The two musicians remained close despite living far apart. Osbourne was based in California, while Iommi lived in England, but they still spoke ” every week or every two weeks “. Their conversations often centred on their respective health problems, with the humour that had long characterised their relationship.
“I’m really tired”
Iommi recalled their last exchange in detail: “I spoke to him the day before he died, which was really strange, because he said to me, ‘I’m really tired.’” The guitarist replied that he was still feeling the effects of the previous weeks too.
“I said, ‘Yeah, I’m tired too. It’s the knock-on from all that.’ And then, of course, I found out the next day that he had gone. That was a hell of a shock.”
Ozzy Osbourne died on 22 July 2025 at the age of 76, just 17 days after Back to the Beginning, the huge concert held at Villa Park in their hometown of Birmingham. That evening marked both Ozzy’s farewell to the stage and the final reunion of Black Sabbath’s original line-up: Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward.
Tony Iommi was deeply moved when he saw Ozzy again
The rehearsals for Back to the Beginning had already come as a shock to Tony Iommi. Before that, he had not seen Ozzy in person since their joint appearance at the closing ceremony of the Birmingham Commonwealth Games in August 2022.
When he met his former singer again nearly three years later, Iommi was startled by his physical condition. “Ozzy had talked to me about his problems, but seeing him for real… We were shocked to see him being carried like that. It was quite sad.”
Diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and weakened by several operations, Ozzy was no longer able to move around the stage as he once had. For his final concert, he sang seated on a throne. It was a difficult image for Iommi to accept, after decades of seeing his bandmate run from one side of the stage to the other.
Iommi thought two sets were too much
At Back to the Beginning, Ozzy first performed several songs from his solo career before joining Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward for the final Black Sabbath set. Tony Iommi now says he had tried to persuade him to choose between the two.
“I had said to him: ‘I don’t think you should do two sets. You should do one or the other, because I think it’s too much.’” The guitarist was concerned that Ozzy would exhaust his voice and energy before the Sabbath reunion. The programme had already been set, however, and the singer insisted on doing both performances.
One last concert Iommi was not sure he wanted to do
Tony Iommi admits he was not immediately convinced by the idea of reforming Black Sabbath once again. The band had already presented the The End tour, which finished in 2017, as its real farewell. He did not want to give the impression of erasing that ending by returning one more time.
The charity element of the project eventually persuaded him. Back to the Beginning brought together, alongside Black Sabbath and Ozzy, a long list of bands and musicians, including Metallica, Slayer, Pantera, Guns N’ Roses and Gojira, with Tom Morello as musical director.
Looking back, Iommi clearly has no regrets about agreeing to take part: “I’m glad we did it, because we had the opportunity, all four of us, to finish where we started.” After the concert, he spoke to Ozzy again, and Osbourne told him how happy he was to have made it through the night.
That final conversation, a few days later, left Iommi with another image: an exhausted Ozzy, but one with whom he was still speaking as he had for years. More than a year after his death, the guitarist says it is still hard to take in his absence. When old footage appears at random on YouTube, he says, he still sometimes feels as though Ozzy is there.