The story of Black Sabbath

Four kids from Aston

Black Sabbath's story begins in Aston, a working class district of Birmingham still scarred by wartime bombs. Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward all grew up within a few streets of each other, a stone's throw from Villa Park. Ozzy, born John Michael Osbourne on the third of December 1948, was one of six children in a two bedroom house on Lodge Road. He struggled with dyslexia, later said he was sexually abused by bullies at eleven, and left school at fifteen for jobs that ranged from tuning car horns to working in a slaughterhouse. At seventeen he was convicted of burglary, and because his father refused to pay the fine, he spent about six weeks in Winson Green Prison.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Tony Iommi, the only child of Italian immigrants who ran a shop in Aston, nearly never played at all. At seventeen, on his last shift at a sheet metal factory before turning professional, a machine sliced off the tips of the middle and ring fingers of his right hand. Because he played left handed, that was his fretting hand, and doctors told him to give up. Then his foreman played him a record by Django Reinhardt, the jazz guitarist who played with two working fingers after a fire. Inspired, Iommi melted down a washing up liquid bottle, shaped two thimbles with a soldering iron and covered them with leather from an old jacket. Unable to play conventional chords, he found a heavier, simpler way to make a big sound.[1] [2] [3]

In 1967 Geezer Butler formed a band called Rare Breed with Ozzy singing, but it lasted only a couple of shows. Ozzy then put a card in a Birmingham music shop that read Ozzy Zig needs gig, has own PA. Tony Iommi and Bill Ward, whose band Mythology had just collapsed after a police drugs raid, went round to the address. When Ozzy's mum called John to the door, Tony recognised him as a pest from Birchfield Road school and told Bill to forget it. A few days later Ozzy and Geezer turned up at the Iommi family shop looking for a drummer, and Bill said he would not join anything without Tony. In 1968 they became a six piece called the Polka Tulk Blues Band, complete with a slide guitarist and a saxophonist.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The six piece soon slimmed down to four and renamed itself Earth. Local promoter Jim Simpson let them play his club, Henry's Blueshouse at the Crown in Birmingham, liked what he heard and became their manager. In late 1968 Iommi briefly left to join Jethro Tull, even appearing with them on the Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus, but he disliked having a leader in the band and came back within weeks. Then came a practical problem. Promoters kept confusing them with another English band called Earth. Across the road from their rehearsal room, a cinema was showing the 1963 Boris Karloff horror film Black Sabbath. Watching the queues, the band wondered why people paid money to be frightened, and why nobody made frightening music.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The answer was a song. Geezer, raised a devout Catholic but fascinated by the occult, had painted his flat black and filled it with inverted crosses. He said that after reading an old book on magic that Ozzy had given him, he woke to see a dark figure standing at the foot of his bed, and the book had vanished. Ozzy turned the experience into lyrics. Musically, Geezer had been playing a fragment of Mars, the Bringer of War from Holst's The Planets, and Iommi answered with a slow, crushing riff built on the tritone, the interval long nicknamed the devil in music. The song was called Black Sabbath, and in August 1969 the band took the same name. The plan was to be the musical equivalent of a horror film.[1] [2] [3]

The birth of heavy metal

The first gig as Black Sabbath came on the thirtieth of August 1969 in Workington, in the far north west of England. That autumn the band sharpened their act at the Beat Club in Zurich, where they had to fill seven forty five minute sets a day for six weeks. With only a handful of songs, they stretched them into long jams, and much of their second album grew out of those improvisations, including War Pigs. Bill Ward's drum solo Rat Salad was born the same way, simply to fill the time. In November 1969 they recorded a session for John Peel's Top Gear on BBC Radio 1, their first exposure to a national audience, and signed with Philips, whose new progressive label Vertigo would release their records.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The debut album was made at astonishing speed. After cutting the single Evil Woman at Trident Studios, the band recorded almost everything else at Regent Sound in London on the seventeenth of November 1969, in a single twelve hour session, essentially playing their live set with Ozzy singing in a separate booth. Ozzy later said they were in the pub in time for last orders. Black Sabbath came out on Friday the thirteenth of February 1970. The cover showed a cloaked woman by Mapledurham Watermill on the Thames, photographed at dawn with a smoke machine. Critics were brutal. Lester Bangs in Rolling Stone dismissed it as a poor copy of Cream. Yet the record reached number eight in Britain and stayed on the American chart for over a year.[1] [2]

The dark image brought trouble the band had not bargained for. The inner sleeve of the first album carried an inverted cross with a poem written by the photographer's assistant, and suddenly occultists were turning up at their shows. According to later liner notes, the record was launched in America with a party presided over by Anton LaVey of the Church of Satan, without the band's knowledge. The irony was that Geezer, the main lyricist, had been raised Catholic and said his scare with the dark figure had put him off the occult for good. On the next albums he wrote After Forever, a song openly about Christian faith, and he described N.I.B. as the devil falling in love and becoming a better person.[1] [2] [3]

