Ozzy Osbourne struggled before last show
Ozzy Osbourne was having health problems even at the airport as he went to the final Black Sabbath show in Birmingham.
“The cherry on top was when they made me get out of my wheelchair and ‘walk’ through the body scanner,” Ozzy said in a new documentary. “I almost went through that thing arse over tit. Well… this is going smoothly, I thought.”
“Three days after we finally got to England, I was back in hospital,” Ozzy said. “My blood pressure kept me there for eight days, during which I had nothing to do but worry. Because the show kept getting bigger.”
“As all these huge names were announced – Guns N’ Roses, Metallica, Steven Tyler from Aerosmith – I was like, ‘holy fuck, it’s gonna be like metal’s answer to Live Aid.’ Lying in bed at night, I’d be like, ‘I can’t go, I can’t do this.’ I kept saying to Sharon, ‘We’d better get a video made ‘cos there’ll be an empty stage.’ She just looked at me like I was mad. She knows me better than I do. She knew I was just scared.”
“Eventually, Sharon said, ‘Look, there’ll be no backup plan. No video. No prerecorded anything. If you can’t sing on the night, just talk to the crowd and thank them. All you need to do is get up there and be Ozzy.”
Ozzy Osbourne’s final albums
While speaking to Rolling Stone in a new interview about his relationship with the late Ozzy Osbourne, Grammy-winning producer Andrew Watt admitted that he owes his success to the legendary musician.
Watt produced Ozzy’s final two studio albums, 2020’s “Ordinary Man” and 2022’s “Patient Number 9.”
“When we made all those albums together, he was recovering from this accident [a fall at home] that he had,” he recalled. “And it was the first time that I was ever making music where I realized that music was something bigger than just making songs. It was giving him a purpose when he didn’t feel well and making him feel great and laugh and sing and dance and heal. Those two albums were incredible, and they, for me, are the reason why I’m here talking to you today.”
He continued, crediting the late Black Sabbath frontman for jump-starting the path that led to projects with the Rolling Stones, Pearl Jam, Lady Gaga, and more.
“It changed everything for me. He saw me as a serious album producer,” Watt said. “Up until then, I wasn’t really making full albums. I had made one or two full albums that I was involved in, but I wasn’t doing it like that. And he saw in me that I could do this. And it was a dream come true.
“He gave me the confidence, and he taught me so much about how to mix rock music and take it all the way to the end. He really believed in me. He let me play guitar on his albums, and that’s just unbelievable. We were really big for each other, both as collaborators and as friends.”
“And, f*ck, man, more than anything, I miss the laughter. He’s the funniest person ever of all time,” Watt added.
