Nuno Bettencourt reveals final conversation with Ozzy Osbourne: “I love you”
Guitarist Nuno Bettencourt has detailed his emotional final conversation with the late rock icon Ozzy Osbourne.
Bettencourt’s last meeting with Osbourne came at Back to the Beginning in Birmingham at Villa Park, which took place just weeks before the Black Sabbath frontman passed away and marked his final performance.
Now, in a new interview with Page Six at the MTV VMAs, Bettencourt detailed the last time he spoke to Osbourne, sharing, “The last words we said to each other when we took the big group photo and I was at his feet, I grabbed his hand and said, ‘Thank you for everything. Thank you Ozzy for what you mean to me.'”
The Extreme guitarist continued, “And he pulls me in by the hand and goes, ‘You were the only guitar player who said no to me’. But he laughed, he goes, ‘I love you’ and he laughed.”
Bettencourt initially auditioned to become Osbourne’s band as a teenager despite being an unknown musician. He sent a cassette tape to Ozzy’s team, and unsurprisingly, didn’t hear anything back. Then, in 1993, he was finally asked to join, but rejected the proposal because of his loyalties to Extreme.
During an interview with Rick Beato in 2024, Bettencourt admitted this was a mistake, sharing, “I was trying to carve my own path, and be my own person. I don’t know what I was thinking; I should have done it.”
At Back to the Beginning, Bettencourt was part of Yungblud’s backing band for his show-stopping performance of Black Sabbath classic, ‘Changes’. On September 7th at the MTV VMAs in New York, Bettencourt reunited with Yungblud alongside Steven Tyler and Joe Perry to perform a medley of Osbourne’s greatest hits, delivering electrifying renditions of ‘Changes’, ‘Crazy Train’, and ‘Mama, I’m Coming Home’.
Before the performance at the UBS Arena got underway, a video message from Jack Osbourne and Ozzy’s grandchildren was played to introduce the set. “I know for sure it would make him incredibly happy to see these great musicians carry on his legacy,” Jack said, before joining forces with the younger Osbournes to shout, “Let’s go crazy”.
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