Tony Iommi says he spoke with his Black Sabbath bandmate Ozzy Osbourne the night before the iconic metal singer passed away, calling his death “a hell of a shock.”
The guitarist discussed his final conversation with Ozzy during an appearance on Eddie Trunk’s Trunk Nation SiriusXM show, as he reflected on Black Sabbath’s final show at the “Back to the Beginning” concert.
“It was difficult,” began Iommi. “I mean, and the whole thing really cuz Ozzy and myself were in contact every week or every other week cuz he was in California, me in England. But we’d always be in contact and you know, the same old thing, ailments, ‘What’s wrong with you this week?’ ‘Oh, I’ve got this ache in my arm.’ ‘Oh, what’s wrong with you?’ ‘Oh, I’ve had this foot problem.’ So that was regular, regular conversation, but it was just nice to talk and see what, you know, each other were up to, but yes, I miss those days. I miss talking to him. And because the thing was, I hadn’t seen Ozzy for two years since we did the Commonwealth Games together in England, Ozzy and myself. And I hadn’t seen him from that day until we started rehearsals for the Back to the Beginning, and I was really shocked when I saw him.”
He continued, “I mean, when Ozzy’s told me about his problems, but to actually see him and the other guys, we were in, we were shocked, you know, to see him sort of carried in, and it was quite sad really. But I’m really glad we did that show and I’m so grateful to all the people that come out to show their thing and support us all on it. You know, they were really great. Really great. It was a great event. At first, I didn’t agree with doing it purely because I thought, ‘Well, hang on, we’ve done The End tour and that should have been the end.’ You know, I didn’t want to do The End and, ‘Oh, here we are again. We’re back.'”
Iommi went on to say, “I didn’t want to do that. But since they said it was for charity and the whole thing’s going to be done, all these bands are going to come forward and it’ll all be for charity, thought, ‘Well, yeah, that’s good.” And so, I did it. And I’m glad we did now cuz we had a chance for the four of us to really finish off where we started and, you know, I spoke to Ozzy afterwards after the show, well, the next day and he was really thrilled that we could go and do it, you know, that we’d done it.”
That’s when Iommi recollected his last conversation with Ozzy, telling Trunk, “In fact, I spoke to him the night before he passed, which was really strange cuz he said, ‘I’m feeling really tired.’ I said, ‘Well, yeah.’ I said, ‘I’m tired. You know, it’s the aftereffects of everything,’ and thinking, well, you know, and then of course the next thing, he’d gone. It was really a hell of a shock. Really.”
Regarding the physical toll for Ozzy to perform two sets at Back to the Beginning, one with his solo band and one with Sabbath, Iommi noted, “He had done two sets. And which I did say to him, ‘I don’t think you should do two sets. You got to do one or the other because I think it’s too much.’ I thought he was, I said, ‘You’re going to either blow your voice and you’re going to get too much.’ But it was already set that he was doing his own set and then the Sabbath set cuz I said, ‘Well, look, you know, we could just walk out afterwards and say thanks to everybody,’ but no, we ended up playing. And he ended up doing his set. So, I think it was, you know, he had to do, a lot of it was tough for him.”
Sadly, Ozzy passed away on July 22nd, 2025, just 17 days after the Back to the Beginning concert.
Iommi, meanwhile, recently announced his long-awaited new solo album, From the Dark, set for release on October 23rd.
Watch Tony Iommi discuss the Back to the Beginning concert and his final conversation with Ozzy Osbourne in the clip from Trunk Nation below.