Just four months after the debut, in June 1970, the band were back in London with producer Rodger Bain. Short of material, Iommi came up with a riff, Geezer wrote the lyrics as fast as he could, and the song Paranoid was written in a matter of minutes. It was meant as a three minute filler. Instead it reached number four on the UK singles chart and remains the band's only British top ten hit. The album itself was supposed to be called War Pigs, after Geezer's attack on the powerful who send the poor off to die, a song that began life as Walpurgis. The label renamed the album Paranoid, but the cover, a man in a helmet brandishing a sword, had already been shot with the old title in mind.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Paranoid went to number one in Britain and, released in America in early 1971, eventually sold four million copies there with almost no radio support. It carried the songs that defined the band. Iron Man tells a science fiction story of a man turned to steel who takes revenge on the world that mocked him. Geezer insists it had nothing to do with the Marvel superhero, since his parents never let him read American comics. Hand of Doom was about soldiers coming home from Vietnam hooked on heroin, something the band had seen playing American army bases in Europe. Their first American show was at a New York club called Ungano's, and four lads from Aston were suddenly international stars.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The golden years, 1971 to 1975

Success brought money, and money brought drugs. For the third album, recorded in London in early 1971, the band got more studio time and, by their own account, a briefcase full of cash for drugs, and Ward remembered cocaine, uppers and downers joining the cannabis. Master of Reality opens with Sweet Leaf, a love song to marijuana that begins with a tape of Iommi coughing after Ozzy handed him an enormous joint. More importantly, Iommi tuned his guitar down to ease the strain on his damaged fingers, and Geezer tuned his bass to match. On Children of the Grave and Into the Void the result was a thicker, slower, heavier sound that later bands would build entire genres on. Master of Reality went top ten in both Britain and America.[1] [2] [3]

In 1972 the band moved to Los Angeles to record at the Record Plant, renting a mansion in Bel Air. Cocaine was reportedly delivered to the studio in speaker boxes. It was a wild time and a creative one. Iommi taught himself piano for the ballad Changes, and after staying up all night to watch the sunrise at Laguna Beach he wrote the instrumental Laguna Sunrise. The pranks got dangerous. Iommi says the others once covered a passed out Bill Ward in gold spray paint, and the drummer had a seizure and needed an ambulance. The album was meant to be called Snowblind, after a song about cocaine. The label balked, so it became Black Sabbath Vol. 4, a title Ward called stupid, since there had never been volumes one to three.[1] [2] [3]

By 1973 the pressure was showing. Back in Los Angeles, Iommi hit a wall of writer's block, and the room they had used at the Record Plant had been taken over by a giant synthesiser left by Stevie Wonder. The band retreated to England and rented Clearwell Castle in the Forest of Dean. They rehearsed in the dungeon, swore they saw a cloaked ghost in a corridor, and there Iommi found the riff for Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. The album, released in November 1973, added synthesisers, strings and the Yes keyboard player Rick Wakeman, who refused a fee and was paid in beer. For the first time, the critics loved them. Rolling Stone called it an extraordinarily gripping affair.[1] [2]

In April 1974 Black Sabbath played the California Jam festival to more than two hundred thousand people, alongside Deep Purple and the Eagles, with parts of the show broadcast on American television. Behind the scenes, though, they felt broke. Despite millions of records sold, they believed their manager Patrick Meehan had left them with little to show for it. They split from him and signed with the notorious Don Arden, which triggered years of litigation. Ozzy was even handed a subpoena on stage. The sixth album, Sabotage, was made between court dates and writs, and its closing song, The Writ, is Ozzy's furious attack on the people who had exploited them. Rolling Stone thought it might be their best record ever.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Sabotage cover became a joke in its own right. The band thought they were attending a test photo shoot, so they turned up in whatever they happened to be wearing. Ozzy wore a kimono, and Ward, lacking clean jeans, wore his wife's red tights with Ozzy's underpants underneath. The designers promised to fix it later, but the test image ended up on the sleeve. The tour that followed was cut short in November 1975 after Ozzy injured his back in a motorcycle accident. That December the label released a greatest hits set, We Sold Our Soul for Rock 'n' Roll, without the band's input. It went on to sell two million copies in America.[1] [2] [3]

Coming apart, 1976 to 1979

By 1976 the original lineup was wearing thin. They recorded Technical Ecstasy at Criteria Studios in Miami, adding keyboards and brighter rock songs. Ozzy admitted he was losing interest, and by the time the album was finished he had checked himself into a psychiatric hospital in Stafford. Bill Ward sang lead for the first time on the ballad It's Alright, which Guns N' Roses would later cover. In 1977 the paranoia turned inward. Ward went to Geezer's house and told him he had been fired. Geezer was relieved and enjoyed two peaceful weeks at home, until Ward rang to ask why he was missing rehearsal. Nobody ever explained, and Geezer said a little bit of him died that day.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In late 1977 Ozzy walked out of rehearsals and did not come back. The band called an old friend, Dave Walker, formerly of Savoy Brown and Fleetwood Mac, who flew in from California. In January 1978 Walker's only public performance with Sabbath went out on a BBC Midlands television show called Look! Hear!, including an early version of Junior's Eyes. Walker wrote pages of lyrics, but when he met Ozzy in a pub he sensed the old singer was having second thoughts. He was right. Ozzy rejoined days before recording began and refused to sing anything written with Walker. Ozzy's father had recently died, and Junior's Eyes survived with new lyrics shaped by that loss.[1] [2] [3]

