“We had six different doctors and they advised us not to do the show. They said it would kill him. Ozzy said, I know I’m dying. If I miss a few months of my life, I want to go this way.” Sharon Osbourne on Ozzy’s farewell live performance

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The revelation comes in an emotional exclusive interview with Rolling Stone. Announced in early 2025, Back To The Beginning was put together as Ozzy Osbourne’s final bow, following his retirement from touring in 2023 due to Parkinson’s disease and other health issues. The show was held on July 5, 2025, at Villa Park, Brmingham, a short distance from where the singer grew up in Aston, and featured a who’s who of heavy metal – including Metallica, Slayer, Guns N’ Roses, Mastodon, Tool, Gojira and more – paying their respects to Ozzy and Black Sabbath.

In her interview with Rolling Stone, Sharon Osbourne says that Ozzy was advised not to perform.”He was in hospital in America before he left,” she says. “We moved back to England, and we had a whole new team of doctors. His new doctors didn’t want to take doctor’s notes from America. They wanted to make their own assessment on him. He was in hospital for a week in England.”After he came out of hospital, they asked for a meeting, and they came to our house. We had six different doctors and, like, a quarterback, because there were all of these specialists for the heart, for Parkinson’s, for his lungs, because of all the different things that were wrong with him.

“They advised us not to do the show,” she admits. “They said it would kill him. We were all together and Ozzy said, ‘It’s not an option. It’s what I want.’ He said, ‘I know I’m dying. If I miss a few months of my life, I want to go this way. This is what I want.’ It was his wishes and we went through it. He said to me, ‘Another six months, what’s it going to do for me?'”He was very, very emotional,” Osbourne admits. “But you know what? It was beautiful too. It was amazing. How lucky was he to go out that way? I say he went out like a Viking.”

Read the interview in full at RollingStone.com

A documentary about the gig, Ozzy & Black Sabbath: Back To The Beginning, will get a global cinema release on October 28, for a limited time. Sharon Osbourne says that every artist who performed will appear in the film.“There’s never been anything like that that’s happened in the history of rock and roll,” says Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello, who was musical director of the show and helped pull the bill together. “There’s never been a precedent for a show like this… [Black Sabbath] gets to play their final show basically in the Ground Zero of where they created heavy metal.”

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Paul Brannigan Contributing Editor, Louder A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne’s private jet, played Angus Young’s Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.

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