Black Sabbath’s Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler Talk ‘Bittersweet’ Finale
When we first came to the States and we stayed at the Hyatt House in Los Angeles, I thought, ‘Fucking hell, we’re in California,'” Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne says in a way that sounds both amazed and matter-of-fact. “The people were cool, the weather was great, we were swimming in an outdoor pool at midnight, we had drugs, alcohol, women and fucking parties. It was a great way to spend your young years.”
“Now we have private planes, the best suites in the best hotels, but the downside is there’s no drugs and no women,” the group’s generally more reserved bassist, Geezer Butler, age 66, says with a laugh. “You come offstage and have a cup of tea and go to bed.”
“I was the fucking rebel for so many years,” says Osbourne, age 67. “Now I can’t understand why I was going out, getting full of Jack Daniel’s, having a bag of white powder and talking shit ’til daybreak, thinking that was fun. I would poke my fucking eyes out if I had to do that now.” The singer is now three years clean of alcohol and drugs, and it’s been 15 since he had a cigarette.
Black Sabbath may no longer live every day like Caligula on his lunch break, but by Osbourne’s estimation, their career has come full circle. On Wednesday, they will play the first date of their farewell tour, which they’ve dubbed “The End.” “I don’t want to drag it into the dirt,” the singer says. The band members — Osbourne, Butler and guitarist Tony Iommi, who is 67 — so far have signed up for 80 gigs around the world that stretch into next year, though they may extend the run. And even though they opted out of recording a follow-up to their doomy comeback LP, 2013’s 13 — which earned them their first Number One in the U.S. — they’re not ruling out recording together when the tour is done. For now, the bassist has mixed emotions about the final run of Sabbath shows. “It’ll be bittersweet,” he says. “I’m glad we’re finishing on a high note but sad that it’s the end of what I’ve known for most of my life.”
The decision to do a final tour “just kind of happened,” according to Osbourne. The band, which formed in 1968 and settled on several names including Earth before issuing their 1970 debut Black Sabbath, has been through many incarnations since it arguably founded heavy metal (“I hate that terminology,” Osbourne says, “because it goes from Poison to fucking Black Sabbath and there is quite a fucking difference”), but it has been mostly stable in recent years. It had played several runs of dates in support of 13 in 2013 and 2014 and took a year off in 2015. “I thought the last tour was going to be the end,” says Butler, who would like to see the trek stretch to Sabbath’s 50th anniversary but isn’t counting on it. “This time, we thought, ‘Well, we got one more tour left in us — let’s go out and do it while we can. We’re all aware of our mortality these days. So while we still can all play really well, we decided we’d do one more tour and go out on top.”