The sessions for Never Say Die! were grim. The band spent about five months in Toronto, chosen partly for tax reasons, rehearsing in a freezing cinema and recording at night, often too stoned to play. Iommi compared the process to a conveyor belt, with no time to reflect. The album came out in September 1978 and still gave them two British hits, Never Say Die and Hard Road, plus a return to Top of the Pops. On their tenth anniversary tour the support act was a young Van Halen, touring the world for the first time, and reviewers said the headliners looked tired beside them. Ozzy's last show with the band for years came in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on the eleventh of December 1978.[1] [2]

In 1979 the band rented another house in Bel Air to write the next album, and it fell apart. Everyone was drinking and using drugs, but Iommi felt Ozzy was on a different level, showing little interest and refusing to sing new ideas. With the label pushing, Iommi decided the singer had to go. The job of telling him fell to Ozzy's closest friend in the band. On the twenty seventh of April 1979, Bill Ward told him he was out. Ward later called it one of the worst things he ever did, and said the band had become toxic and destined to destroy each other. Ozzy, by his own account, locked himself away for three months of drink and drugs, expecting to end up back in Birmingham on the dole.[1] [2] [3]

A new voice: the Dio years

The replacement came through an unlikely connection. Sharon Arden, the daughter of their manager Don Arden, introduced Iommi to Ronnie James Dio, the American singer who had just left Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow. Dio was everything Ozzy was not. Iommi said Ozzy followed the riff, while Dio sang across it, bringing operatic power and fantasy lyrics. Geezer briefly stepped away during his divorce, then came back. Produced by Martin Birch, Heaven and Hell came out in April 1980 and was a genuine rebirth, selling a million copies in America. Early crowds chanted Ozzy's name at Dio, but he won them over. He also popularised the devil horns hand sign, which he said came from a gesture his Italian grandmother used.[1] [2] [3]

Ozzy's career was anything but over. Don Arden signed him to his Jet label and sent Sharon to look after him in Los Angeles, and with the young guitarist Randy Rhoads he made Blizzard of Ozz, a huge hit. The chaos continued. In 1981 he bit the heads off doves at a meeting with CBS Records executives, and on the twentieth of January 1982, in Des Moines, he bit into a bat thrown on stage, thinking it was rubber, and needed rabies shots. Two months later came real tragedy. On the nineteenth of March 1982 in Florida, the band's bus driver took Rhoads and costume designer Rachel Youngblood up in a small plane, clipped the tour bus while buzzing it, and crashed, killing all three.[1] [2] [3]

Back in Sabbath, Bill Ward was coming undone. His mother had died, he missed Ozzy badly, and he said he was drinking around the clock. After a show in Bloomington, Minnesota, on the eighteenth of August 1980, he packed up and left in the middle of the tour. The band hired a young New York drummer, Vinny Appice. Weeks later, on the ninth of October 1980, a concert at the Milwaukee Arena turned into a riot after a thrown bottle hit Geezer and the band walked off. About a hundred and sixty people were arrested. The next album, Mob Rules, came out in 1981 and went gold, and its title track was recorded at John Lennon's old house in England.[1] [2]

The Dio lineup ended in bitterness over a live album. While Live Evil was being mixed in 1982, Iommi and Butler were told by their engineer that Dio had been sneaking into the studio at night to turn up his vocals. Dio denied it, and he was also unhappy with how few photos of him appeared in the artwork. Iommi said Dio wanted more and more control. Dio later said that when it came to his vocals nobody told him what to do, and he refused to listen to the album. In November 1982 he left to form his own band, Dio, taking Vinny Appice with him. Live Evil came out in January 1983, only to be overshadowed by Ozzy's own live album, Speak of the Devil.[1] [2]

The revolving door, 1983 to 1989

Iommi and Butler then made a surprise choice, Ian Gillan of Deep Purple. It was meant to be a new project, but the record label insisted on the Black Sabbath name. Bill Ward returned, newly sober, and in 1983 they recorded Born Again at Richard Branson's Manor Studio in Oxfordshire. Gillan chose to live in a marquee tent in the grounds. One night after the pub he took Ward's car, raced it round a go kart track on the property and crashed it, escaping just before it burst into flames, and turned the story into the opening song, Trashed. The cover, a screaming red devil baby, is often called one of the worst in rock, and Gillan claimed it made him sick. Born Again still reached number four in Britain.[1] [2] [3]

