Black Sabbath – Back To The Beginning

Artists: Various

Venue: Birmingham - Villa Park

Date: 5th July 2025

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I have been to almost 1,000 gigs, and I can comfortably say none of the others can come remotely close to “Back To The Beginning.

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The Greatest Gig In Heavy Metal History

What is this that stands before me? Figure in black which points at me… Yes, it is the prince of darkness Mr John Michael (Ozzy) Osbourne himself. Was it a “Symptom Of The Universe” or did I step “Into The Void” to witness both “Heaven And Hell” in one glorious sunny day at Villa Park? It was fitting after some 57 years that Black Sabbath ended their glorious career a few miles from their birthplaces in Aston, Birmingham.

So what was “Back To The Beginning”? Well, this was a Heavy Metal festival like no other. I will deal with the downsides first as I want to focus on the good things. So, parts of the stadium ran out of beer, and the queues for beer and the toilets were horrific. If you wanted a beer in the stands you missed out on a band’s performance, so no way I was going to do that. A few times the sound was lost in the strong wind, however this was only really early on. Occasionally the sound was also rather muddy. Even at 11am they had run out of several of the merchandise items. Also, someone rather evil made sure this was not a history of Black Sabbath and was more of an Ozzy tribute.

Okay, so onto the show itself. First of all the organization was fantastic. The revolving stage meant a very short gap between bands, and those gaps were filled by AI video clips of Ozzy with numerous people, or video tributes to Ozzy and Black Sabbath from the likes of Sir Elton John, Dolly Parton and Judas Priest. We were treated to sixty-nine different songs from a large group of musicians, with all (bar Steven Tyler) playing at least one Ozzy or Sabbath tune.

At 1pm prompt Mastodon hit the stage, proudly decked in their Sabbath shirts. After two of their own songs, drummer Brann Dailor showed us his skills hitting the jazzy rhythms of ‘Supernaut’, whilst singing it as well – wow! The Heavy Rockers from Atlanta set a very high bar, straight out of the starting gate. Dailor also featured Randy Rhoads on his bass drums, a fine tribute to the great guitar player.

Before we could catch our breath, the Rival Sons hit the stage. Their frontman Jay Buchanan was decked out in a rather nice purple suit, and they treated us to a perfect version of ‘Electric Funeral’. Just in case we were already not dizzy enough, Anthrax upped the pace with their furious version of ‘Into The Void’, they all sported “666 Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” tee shirts.

Lzzy Hale of Halestorm decided we needed some glamour and entered the stage decked in a tasseled jacket with a significant number of Sabbath crucifixes, and treated us to the epic Ozzy powerhouse ditty ‘Perry Mason’. She absolutely nailed it. Lamb Of God are far from my favorite band, however they delighted us all with their own spin on ‘Children Of The Grave’, followed by Randy Blythe throwing his smelly trainers far into the crowd.

The legendary Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine) was in charge of the day’s arrangements and had created the Supergroups. Supergroup A had Hale joining drummer Mike Bordin (Faith No More & Ozzy), guitar maestro Nuno Bettencourt (Extreme), bassist David Ellefson (Megadeth), keyboardist Adam Wakeman (often behind the scenes playing with Sabbath) and on guitars Jake E Lee (Ozzy) for ‘The Ultimate Sin’. Then Disturbed’s David Draiman crooned through ‘Sweet Leaf’ and ‘Shot In The Dark’. You either love or hate him; for me he is a great singer. Next on stage was Ugly Kid Joe’s Whitfield Crane, backed by Sleep Token’s drummer II for Ozzy’s ‘Believer’.

Biggest surprise of the day for me was Yungblud with an incredible edition of the emotional ballad ‘Changes’. The whole crowd were in tears just like me. He was feckin’ amazing. This was followed by a crazy video of Jack Black performing ‘Mr Crowley’ with a number of kids, including Morello’s son Roman, shredding just like Rhoads. By now I am completely shell shocked at the epic-ness of the day, so I had to decide if I needed first aid treatment or stayed at the venue for more Heavy Metal pummelling, I wisely chose the latter.

Alice In Chains sure know how to play to large crowds, and they treated us to a skull crushing version of ‘Fairies Wear Boots’. Jerry Cantrell was electric, and William Duvall was on top form. My son was also losing his mind by now. French Metal masters Gojira tore up the doom laden ‘Under The Sun’. They showed us that they had considerable flexibility, as well as their frantic Thrash Metal chops. It was now time for a powerhouse drum-off between Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Travis Barker (Blink-182) and Danny Carey (Tool) over an epic ‘Symptom Of The Universe’. They were accompanied by some serious guitar riffing.

Then we were treated to Morello’s Supergroup B. Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins) fronting guitar players Morello, KK Downing (Judas Priest), Bettencourt, along with bassist Rudy Sarzo (Ozzy) through Priest’s crowd pleaser ‘Breaking The Law’, and a monstrous ‘Snowblind’. Downing was running his fingers so fast on the fretboard of his Flying V that I swear his fingers burst into flames. Sammy Hagar and Vernon Reid (Living Colour) joined us to perform ‘Flying High Again’ and ‘Rock Candy’. Sadly Hagar was weak performing the Ozzy song, and then recovered on the Montrose classic track. He was over shone by Tobias Forge (Ghost), decked in a bright silver jacket, for a superb rendition of ‘Bark At The Moon’. Surely it cannot get any better, can it? Oh my God, how wrong can I have been!

