Inside BLACK SABBATH’s Final Reunion: TONY IOMMI On Bad Weather, Setlist Cuts & OZZY’s Stamina

If you’ve been living under a rock for the last week and somehow missed that Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne wrapped up their career at one final show called Back To The Beginning… that’s on you. Get yourself together.

If you’re with the times, you might be wondering how it all came to be. In a revealing conversation with Eddie Trunk on SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation, Black Sabbath‘s Tony Iommi offered a rare behind-the-scenes look at the band’s reunion — how it came together, the concerns that surfaced, and the emotional weight of performing again as the original lineup. The reunion didn’t start with instruments in hand. Instead, it began with honest conversation and reflection among old friends.

“Well, by the time we were finished talking about what’s, you know, our health and everything else, and then we sort of went into, just started playing and that’s really what we did,” Iommi said. “Just started, we worked out what we were gonna play, what songs we were gonna play.

“And it was really a case of how long Ozzy could do it, really, because we didn’t know – with him doing his own set, which I said to him, I didn’t think he should do because I didn’t want him to get burnt out by the time he come with us. But, you know, he didn’t, and he did his own set. And we didn’t know, we ended up doing four songs where we put aside sort of six or seven, but it worked out that we did four. So that was fine.”

Eddie Trunk expressed what many fans were thinking: how surprising and risky it was for Ozzy Osbourne to do a full solo set right before a Black Sabbath performance. For Iommi and the rest of the band, that decision raised red flags.

“Yeah, I mean, that was my concern and that was all our concern actually,” Iommi admitted. “Geezer and myself and Bill, we thought that he should have a longer break and we didn’t really know how we were gonna do it because the original plan was we got a curtain and the curtain was gonna be raised and we’d all be there.”

But even the best-laid stage plans sometimes fall apart: “Of course on the day, well the day before, when we went down for a soundcheck to the stadium, the curtain didn’t work and they thought best not to use it because it was windy,” Iommi recalled.

“So then we had to figure out how we’re gonna get on stage, which was a revolving stage, by the way. But it was mainly getting Ozzy on because he is in that, he’s in his throne. And then Geezer and I walk on, and Bill was already on, you know, it was making it up as we went on really.”

Later in the conversation, Iommi became more introspective. Being part of the reunion gave him a chance to reflect not just on his bandmates, but on the enormity of Black Sabbath’s influence on rock and metal.

“This for me, really brought it home and talking to the guys, I mean, they were so respectful and so insane, what you are saying now to me, you know, without you, we wouldn’t be here. This is like, you know, when we first all got together the day before to the photo sessions it was so nice for him to say that and to see all these people that we’ve known over the years, or, you know, they’ve either been on tour with us or have known them separately and to all come together.

“It was just, there’s never been anything like that in our sort of music. I think it was just incredible. And as I say to say that we started without us, they wouldn’t be there. Which was just mind blowing, you know?”