The Born Again tour produced a famous blunder. The stage set was a replica of Stonehenge, but the dimensions were misread and the stones came out far too big for almost any stage, a mishap later echoed in the film This Is Spinal Tap. Ward could not face the road and drank again, and Bev Bevan of the Electric Light Orchestra took over. Ward later described his lowest point, a suicide attempt after Christmas 1983. In January 1984 he went into his final detox and says he has not had a drink since. Gillan returned to Deep Purple, Butler left, and the original four came together only once that decade, for Live Aid in Philadelphia on the thirteenth of July 1985.[1] [2] [3]

With Butler and Ward gone, Iommi was the last founder standing. He made what was meant to be his first solo album, with Glenn Hughes, another former Deep Purple singer, on vocals. Warner Bros and Don Arden insisted it be sold as Black Sabbath featuring Tony Iommi, and Seventh Star came out in January 1986. Hughes himself said him singing in Black Sabbath was like James Brown singing in Metallica. Four days before the tour, he got into a fight with the production manager that broke a bone around his eye and affected his singing. Ray Gillen stepped in, but he too soon left. Players came and went so quickly that even fans struggled to keep track.[1] [2] [3]

In 1987 a little known singer, Tony Martin, joined and would become the band's longest serving vocalist after Ozzy. That year they played six shows at Sun City in apartheid era South Africa, drawing criticism from anti apartheid campaigners, and Bev Bevan refused to go. The Eternal Idol stalled, and they were dropped by their record labels. Iommi rebuilt on the smaller I.R.S. label with drummer Cozy Powell, and 1989's Headless Cross, with a guest solo from Queen's Brian May on When Death Calls, won back some respect. That year Black Sabbath became one of the first Western bands to tour Russia, playing twenty three dates with Girlschool after Mikhail Gorbachev opened the country up.[1] [2]

The road back to the originals

In 1990 Butler and Dio patched things up and rejoined, and after Cozy Powell broke his hip when his horse fell on him, Vinny Appice returned as well. The slow, costly Dehumanizer, released in June 1992, was their biggest seller in a decade. Then Ozzy announced his first retirement and invited Sabbath to open the last two shows of his farewell tour in Costa Mesa, California. Dio refused, reportedly telling Iommi he would not support a clown, and he quit after a show in Oakland on the thirteenth of November 1992. Judas Priest's Rob Halford stepped in at the last minute. At those shows, Ozzy, Tony, Geezer and Bill also shared a stage for a short set of Sabbath songs, the first time since Live Aid.[1] [2]

With a full reunion stalled, Iommi and Butler brought back Tony Martin and made Cross Purposes in 1994. Eddie Van Halen helped write one song, Evil Eye, though record label rules kept his name off the credits. Butler soon quit again, and on his solo project GZR he recorded a song called Giving Up the Ghost that accused Iommi of cheapening the band's legacy by carrying on under its name. Iommi said he had barely listened and still considered Geezer a friend. The 1995 album Forbidden, produced by Body Count guitarist Ernie C with a guest vocal from Ice-T, was widely panned. Martin later called it a filler that got the band out of its record deal and into the reunion.[1]

In the summer of 1997, Ozzy, Iommi and Butler headlined Ozzfest alongside Ozzy's solo band, at the touring festival Sharon had founded, with Ozzy's drummer Mike Bordin filling in. In December, Bill Ward rejoined for two homecoming shows at the Birmingham NEC, the first time the original four had played together since 1992. The recordings became the double album Reunion, released in October 1998, which went platinum in America. Its live version of Iron Man won the band their first Grammy, for Best Metal Performance in 2000, thirty years after the song was first released. Iommi later laughed about one of the NEC shows, when Ward hit a huge gong that fell on him and left his arm black and blue.[1] [2] [3]

Reality TV, the Hall of Fame and Heaven and Hell

The reunion was fragile from the start. In 1998, during rehearsals, Bill Ward felt his arm go numb and suffered a heart attack, and Vinny Appice filled in while he recovered. In 2001 all four went to Wales to work on a new album with producer Rick Rubin and recorded several demos, but the sessions stopped when Ozzy was called away to finish a solo record. Then, in March 2002, MTV's The Osbournes turned Ozzy into a reality television star loved by people who had never heard Paranoid, and the show won an Emmy. In December 2003 he nearly died in a quad bike accident at his home in Buckinghamshire, breaking his collarbone, ribs and a vertebra in his neck.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Official honours arrived late. Black Sabbath entered the UK Music Hall of Fame in November 2005, and in March 2006 they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after eleven years of eligibility. Ozzy had famously dismissed an earlier nomination in 1999 as meaningless. Metallica's James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich inducted them, and Metallica played Hole in the Sky and Iron Man in tribute. Geezer, a lifelong Aston Villa fan, could be heard shouting up the Villa as they left the stage. By then the original four had played their last shows together for twenty years, at Ozzfest 2005. The next chapter would belong to the Dio lineup.[1] [2] [3]

