Tom Morello is “honoured” to be the musical director for Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath’s final concert.
The Rage Against The Machine rocker, 60, has been chosen by the Prince of Darkness and his wife and manager Sharon Osbourne to head up the epic ‘Back to the Beginning’ gig at Birmingham’s Villa Park on July 5 and described it as a “salute” to heavy metal.
Speaking on the Chicago radio station WBEZ, Morello said: “Heavy metal is the music that made me love music, and Black Sabbath is the band that invented heavy metal. So, when Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne asked me to be the musical director of what’s going to be the last Black Sabbath show — the last Ozzy Osbourne show in the soccer stadium that’s like a half-block down from where Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler, the bass player of Black Sabbath, grew up — I was honoured to do that.
“Right now, we have, like, 14 bands. You know, it’s Metallica, Guns N’ Roses. It’s, like, all the biggest bands in the history of heavy metal. The show is gonna be about 10 hours long, but it’s gonna be a salute to a genre that people all around the world love. You know, it’s been the music that has really made me love music. I’m interested in a lot of different kinds of music now, but I never would have been interested in any kind of music had it not been for metal.”
Metallica, Slayer, Pantera, Gojira, Halestorm, Alice in Chains, Lamb of God, Anthrax and Mastodon area among the metal heavyweights set to take to the stage.
A supergroup including Guns N’ Roses’ Slash, Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan, Korn’s Jonathan Davis, Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst, and Wolfgang Van Halen and Morello will also perform.
Teasing his involvement, Morello said: “Oh, of course, I will be up there. Speaking of Northern Illinois, this may be a little bit of a spoiler alert, but Adam Jones, the guitarist of Tool, he and I went to Libertyville High School together and played in a band. Billy Corgan, the singer of Smashing Pumpkins, grew up a few suburbs over. The three of us are going to play together for the first time ever at the show. So, there’ll be an 847 connection.”
Osbourne, 76, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in February 2019 and has lost his ability to walk, owing to a longstanding spinal injury and the disease impacting his mobility, and requires a walking aide to get about.
However, ahead of the concert, he’s miraculously been building up his fitness levels in the gym.
That’s according to producer and friend, Andrew Watt, who told ‘The Howard Stern Show’: “He’s [Ozzy] okay. It’s just his body is not doing what he wants it to do all the time.
“But I talked to him a couple days ago, and he’s, like, starting to get in the gym again a little bit by little, get himself ready for this last concert. He is the real-life Iron Man. And nothing has happened to his voice — his voice is as good as it has ever been.”
Proceeds from the event will go to Cure Parkinson’s, Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Acorn Children’s Hospice.
Tickets are sold out and many fans were left stunned by the eye-watering prices.