Key events
“All of us in the same place for one fucking reason, and that’s to celebreate the music Black Sabbath gave us,” Ian tells the crowd. “We’re not here to say goodbye, we’re here to say thank you.” Then he straps on a black Flying V for a cover of Into the Void, to a very admiring swell of noise from the audience. So much relish to the way he’s playing that brawny riff. This rules.
Now it’s Anthrax, adorably enough in matching T-shirts reading Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Scott Ian looks like he’s enjoying playing the high-speed complex riffs of Indians as much as he did when it was written in 1986. Joey Belladonna meanwhile is reaching the very back of the Holte End (or its opposite) with his voice, and it’s another reminder of just how deep Ozzy’s influence runs: these soaring declarations could have easily been uttered by the man himself.
A modest circle pit has broken out at medium tempo, by a group of fans who want to let rip but also know there’s a lot more time to go and they don’t want to sprain an ankle or have a blood sugar dip just yet.
Michael said earlier: “Queues for bars inside Villa Park are enormous already, before the bands have started. Today’s crowd is very thirsty.” Pace yourselves everyone!
Surprise guest from the future! Michael informs me that Yungblud is on stage now, doing a very good cover of Sabbath’s Changes.
Rival Sons now, with some distracting fashion choices of their own. You know from the guitarist’s moustache and leather trousers combo that he’d be prone to a steampunk side project, or discussing polyamory while microdosing mushrooms at Burning Man. Frontman Jay Buchanan however, whose holler is no doubt inspired in large part by Ozzy as well as fellow Midlander Robert Plant, is in arrestingly fine voice.
They do a cover of Sabbath’s Electric Funeral with that eerie riff made truly ghost-train spooky through some phantasmagoric pedal action, and Buchanan is once again channelling peak Ozzy. “We love you Sabbath, we’re thankful for everything you’ve done for us,” Buchanan says. Then it’s into another of their own numbers, Secret. They really throw down a marker with this set: that was terrific.
Jason Momoa introduces the gig
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Jason Momoa thanks the “fucking epic” Mastodon. “Metal is in all of our DNA – every character I’ve ever played has been inspired by this music and built by this music, it’s in everything that I am … Today we celebrate heavy metal, a movement invented by Black Sabbath”. He also shouts out Birmingham, “the city that gave birth to them” and calls on everyone, no doubt to the consternation of the Villa groundskeeper: “Let’s tear this motherfucker down!”
You’ll be thinking: show me photos of all these starry metal shenanigans! I’m really sorry but Live Nation have told me there won’t be any photos available until the end of the gig, and the livestream doesn’t allow screengrabs. Use the power of your mind, I guess.
There are a notable number of empty seats there, but remember this was all going on two hours ago which is quite an early start for a massive stadium show. “Stadium really pretty full from the beginning – testament to the depth of the line up,” Michael says. “Maiden a fortnight ago had a higher proportion of battle jackets though.”
If you’re the keyboardist in a heavy metal band, you have to accessorise. Sunglasses, scarf, or big black top hat is the case here. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.
It’s all gone a bit Stomp at the end of Mastodon, as a load of tom-toms are whacked in a groove-metal beat by fellas from Gojira and more.
In addition to all the aforementioned, there’s going to be this lot doing something or other.
Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan
Tool guitarist Adam Jones
Ugly Kid Joe frontman Whitfield Crane
Korn frontman Jonathan Davis
Former Judas Priest guitarist KK Downing
Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst
Ghost frontman Tobias Forge
Soundgarden
Sleep Token drummer II
Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler (vocals)
Guitarist and producer to the stars Andrew Watt
Also – the livestream just crossed 200,000 viewers!
The livestream begins!
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Mastodon kick us off, cranking out Black Tongue with Troy Sanders in fine voice. But where’s guitarist Brett Hinds? Ah yes, he left recently. “Won’t miss being in a shit band with horrible humans,” he posted on the band’s Instagram account. Meow! Then it’s into Blood and Thunder, with some excellent widdly-woo-ing in the middle eight. “Thank you to the mighty Black Sabbath for inventing this genre we call heavy metal,” Sanders says.
As we count down, here’s how it’s looking in Villa Park from Michael’s seat.