In 2006 Iommi, Butler, Dio and Appice reunited to record three new songs for a compilation called The Dio Years. It went so well that they toured, calling themselves Heaven and Hell so fans would not expect Iron Man and Paranoid. Bill Ward was due to take part but dropped out. They played around the world, filmed a concert at Radio City Music Hall, and in 2009 released a studio album, The Devil You Know. That same year Ozzy sued Iommi in a New York federal court over the Black Sabbath trademark, which Iommi had registered in the United States in 2000. Ozzy argued the name morally belonged to all four. The case was settled in 2010 on terms that were never disclosed.[1] [2] [3]

By then, tragedy had overtaken Heaven and Hell. In November 2009 Ronnie James Dio announced he had stomach cancer and began treatment in Houston, Texas. His final performance had been in Atlantic City that August. The band cancelled their summer dates, and on the sixteenth of May 2010 Dio died, aged sixty seven. His wife Wendy wrote that her heart was broken. Iommi said he was in total shock and would miss his dear friend. The Download Festival renamed its second stage in Dio's honour. With him gone, Heaven and Hell was over, and within weeks the dispute over the Black Sabbath name was settled, clearing the way for one more chapter with the original singer.[1] [2] [3]

Thirteen and The End

On the eleventh of November 2011, the original four announced a new album with Rick Rubin and a world tour. Weeks later, on the ninth of January 2012, Iommi was diagnosed with lymphoma. The band moved their work from Los Angeles to England so he could keep going between treatments, and most of the planned tour was cancelled. Then the drum stool emptied. In February 2012 Bill Ward said he would not take part without a signable contract. Ozzy later suggested Ward's health was the real issue, which Ward disputed. Rage Against the Machine's Brad Wilk played on the album, and Tommy Clufetos from Ozzy's solo band took over on tour.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The album, simply called 13, came out in June 2013 and did something no Black Sabbath record had done before. It went to number one on the Billboard 200, almost forty three years after their first appearance on that chart, selling a hundred and fifty five thousand copies in its first week. It topped the UK chart too. It was their first studio album with Ozzy since Never Say Die! in 1978. The first single, God Is Dead?, won the Grammy for Best Metal Performance in 2014. The band returned to Australia and New Zealand for the first time in forty years, and closed a European run in 2014 with a show in London's Hyde Park.[1] [2] [3]

In 2016 they set out on The End, a farewell tour of eighty one dates across the world, with Iommi's cancer and the members' ages among the reasons to stop. Old tensions between Ozzy and Iommi resurfaced on the road. The very last show came on the fourth of February 2017 at the Genting Arena in Birmingham, with Clufetos on drums and Adam Wakeman on keyboards. They played fifteen songs, ending with Paranoid, as ticker tape and balloons fell and fireworks went off for the final bow. Ozzy remembered playing the Crown pub and thinking the band might be good for a couple of years. In March 2017 they posted an image reading Black Sabbath, 1968 to 2017.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Retirement did not quite stick. Ozzy later said his one regret was that Bill Ward had not been there at the end, because the four who started it should have finished it. In January 2020 he revealed he had Parkinson's disease, on top of spinal damage from a fall in 2019. On the eighth of August 2022 he made a surprise appearance with Iommi to close the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, rising through the stage to play Paranoid for thirty thousand people. In 2023 the Birmingham Royal Ballet premiered a ballet set to Black Sabbath's music. That same year Ozzy gave up touring and Geezer said he was retiring from performing, though neither would stay away for good.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Back to the Beginning

On the fifth of February 2025, Sharon Osbourne and Tony Iommi announced one last show at Villa Park, the Aston Villa stadium close to where the band was born. It would reunite the original four for the first time in twenty years, and it would be Ozzy's final performance. Ozzy, now struggling to walk, said he had no intention of turning up as a half hearted Ozzy looking for sympathy. Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine was musical director, and the bill included Metallica, Slayer, Pantera, Guns N' Roses and many more. Profits would be shared between Cure Parkinson's, Birmingham Children's Hospital and Acorns Children's Hospice. A week before the show, all four were made Freemen of the City of Birmingham.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

On Saturday the fifth of July 2025, forty thousand fans packed Villa Park and millions more watched a livestream. After a day of tributes from bands they had inspired, Ozzy rose from beneath the stage on a black throne topped with a bat. Parkinson's meant he had to sing sitting down, but he clapped, waved and pulled his old wild faces. He played five solo songs, then Iommi, Butler and Ward joined him for War Pigs, N.I.B., Iron Man and Paranoid. He told the crowd he had been laid up for six years and thanked them from the bottom of his heart. Metallica's James Hetfield had told the same crowd there would be no Metallica without Sabbath.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Seventeen days later, on the twenty second of July 2025, Ozzy Osbourne died, aged seventy six, with his family around him. The family said their sadness was more than mere words could convey. His death certificate later listed cardiac arrest and a heart attack, with coronary artery disease and Parkinson's disease as joint causes. The tributes poured in. Iommi said Geezer, Bill and he had lost their brother. Geezer thanked him for all the fun and marvelled at how far four kids from Aston had come, glad they had done it one last time at home. Bill Ward wrote that his friend was forever in his heart. Elton John called him a true legend and one of the funniest people he had ever met.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

