“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.”

“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.”

Beyond Ozzy’s latest improbable return, there is the matter of the other support acts. Thanks to the bulging contact book of the show’s musical director Tom Morello, Back To The Beginning’s undercard boasts a smorgasbord of heaviosity so vast it would make Thor weep: there’s Metallica and Guns N’ Roses, then also Slayer, Pantera, Tool, Alice In Chains, Anthrax and more, with sundry significant others – including Sammy Hagar, Billy Corgan, Vernon Reid, and Morello himself – providing supergroup garnish throughout what promises to be a long and loud affair, with all profits going to Parkinson’s and Birmingham children’s charities. Big names are still being added – Sharon Osbourne mentions Soundgarden – and Morello promises surprises on the day. To have so many premium acts in a limited period of time will require strictly rationed set-times, with egos checked accordingly.

“I certainly hope so!” laughs Andy Copping, the Live Nation promoter tasked by the Osbournes with organising it all. Having promoted the Download festival since its inception, Copping is expert in the mechanics of big rock events. Back To The Beginning, however, has presented some very specific challenges.

“Imagine putting a three-day festival bill into one,” he says. “So it’s pretty intense, trying to fit all those bands in. But every artist we talk to is just overjoyed to be involved. This is like Live Aid and the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert rolled into one. I don’t think fans of rock and metal are going to ever see anything like this again.”

Rock and metal stars seem to agree. Following the event’s announcement in February, Copping started getting calls from artists saying they wanted in, and he had to explain there wasn’t any room. Until, that is, one of those callers was Axl Rose, having noted Slash and Duff McKagan in the ‘additional performance’ sub-section. Hence the upgrade to the full GN’R experience. “It is,” Andy Copping concedes, “the sort of headache you want. When you can turn something that was already great into something amazing.”

Almost as extraordinary as the supporting cast’s depth and calibre is the willingness of all concerned to suspend their normally well-tuned hierarchical sensitivities. It’s 20 years since Metallica conceded top billing to anyone and opened for The Rolling Stones in San Francisco – a reportedly chastening experience where they were asked to avoid looking directly at Mick Jagger as he emerged for a pre-show warm-up. Even Ozzy Osbourne himself, at his own OzzFest in 2008, played before Metallica. No such equivocation now: when it comes to the original Black Sabbath playing together for one last time, Metallica know their place.

“We’re going there to show our respect and our love,” says bassist Robert Trujillo. “They’ve earned it. These guys are humble, they didn’t grow up privileged. They really did earn every bit of their success, they’ve had the rough road and all the challenges that go with the business. There was no shortcut for them. And just to see how they’re being celebrated, it’s beautiful. I’m sure it’ll be overwhelming in a good way.”

Trujillo is well qualified to judge the emotional significance of the event, having played in the Ozzy Osbourne band for five years prior to joining Metallica in 2003. As he notes, Black Sabbath may have invented heavy metal – “I don’t think most of the bands playing this show would exist without them” – but they also transcend it. No Black Sabbath means no goth, no grunge… even hip-hop greats from Beastie Boys and Ice-T to Kanye West have sampled Sabbath. Speaking to MOJO from the Rogers Centre stadium in Toronto, where Metallica have just begun the latest leg of a two-year world tour, Trujillo mentions an encounter earlier in the day at his hotel gym. “I was working out, and there was a gentleman on the treadmill, who was blasting [Black Sabbath] Volume 4. I don’t know if the other people in the gym appreciated it much, but I thought it was pretty cool. He kind of looked like Rick Rubin. It turns out he plays in Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds! And he loves Black Sabbath! It just goes to show you the power of that band.”

The Sabbath factor has made Back To The Beginning an epochal event, thanks to the personnel specifics. Yet the participation of all four original members was far from guaranteed. Bill Ward, for instance, has been a conspicuous and contentious absentee from Sabbath activity ever since he last played with the band on October 18, 2005 at a UK Music Hall of Fame ceremony, and a subsequent 2006 appearance at the band’s induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Ward opted out of 2012’s reunion gigs and comeback album 13, and also 2016-17’s farewell tour The End, in both instances citing an “unsignable” contract, to which Ozzy Osbourne responded by querying Ward’s capability to perform for two hours each night: “Physically, you knew you were fucked,” he said on Facebook.

Towards the end of The End, however, Osbourne struck a more emollient note, telling MOJO he was “sorry” Ward wouldn’t be present for the tour’s final date at Birmingham’s NEC arena in February 2017. Either way, for Black Sabbath purists, it’s Bill Ward’s name alongside his bandmates’ that makes this a meaningful event. Those Black Sabbath purists include the bass player in Black Sabbath.

“It could only happen if the original four of us were involved, otherwise it would be pointless,” says Geezer Butler. “The whole concept was to finish back where we all started, in Aston, and it would seem false having someone who wasn’t there from the beginning. Ozzy texted me and asked if I’d be interested in ending the whole Sabbath story with the original four members back in Aston. I said I’d do it if Tony and Bill were up for it, which they were.”

Ward concurs. “This was basically something that came from Ozz – he called me and asked: ‘I’m gonna do one last time – do you want to come and play?’ There’s no finances involved in this. Those affairs during that period from 2012 onward, it wasn’t particularly nice. I missed the band terribly, I missed everything about it. That was a really difficult and very painful part of my career. But regardless of everything, they’re still my brothers. They always have been. And it’s my understanding that there’s some finality here. So, what the hell? It’s a one-off gig, at Villa Park, a very special place for me, and the rest of the guys as well.”

Ironically, the only member of Black Sabbath who rejected Ozzy’s request was the only member of Black Sabbath never to have left the band.

