“Look at all this love for heavy metal.”
James Hetfield, the guitarist and lead vocalist for Metallica, gazed out at the crowd at Villa Park, a football stadium in Birmingham, England, on Saturday. His band was the last of a slew of headliner-caliber metal acts and seasoned pros in and around the genre to perform ahead of the night’s honoree and hometown hero: Ozzy Osbourne.
The gathering, a daylong festival called Back to the Beginning, was designed as both a tribute and a farewell. Osbourne, who has stepped back from live performance amid health issues including Parkinson’s disease and emphysema, played solo for the first time in nearly seven years and then, for the first time since 2005, reunited with all three other original members of his pathbreaking 1970s band Black Sabbath — the guitarist Tony Iommi; the bassist Terence Butler, known as Geezer; and the drummer Bill Ward — for a four-song set.
Both performances were billed as career finales at the event, which was organized by Osbourne’s wife, Sharon, along with the Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, and streamed worldwide with a two-hour delay.
“Metallica is so grateful to be invited here to see all your beautiful faces and celebrate the band Black Sabbath, because without Sabbath there would be no Metallica,” Hetfield continued. “Thank you, boys, for giving us a purpose in life; thank you, Black Sabbath.”
Gratitude was a theme throughout the concert, where artists didn’t simply cite Black Sabbath for inspiring them musically, but often credited the group with fostering an entire global subculture.
“I’ve got to tell you how beautiful this is, because no matter what kind of madness and division is going on outside these walls, in here, it’s really simple,” the Alice in Chains singer William DuVall told the crowd. “We’re all just a bunch of headbanging, riff-loving freaks.”
In the spirit of the Osbournes’ prior Ozzfest tours, the lineup exemplified the polyglot community that metal has become, and illustrated a sort of living family tree of the genre, with Sabbath as the root. Acts representing ’80s thrash metal (Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax), ’90s grunge and alternative rock (Alice in Chains, Tool, Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan) and the harsher extremes of 21st-century heaviness (Mastodon, Lamb of God, Gojira) all presented their distinctive sonic flavors.
There were also a handful of Sabbath contemporaries (Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, the former Van Halen singer Sammy Hagar, the Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood), and between sets, the stream featured warm tributes from famous fans including Dolly Parton, Cyndi Lauper and Elton John. The actor Jason Momoa, a proud and vocal metal fan, served as host, offering brief, enthusiastic band introductions and merrily hopping into the mosh pit during Pantera’s set.
Each performer covered at least one Sabbath or Osbourne solo song alongside their originals, and, in several all-star interludes, teamed up to interpret additional classics. A motley grouping like the one that featured Morello, Corgan, the Tool members Adam Jones and Danny Carey, the Judas Priest guitarist K.K. Downing and the early ’80s Osbourne bassist Rudy Sarzo illustrated the breadth of Osbourne and Sabbath’s influence.
If the show played like a mixtape of some of metal and hard rock’s greatest riffs — Metallica’s “Master of Puppets,” Slayer’s “Angel of Death,” Pantera’s “Walk,” Guns N’ Roses’ “Paradise City,” Mastodon’s “Blood and Thunder” and Tool’s “Forty Six & 2” — none felt as monumental as those from Sabbath’s own catalog. The awe and joy in reproducing them was evident in the expressions of metal lifers such as Scott Ian, the Anthrax guitarist, whose band covered the spiraling, menacing “Into the Void,” and Phil Anselmo, the Pantera frontman, who sang the night’s second cover of the eerily psychedelic “Electric Funeral.”
Sabbath’s own grand finale was a reminder that, for as much respect as the group is routinely shown, no subsequent metal band has been able to reproduce the viscous grooves honed in the late ’60s and early ’70s by Iommi, Butler and Ward, players as steeped in blues, jazz and R&B as the then-nascent hard-rock movement. After a promised reunion with Ward in 2011 splintered, Sabbath recorded and toured with other drummers, making Saturday’s show a highly anticipated return that delivered on its promise.
The band opened a bit tentatively with “War Pigs,” then locked in for “N.I.B.” and “Iron Man,” as well as the closer “Paranoid,” modeling the artfully languid feel and improvisational intrigue that have made it a gold standard for aficionados of vintage heaviness. Like Osbourne did at last year’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction, he performed seated on an ornate black throne adorned with skulls and a batwing design. He took palpable delight in both his bandmates’ performances and the enthusiasm of the crowd.
Speaking to the audience before “Paranoid,” Osbourne hit his own note of deep gratitude. “Unfortunately, we’ve come to our final song … ever,” he said with a pause, sounding slightly forlorn. “I just want to say to you on behalf of the guys in Black Sabbath and myself, your support over the years has made it all possible for us to live the lifestyle that we do. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I love you; we love you.”
His solo set just before Black Sabbath’s, which spotlighted songs from “Blizzard of Ozz,” his classic 1980 debut under his own name, provided the night’s emotional peak. Backed by a cast of his longtime supporting musicians, Osbourne delivered both impressive vocals and a prolonged exchange of energy and affection between performer and audience. What he lacked in mobility, he made up for in expressions and gestures: widening his eyes, grinning fiendishly, clenching his fists, and clapping and waving his hands.
“I love you all,” he said repeatedly during and between the songs. During an early break, he told the crowd, “It’s so good to be on this [expletive] stage; you have no idea.”
During “Mama, I’m Coming Home,” his wrenching power ballad from 1991, he appeared on the verge of tears, a state mirrored in the faces of many audience members seen on the stream. And during “Crazy Train,” his signature solo hit — backed by poignant footage of the guitarist Randy Rhoads, one of the song’s writers, who died in 1982 at age 25 — he told the crowd that it was their “last chance to go [expletive] crazy.”
Osbourne put everything he had into the opening shout of “All aboard!” summoning once more the signature maniacal energy that has, for decades, made him such a grateful, good-humored artist worthy of his Prince of Darkness title.
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