On the thirtieth of July, Birmingham said goodbye. Ozzy's hearse, with purple flowers spelling his name, set off from Aston past Villa Park and his childhood home on Lodge Road, then into the city centre, where thousands of fans lined Broad Street chanting his name while a brass band played Black Sabbath songs. The cortege stopped at Black Sabbath Bridge, where a bench showing the four members had become a shrine of flowers, beer bottles and bat shaped balloons. Sharon, supported by Kelly and Jack, laid a rose and flashed peace signs to the crowd, and Aimee and Louis laid flowers too. A private funeral followed. In a BBC documentary that autumn, Ozzy said that if he lived his life again, he would not change a thing.[1] [2] [3] [4]

As of 2026, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward are the surviving founders, and Iommi is the only member to have played on every Black Sabbath release. The band sold more than seventy million records, and their fingerprints are everywhere, from Judas Priest, Metallica and Slayer to Nirvana, Soundgarden and the whole worlds of doom and stoner rock. Birmingham now wears them proudly, with Black Sabbath Bridge, a huge mural near New Street station and the freedom of the city. Even Ozzy's afterlife has stirred debate. In 2026 his family announced a life sized AI avatar of him, and some fans pushed back, while Jack Osbourne promised it would be tasteful. The Prince of Darkness, it seems, is not finished yet.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The people around Black Sabbath

Ozzy Osbourne and Tony Iommi. They went to the same school, where Iommi saw the younger Ozzy as a pest, and their partnership was never easy. Iommi once knocked Ozzy out with a single punch during a drunken hotel fight in the early 1970s, and it was Iommi who decided to fire him in 1979. Ozzy later sued him over the band's name. Yet Ozzy called Iommi the master of the metal riff, and after Ozzy's death Iommi said he had lost a brother.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Ozzy Osbourne and Sharon Osbourne. Sharon Arden met Ozzy while working for her father, the band's manager. She took over his management after he was fired in 1979, rebuilt his career and married him on the fourth of July 1982. The marriage survived his addictions, affairs and a 1989 arrest after he tried to strangle her while drunk, and she did not press charges. Together they created Ozzfest and The Osbournes, and she set up his farewell at Villa Park.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Sharon Osbourne and Don Arden. Don Arden, nicknamed the Al Capone of Pop for his menacing business methods, managed Black Sabbath from 1974 and hoped Ozzy would come back. When his daughter Sharon took over Ozzy's management herself, he was furious. It was reported that his dogs attacked her while she was pregnant, and she lost the baby. Father and daughter did not speak for twenty years. Ozzy also claimed Arden kept almost all of the band's fee from the 1974 California Jam.[1] [2]

Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler. The guitarist and the bassist were the band's engine room and its most durable partnership, sticking together through the Dio and Gillan eras. Butler wrote most of the lyrics to Iommi's riffs and tuned down to match him. They fell out in the mid 1990s, when Butler's solo song Giving Up the Ghost attacked Iommi for carrying on with the name, but Iommi refused to feud and called Geezer a friend. They played together to the very end in 2025.[1] [2] [3]

Ozzy Osbourne and Bill Ward. Ward was Ozzy's closest friend in the band, which is why he was sent to fire him in 1979, a job he later called one of the worst things he ever did. Ward said Ozzy was like a brother, and missing him fed the drinking that drove Ward out in 1980. They clashed publicly over Ward's absence from 13, but Ozzy later regretted it, and they shared a stage one final time in 2025.[1] [2] [3]

Tony Iommi and Ronnie James Dio. Introduced by Sharon Arden in 1979, Iommi and Dio clicked instantly and revived the band with Heaven and Hell. Their partnership broke over Live Evil in 1982, recovered for Dehumanizer in 1992, broke again when Dio refused to open for Ozzy, and flourished a third time as Heaven and Hell from 2006. When Dio died in 2010, Iommi said he could not believe his dear friend was gone.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Ronnie James Dio and Ozzy Osbourne. Replacing Ozzy put Dio in an awkward position, with some crowds chanting Ozzy's name at him. Dio said plainly that he was not, and never would be, Ozzy Osbourne. Relations between the two camps soured, with harsh words on both sides, and in 1992 Dio refused to open for Ozzy's retirement shows, reportedly saying he would not support a clown. He quit the band rather than play them.[1] [2] [3]

Black Sabbath and Patrick Meehan. Patrick Meehan took over from Jim Simpson as manager in 1970 just as the band exploded, and he even introduced Iommi to his first wife. But by the mid 1970s the band felt they had sold millions of records and had almost nothing to show for it. They fired him, starting a bitter legal battle that shaped Sabotage and its furious closing song, The Writ. Meehan had also taken producer credits the band said he did little to earn.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Ozzy Osbourne and Randy Rhoads. After his firing, Ozzy found a new creative partner in the young guitarist Randy Rhoads, who co-wrote Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman. Rhoads even predicted that Ozzy and Sharon would marry one day. His death in a plane crash in Florida in March 1982 plunged Ozzy into a deep depression, and fans at Ozzy's funeral procession in 2025 still spoke of the two of them together.[1] [2]