“To be honest, when it was first mentioned to me, I said, no, I wouldn’t do it,” says Tony Iommi. “And it went on and on. I met with Sharon and we talked about it. I was just concerned about how it’s going to be health-wise for everybody, myself included. We need to be good. We’ve got a good legacy, and I didn’t want to destroy it by everything not being right. The main thing for me is it’s for charity, and we’re getting back out with the original line-up, to finish it off properly. But yeah, I had to be convinced. Because the end of The End was the end for me, I thought that was it. But now this is the end of the end… of the end.” He laughs. “Confusing, isn’t it?” 

The first hint of a monumental happening at Villa Park came last summer, with the launch of Aston Villa’s 2024/25 home kit. The promo video opened with Osbourne and Butler on the phone – “’Ey Geezer!” “All right Ozz?” “Let’s play Villa Park!” “As long as I’m left wing” – then riffed through a quick succession of cameos from Villa stars past and present pledging loyalty to manager Unai Emery over a soundtrack of Paranoid, concluding with Geezer and Ozzy yelling “Up the Villa!”

Butler is the band’s only true football fanatic. Iommi appeared alongside Sharon at the Villa Park press launch for Back To The Beginning holding personalised Sabbath claret shirts, but professes an ecumenical stance with regard to the city’s football divide. “I’ve never been really a football fan,” he admits, “which is peculiar, because a lot of my friends were ex-football players and managers. Trevor Francis, Andy Townsend, Andy Gray… I did go to the Villa once with Andy Gray. But no, that’s Geezer’s department.”

Ozzy might be the self-styled Prince Of Darkness, but it’s Butler, Sabbath’s principal lyricist, who is the band’s philosopher king. Geezer speaks eloquently of growing up the youngest of seven in a large Irish Catholic family on Victoria Road, a 10-minute walk from Villa Park, as well as the band’s relationship with the neighbourhood where all four members grew up.

“There was a great community spirit,” he says. “Everyone was relatively poor, working-class and from diverse backgrounds, but we all helped each other out when needed. I had an extremely happy childhood, despite having no hot water, heating, bathroom, or indoor toilet in the house, and a few bombed-out buildings during the 1950s became my playground, but those things probably made me more determined to succeed at what I put my mind to. Ozzy, Tony and Bill were all just streets away from me, within walking distance, which was great since none of us had cars or bikes – or money – and we all shared the same sort of upbringing and were all determined to succeed, in spite of everyone telling us we’d never get anywhere with our band. We all had a fighting spirit, which you had to have growing up in Aston.”

Osbourne has employed a vocal coach and a live-in trainer to get him match fit for Villa Park, but it’s no trivial undertaking for his bandmates either. In 2016, Iommi, now 77, was given the all-clear following treatment for lymphoma, but subsequently had a growth removed from his throat and still has regular check-ups with his oncologist. “I had an appointment in the hospital yesterday,” he says, breezily. “I’ve also got a problem with a trapped nerve in my neck – nine months and it won’t shift. When you get to our age, things just go wrong. We’ll probably keel over after two songs!”

Illness prevented Butler from joining Iommi and Osbourne’s Birmingham Commonwealth Games finale in 2022, and the bassist is currently working hard on his flexibility. “It’s surprising how easily finger and hand cramps can set in after not playing for a while,” he says. “Out there in front of thousands of fans, I’m aware that if I mess up, the whole band will look bad.” Ward, meanwhile, is doubling down on rehearsal and fitness programmes with his drum crew, building the core strength and leg power required to drive Sabbath’s massive double bass drum attack, and getting his weight down. He sounds like a man with a point to prove.

“I’ll be 77 when we play that gig – that’s a whole other world, 77 and playing 26-inch bass drums. One could call it lunacy. But I never stopped working, especially in the past four years, I’ve been making my own albums, playing the entire time. I’ve got to be down in weight to be able to swerve and move and crash and thrash, I gotta be able to punch those bass drums. That’s what’s going to be expected of me – and I expect that of me also.” A lugubrious chuckle. “I’m expecting the soundscape to be very loud.”

In truth, with a couple of months to go, no one can say with certainty how Back To The Beginning will play out. There is circumspection around the issue of Ozzy on-stage: Iommi suggests he’ll sit in a throne, while Sharon points to the Commonwealth Games set-up when Ozzy had a metal harness that he could lean against. Then there’s the set’s duration: Ward says he was told to prepare for four or five songs, but is training for the possibility of six or more. The picture will become clearer once the four members plus their support teams convene in the UK for a week’s studio rehearsal in June, followed by a couple of days’ stage rehearsal at a Birmingham arena, followed by a stage rehearsal at Villa Park on the day before the gig. Which happens to be Ozzy and Sharon’s 43rd wedding anniversary. “A joyous time for everyone!” laughs Mrs Osbourne.

As for what songs Black Sabbath will play, that seems more straightforward, given a core of material they’re practically obliged to perform. Part of Tom Morello’s job has been to co-ordinate the support acts’ Sabbath tributes, ensuring that when the stars of the show inevitably play Paranoid it hasn’t already been rendered a dozen times throughout the day.

The one thing for sure is that, unlike The End, this really is the end. Ozzy’s said as much. “He says a lot of stuff,” laughs Bill Ward, “but the gist of it was ‘I’m gonna do one last time.’” Tony Iommi is firm: “I won’t be doing it again. This will be the final show. I mean, can you imagine us trying to tour? No, this will be it.”

Geezer Butler, however, knows that where this band is concerned, it’s safer to expect the unexpected.

“I’ve given up talking about the end of Sabbath,” he says. “Every time I think or say it’s over, things like this show come along. Someone will probably have our DNA and resurrect us in the distant future… Who knows?”

IMAGES: GETTY/ALAMY