely unimpeachable. After eight hours of hearing other guitarists take their own shots at his riffs and solos, you realize that – even with a lifetime of study and influence – it is impossible to come close.
There’s a paradoxical relaxedness about Iommi’s style. Combined with Bill Ward’s (this evening, inexplicably topless) drumming, it has a drag and swagger. Maybe it’s the effect of those prosthetic fingertips, but there’s something about the behind-the-beat timing, the calm confidence that makes Iommi’s command of the fretboard so disconcerting.
In N.I.B., he summons lightning strikes of pentatonic flurries and blood-curdling bends: he’s far from the fastest player here today, but easily the most recognizable from tone alone.
One quick blast through Paranoid – never the most representative of Sabbath’s oeuvre, but among the most fun – and it’s over. We’re unlikely to see Ozzy onstage again, but his voice will echo through the ages.
Iommi hasn’t hung up his SGs just yet, though. He’s still on fine form – and there remains the tantalizing prospect of a new solo album (and collaborative record with his old mate Brian May).
But should he decide to call it a day, he can be left in no doubt that he changed the course of music history – and, as Back to the Beginning showed, every band with even the mildest heavy leanings owes him a debt of gratitude.
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