Tony Iommi and John Bonham. Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin were close friends from their early days around Birmingham. Led Zeppelin's drummer John Bonham was best man at Iommi's first wedding in 1973, where the instrumental Fluff was played. Bonham loved Supernaut, and he turned up at the Sabbath Bloody Sabbath sessions eager to play, which led to an unreleased jam between the two bands.[1] [2] [3]

Geezer Butler and Ozzy Osbourne. Geezer and Ozzy first met in 1963 outside a Birmingham television studio where the Beatles were appearing, and later formed Rare Breed together. Geezer wrote most of the words Ozzy sang. Ozzy liked to point out that Geezer almost never swore, despite years in his company. Geezer played bass in Ozzy's solo band in the late 1980s and mid 1990s, and after Ozzy's death he remembered four kids from Aston and wondered who would have thought it.[1] [2]

Rare facts about Black Sabbath

• Before the plastic fingertips took hold, Tony Iommi used banjo strings, because light gauge guitar strings did not yet exist. Iommi's thimbles stopped him feeling the strings and made bending them hard. Lighter strings were the answer, but none were made at the time, so he used banjo strings until Picato began producing light gauge guitar strings around 1970.[1]
• Iommi's famous Gibson SG started life as a right handed guitar he played upside down. A faulty pickup forced Iommi off his white Stratocaster during the first album sessions. He switched to a spare right handed SG played upside down, then swapped it with a right handed player who owned a left handed SG. That guitar became his main instrument.[1]
• Tony Iommi first wanted to play drums, and grew his moustache to hide a childhood scar. He chose guitar because drums were too noisy at home. As a boy he cut his upper lip in a fall while being chased, earning the nickname Scarface, and the trademark moustache came later partly to cover the scar.[1]
• Geezer Butler had never played bass before the band's first gig, and borrowed one with only three strings. Butler had been a rhythm guitarist, but Iommi did not want a second guitarist in the band. So Geezer switched instruments on the spot, borrowing a friend's bass that was missing a string. He later said simply following Tony's riffs made the sound heavier.[1] [2]
• Geezer Butler first met Ozzy outside a Birmingham TV studio in 1963, where both were waiting to see the Beatles. When the Beatles appeared on Thank Your Lucky Stars in January 1963, a teenage Butler waited outside the studio for a glimpse of them. Another Beatles fan waiting there was John Osbourne, the future Ozzy.[1]
• Geezer Butler barely swears, a habit dating back to a childhood beating. As a small boy he repeated a slur a bin man had shouted at him, and his father punished him with a belt, telling him only ignorant people swear. Ozzy liked to point out that Geezer still hardly cursed despite years in his company.[1]
• Vertigo reportedly signed Black Sabbath partly to fill a gap left by another act's missing masters. Manager Jim Simpson recalled that someone had failed to deliver the master tapes for one of Vertigo's early release slots. Black Sabbath had a finished album ready to go, so the label signed them as a makeweight.[1]
• The producer of Black Sabbath's first album, Rodger Bain, played Jew's harp on the song Sleeping Village. Bain produced the band's first three albums, capturing them live in the studio when other producers would not. On the debut he also added the twang of a Jew's harp to Sleeping Village.[1]
• The cloaked woman on the first album cover was not publicly identified until 2020. She was the model Louisa Livingstone, who remembered getting up at four in the morning for a freezing shoot at Mapledurham Watermill. Her identity only became widely known in 2020, and she has since released electronic music under the name Indreba.[1]
• The helmeted swordsman on the Paranoid cover was the photographer's assistant. The cover was designed for the original title, War Pigs, and shot by Keith McMillan in Black Park, Buckinghamshire. The model was his assistant Roger Brown, the same man who wrote the poem inside the first album's sleeve.[1] [2]
• The instrumental Fluff was named after the BBC disc jockey Alan Fluff Freeman. Freeman was one of the few British radio presenters who played Black Sabbath at the time. Iommi's gentle instrumental named after him was also played as his bride walked down the aisle at his 1973 wedding.[1] [2]
• Yes keyboard player Rick Wakeman played on Sabbra Cadabra and was paid in beer. Wakeman was recording with Yes in the next studio when Black Sabbath were making Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. He refused a fee for his session, so the band thanked him with beer instead.[1]
• The sleeve of Vol. 4 thanks the great COKE-cola, a barely hidden drug joke. The album's working title was Snowblind, after a song about cocaine, but the label would not allow it. The band slipped their thanks to the great COKE-cola into the liner notes instead.[1]
• Supernaut was a favourite song of both Frank Zappa and John Bonham. The track from Vol. 4 was admired by Zappa, whose lyrical approach Geezer Butler said influenced him, and by Led Zeppelin's drummer John Bonham, who counted it among his favourite songs.[1]