What was next… Well feckin’ Ronnie Wood (The Rolling Stones) Andrew Watt (Ozzy’s producer) and… wait for it… Steven Tyler (Aerosmith). I never thought I would get to see him perform live ever again after his recent throat issues. He ripped through ‘The Train Kept A-Rollin’’ and ‘Walk This Way’ and got the crowd right up to fever pitch. Just to top that off he sang ‘Whole Lotta Love’ - what throat issues? A legendary performance from a singer who is even older than Ozzy. During the show Bettencourt made several tributes to Diogo Jota, sporting his shirt for one song and making a very emotional speech. Very moving indeed.

The sun was now shining brightly, however the temperature was about to rise significantly as Pantera hit us with ‘Cowboys From Hell’ and ‘Walk’, before their epic Sabbath tributes ‘Planet Caravan’ and ‘Electric Funeral’. No time to catch your breath before Tool hit the stage with their take on ‘Hand Of Doom’. A rare time to actually see the band members on stage rather than hidden by their normal psychedelic stage lighting. Now we are really hitting with the big boys as Slayer brought their ferocity to the event. They treated us to six songs, including ‘Wicked World’, which drifted seamlessly into their tune ‘South Of Heaven’ with a ‘Wicked World’ outro. They left our ears bleeding with epic Thrash masterpieces ‘Raining Blood’ and ‘Angel Of Death’.

Axl Rose does not have the voice he once had, and messed up the start the first time, however his performance was better than I have seen of his recently. Mind you any band with Slash tearing it up is going to be fantastic in my eyes. Guns N’ Roses treated us to four Sabbath tracks, with Slash playing a Gibson SG before trading it in for his signature Les Paul. After ‘It’s Alright’, an excellent ‘Never Say Die’, ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’ and ‘Junior’s Eyes’, we were treated to ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ and ‘Paradise City’.

Now we move what has been an incredible day to a completely different stratosphere with Metallica. Their set was a perfect building block for what was to follow. Their tributes to Sabbath were some very heartfelt words, and ‘Hole In The Sky’ and ‘Johnny Blade’. They simply blew us away with ‘Creeping Death’, ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’ and ‘Master Of Puppets’. Watching Rob strut around the stage and do his crab walk which he developed with Ozzy when he was in his band was more than epic. James almost cracked his face as he was smiling larger than any Cheshire Cat possibly could. Thankfully we had the first real break in the day as the 45,000 people in the crowd were completely shell shocked by now.

The lights went out and up from beneath the stage a bat crowned black throne arose, with a regal Ozzy sat in it. This was one of the most emotional moments ever, and I will admit it even brought tears as I wrote this down. Ozzy’s eyes widened as he saw the crowd’s reaction and he explained that we had no idea what this meant to him, however I suspect we did as we had been waiting with bated breath from the second we secured our tickets. Ozzy’s band was Tommy Clufetos (drums), Mike Inez (bass), and his Zakk Wylde (guitars, vocals). Wylde prowled the stage in his kilt, however often returned to stand very close to his long-time pal Ozzy.

During the five-song set Ozzy gave us his crazy menacing faces, however you could see he really wanted to jump up and be the Ozzy of old. Over the years his performances have been both epic and bad, however on this occasion he was on truly fine form. Did he get emotional at times, Hell yeah, but so did the whole crowd. We were treated to ‘I Don’t Know’, ‘Mr Crowley’, ‘Suicide Solutions’, ‘Mama I’m Coming Home’ and ‘Crazy Train’. Ozzy had to use a mouth spray between tunes, however there is no singer than can sing his songs like he can, and he sure showed us that again.

We then had another break to allow Ozzy to regroup before we got the moment we had all been waiting for, the return of the 1968 line up of Black Sabbath for their first time live in over twenty years. They did not disappoint. Tony Iommi never seems to change and he ran his beloved SG through a series of mind blowing riffs. Geezer Butler has also looked after himself and showed us oodles of his funky jazzy bass runs. Bill Ward decided he would be shirtless like he always used to do, he is perhaps not in the shape he once was, however his mix of gentle drumming mixed with the driving power was really good. At his age he cannot bring it like he did fifty-seven years ago, but it was amazing to see him yet again. Their opening tune ‘War Pigs’ had the whole crowd singing every single word. Butler excelled on ‘N.I.B.’ before Ozzy instructed to “go feckin’ crazy” for ‘Iron Man’. There was always only ever going to be one song to end it all – ‘Paranoid’. Wow ,what a performance! Black Sabbath were really tight and it was a fantastic performance. Butler presented Ozzy with a cake and the lights went out. We were treated to a magnificent firework display from every side of Villa Park’s roof. At the end no one moved for quite some time. Everyone was just soaking up what they had just witnessed. There was no one there who didn’t want more of such a good thing.

I was going to sum my day by talking about the different times that I have seen Black Sabbath live over six different decades. However I found this quote from Anthrax: “The Back to the Beginning show was the best day of music we have ever been a part of! Thank you, Black Sabbath, for opening the door for all of us. Thank you for letting us be a part of your legacy. Thank you for all the hospitality over the years, and thank you for your friendship! We love you all.” Sums it all up really, if you were there then you know. I have been to almost 1,000 gigs, and I can comfortably say none of the others can come remotely close to “Back To The Beginning”. This was Heavy Metal Heaven for this aged rocker. Thank you Black Sabbath for all your music. Am I ever glad I flew 4,000 miles to be there.

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Review: Ken Roberts

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Disclaimer:

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