Backing guitarist Jake E Lee revealed some of the details about Supergroup A on Facebook recently: “Me, Mike Bordin, Dave Ellefson, Adam Wakeman, Nuno Bettencourt and [Halestorm’s] Lzzy Hale on vocals for Ultimate Sin. Minus Nuno and swap Lzzy for David Draiman for Shot in the Dark.” Both tunes from Ozzy’s 1986 album The Ultimate Sin.
Supergroup B is going to be fronted by Van Halen hollerer Sammy Hagar. “I’m so honored,” Hagar said in a recent interview. “I chose to do No More Tears. And Tom [Morello] goes, ‘Oh, that would be great’ … And then he comes back and says, ‘Guess what. Ozzy’s gonna try and sing five songs, and he wants to sing No More Tears. I said, OK: Flying High Again.” He’s also going to sing one of his own numbers, Rock Candy by Montrose, “because it’s from the same era as Black Sabbath – Montrose and Sabbath were from the same kind of era. So, I’m excited.”
Not massively well-known in the UK, Montrose were Hagar’s pre-VH band, whose self-titled 1973 debut was kind of doing what Led Zep were doing in the UK: forthright hard rock that would point the way towards a heavier, crunchier style later in the decade. Rock Candy is one of the slower, swaggering numbers – the kind of thing a roadside bar with a questionable alcohol licence would put on for “ladies’ night”.
Hosting it all is Jason “Ahquarman” Momoa – “metal to the core”, according to Tom Morello. So that’s why he looks so robust.
Momoa told Kerrang! that he got the call after he tried to blag some free tickets. “I was just calling my buddies. I called Scott Ian, I called Kirk [Hammett], I called people basically begging to go. And then Ross Halfin, who’s the photographer of every goddamn band, he hit me up … I said I was trying to get a ticket, then he’s like, ‘Sharon wants you to host it!’ I’m like, ‘What the fuck are you talking about, man?!’ I’m over here begging for a ticket and now they want me to host it! I’ve never hosted anything before but I’ve gotta go out in front of all these fucking people and host! And now it’s on pay-per-view. Jesus Christ… I’ll be shitting my pants but at the same time it’s the goddamn greatest metal show in history.”
Momoa is a very vocal metalhead, as this supercut demonstrates. His circle pit manners are excellent but as 2.24 shows, if you got in the way of Momoa mid-headbang you’d probably need helicoptering out of the venue.
Today’s livestream is on a two-hour delay, so us at home will experience everything later than Michael does in the stadium. Here’s the timings for how it will go down there, as leaked by Disturbed frontman David Draiman yesterday – all times BST.
Mastodon – 1.30-1.45 pm
Rival Sons – 1.52-2.07 pm
Anthrax – 2.15-2.29 pm
Halestorm – 2.37pm [not sure why this doesn’t have an end time, but am assuming 2.53pm]
Lamb of God – 3.00-3.15 pm
Supergroup A – 3.25-4.00pm
Alice in Chains – 4.07-4.22 pm
Gojira – 4.29-4.44pm
Drum-off – 4.51-5.01pm
Supergroup B – 5.08-5.48pm
Pantera – 5.55-6.10pm
Tool – 6.17-6.37pm
Slayer – 6.44-7.12pm
Guns N’ Roses – 7.21-7.46pm
Metallica – 7.53-8.23pm
Ozzy Osbourne – 8.38-8.58pm
Black Sabbath – 9.13-9.48pm
Someone with a head mic and clipboard is going to be stressed keep that all on track. And I suppose that’s just the one Tool song, then.
Welcome to Back to the Beginning!
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
You wait ages for the reunion of a much-loved, era-defining British rock band and then two come along at once. After last night’s return of Oasis, now we have Black Sabbath, ultra-poignantly getting back together to give the big man up front the send off he deserves.
Ozzy Osbourne’s touring career had petered out in a frustrating series of knocks – illness, Covid-cancelled tours, more illness – and it looked like he might have been forced into retirement with unfinished business. But thanks to the sterling efforts of wife Sharon Osbourne, musical director Tom Morello and an eye-popping network of greats, we’re about to have what could reasonably be described as the biggest event in heavy metal history.
I’ll be following along with the livestream at home which starts at 3pm, while Michael Hann is in Villa Park itself and will be sending back his observations plus a big review at the end of the night.