• The orchestra on Laguna Sunrise refused to play until their parts were properly written out. Iommi wrote the instrumental after staying up all night and watching the sunrise at Laguna Beach. When an orchestra came in to accompany him, the players would not perform until the music was written down properly.[1]
• Sabotage hides a short joke track recorded without the band knowing. At the end of The Writ sits Blow on a Jug, a half minute of Ozzy and Bill Ward messing about on piano and a cider jug between sessions. It was captured on tape without their knowledge and left on the record.[1]
• A rejected Never Say Die! cover idea ended up on a Rainbow album instead. Hipgnosis designed the Never Say Die! sleeve. An alternative design showing masked doctors was turned down by Black Sabbath, and it later became the cover of Rainbow's 1981 album Difficult to Cure.[1]
• The Heaven and Hell cover is based on a 1928 photo of women dressed as angels smoking. The artwork comes from a painting by Lynn Curlee called Smoking Angels, inspired by an old photograph of women in angel costumes taking a cigarette break backstage at a college pageant.[1]
• The Mob Rules title track was recorded at John Lennon's old house in England. The song was cut at the former Lennon home and also appeared in the 1981 animated film Heavy Metal, although the film version is a different take from the one on the album.[1]
• Disturbing the Priest was inspired by real complaints from real priests. During the Born Again period, Iommi set up a rehearsal space in a small building near a church, and the noise drew complaints from the priests. The band turned it into a song, with Bill Ward banging an anvil lowered into water for effect.[1]
• Eddie Van Halen co-wrote a Black Sabbath song but could not be credited. Van Halen helped write Evil Eye on the 1994 album Cross Purposes, but record label restrictions kept his name off the credits. Sixteen years earlier, his own band had opened for Sabbath on the Never Say Die! tour.[1]
• Rapper Ice-T sang on a Black Sabbath album. Forbidden, from 1995, was produced by Ernie C, guitarist of the band Body Count, and his bandmate Ice-T added a guest vocal on the song Illusion of Power. The album was widely panned.[1]
• In 1989 Black Sabbath played twenty three dates in Russia with Girlschool. After Mikhail Gorbachev opened the Soviet Union to Western acts, the Tony Martin lineup became one of the first bands to tour there, on a run of twenty three shows with the British band Girlschool.[1]
• Iron Man won Black Sabbath their first Grammy thirty years after it was released. A live version recorded at the 1997 Birmingham reunion shows and released on Reunion won Best Metal Performance at the 2000 Grammys. The band won again in 2014 for God Is Dead?[1] [2]
• Black Sabbath waited nearly forty three years for their first number one album in America. They first appeared on the Billboard 200 in August 1970. It was not until 13 in 2013 that they topped it, selling a hundred and fifty five thousand copies in the first week, their biggest sales week since modern tracking began in 1991.[1]
• Ozzy Osbourne dismissed the band's first Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination as meaningless. Black Sabbath became eligible years before they were inducted. Ozzy famously rejected the 1999 nomination, and the band finally went in during March 2006, after eleven years of eligibility, inducted by Metallica.[1]
• Bill Ward nicknamed the short lived 1984 singer David Donato Donut. Donato briefly fronted the band in 1984 and recorded demos with Iommi, Butler and Ward that went nowhere. Ward gave him the nickname because he kept turning up to rehearsals eating doughnuts.[1]
• Bill Ward has hosted a monthly internet radio show from a California college since 2002. His show, Rock 50, is broadcast online by the station WPMD at Cerritos College in California, where Ward plays metal, hard rock and some classic rock.[1]
• A German pop duo turned Paranoid into a song about The Hound of the Baskervilles. In 1971 the schlager duo Cindy and Bert recorded Paranoid with new lyrics as Der Hund von Baskerville, complete with heavy organ. Their TV performance featured a tiny Pekingese standing in for the hound, and it became a collector's curiosity.[1]
• Some listeners misheard a Paranoid lyric as a call to end your life. The song drew controversy for supposedly encouraging suicide, because the line about telling you to enjoy life was misheard as telling you to end your life.[1]
• Ozzy's father went into debt to buy him a microphone. Accepting the freedom of Birmingham in 2025, Ozzy recalled that his late father had borrowed money to buy him his first microphone, and said he thought his dad would have been very proud.[1]
• Tony Iommi received an honorary doctorate from Coventry University in 2013. The university honoured him as one of the founding fathers of heavy metal. After the graduation ceremony at Coventry Cathedral he planned to head straight to Helsinki to rejoin Black Sabbath for the start of a European tour.[1] [2]
• Before Black Sabbath, Tony Iommi played two shows as Jethro Tull's guitarist. In late 1968 Iommi briefly joined Jethro Tull, miming with them on the Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus. He quit within weeks, saying he did not like having a leader in the band, but that the experience taught him how hard he would have to work.[1] [2]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.