Black Sabbath Founding Member Tony Iommi Gives the Final Word on the Possibility of Future Shows

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2 days ago

Tony Iommi says Black Sabbath's Back to the Beginning concert will absolutely be the end. The legendary guitarist, who will reunite with bandmates Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward at Birmingham's Villa Park on July 5 for their first live performance in 20 years, told BBC Midlands Today that there is no possibility that the iconic rock band will ever play together in the future.
"We're never going to do this again, this will be it," Iommi, 77, confirmed.
'We're all nervous really,' the rocker admitted of the band's highly publicized final show. "This is totally different from anything else we've done, you know we've played for 300,000 people, but this is nerve-wracking."
"People are coming from all over the world, and I just can't absorb it,' Iommi added. 'It's been tough, because none of us are getting younger, and to stand there for a couple of hours is tiring.'
Iommi previously told Music Week he was worried about how the band's final show would go amid lead singer Ozzy Osbourne's struggles with Parkinson's disease. "The worrying thing for me is the unknown,' he said in the interview, per Louder. 'We don't know what's going to happen. …It's a nerve-wracking thing, as we'll be touching on some stuff that we haven't done for a long time,' he added.
Iommi also explained that the band only agreed to reunite for the Back to the Beginning concert because it would be a charity show. "It's absolutely the end,' he said of Black Sabbath, which he formed in 1968 with Osbourne, Butler, and Ward. 'There's no way we could go out and do a tour.'
Iommi's confirmation comes after longtime Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde expressed hope that Black Sabbath could tour again in the future with some accommodations for the singer's illness. Speaking with Rolling Stone, Wylde predicted that concert promoters will be all over the Back to the Beginning gig.
'I'm sure the promoters are going to go, 'Wow, that was pretty amazing. Let's do another world tour right now,'' Wylde, 58, predicted. 'If they do this Sabbath thing and it sounds amazing, and Ozzy sings great, and the band sounds amazing, and the only difference is Oz is just sitting down [on a throne]…Why not, right? You know every promoter's just got their fingers crossed on this one."Black Sabbath Founding Member Tony Iommi Gives the Final Word on the Possibility of Future Shows first appeared on Men's Journal on Jul 5, 2025