Black Sabbath highly anticipated farewell show took place last Saturday, July 5th, at Villa Park in Birmingham, United Kingdom. Approximately 40,000 people attended the event, with 5.8 million people watching the show online.
Titled "Back To The Beginning ," the final show by the greatest heavy metal band reunited the four original members. Vocalist Ozzy Osbourne , bassist Geezer Butler , guitarist Tony Iommi , and drummer Bill Ward played together for the first and last time in 20 years. The setlist consisted of only four tracks: "War Pigs," "Iron Man," "NIB," and "Paranoid." However, the band intended to play more.
The two songs that Black Sabbath didn't play.
In an interview with SiriusXM 's Trunk Nation , Iommi revealed that Sabbath had also prepared "Fairies Wear Boots" from the album Paranoid (1970), and "Black Sabbath," from the self-titled 1970 album. He explained [transcription via Ultimate Classic Rock ]:
“Well, initially we also thought about 'Fairies Wear Boots' and 'Black Sabbath'. And it was a little difficult for Bill, because he hadn't played those songs in a long time. Geezer and I, of course, played them on the last tour [which ended in 2017]. And, of course, Bill hasn't toured in a long time. So we could have done six, but we ended up doing four.”
The guitarist continued: “It was a question of how long Ozzy could last, because we didn’t know, since he was going to do his own show. I told him I thought he shouldn’t do it, because I didn’t want him to be exhausted when he played with us. But that wasn’t the case, he did his show. In the end, we ended up playing four songs, although we had planned six or seven. But it worked with four songs, so everything was fine. […] Well, it was seven songs that were reduced to six.”
Black Sabbath made history by performing with their original lineup, and the festival also featured other big names like Guns N' Roses , Metallica , Tool , Slayer , and many more. Check out what each guest played at the festival here .
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