Tom Morello says Ozzy Osbourne’s death was “a terrible and tragic surprise”
Tom Morello has reflected on the passing of Ozzy Osbourne and recalled their final encounter together at Black Sabbath’s farewell concert in Birmingham last month.
Morello served as musical director for the event, overseeing performances from the likes of Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Tool, as well as Osbourne’s final solo set and his closing performance with Black Sabbath.
Osbourne passed away on July 22nd, aged 76, following a cardiac arrest at his family home in Buckinghamshire, just weeks after the iconic farewell concert in Birmingham.
In a recent interview with radio station Q101, Morello began by reflecting on Osbourne’s life, sharing, “Ozzy Osbourne had lived on the edge for such a long time, the fact he lived as long as he did was a miracle.”
He then discussed Back to the Beginning, joyfully saying, “The fact he lived to play and feel that love one more time, to do ‘Paranoid’, to do ‘Crazy Train’. If you have got to go – and I wish Ozzy lived another 30 years – if you’ve got to go out… it felt like he knew.”
Despite Morello conceding that Osbourne had been “frail for a while”, the Black Sabbath singer’s death still came as a shock to the guitarist. He explained, “Friends of mine saw him a week later at another event in Birmingham. He wasn’t on his deathbed. He was just sort of living his life. It was a terrible and tragic surprise.”
The former Rage Against The Machine member then said “Black Sabbath invented heavy metal”, and for Back to the Beginning, he “laid out to make it a great show for fans and for them.” Morello continued, “It is so unusual that those guys headlined. They got to see all the work they had done and the great artists their music had created perform for them.”
He emotionally continued: “They got to play and feel the love not just from the bands, the people in the stadium but from all over the world.”
In the same interview, Morello seemingly confirmed there were no plans for Rage Against The Machine to return to the stage again.
The guitarist said of their final shows in 2022: “We finished with five sold-out nights at Madison Square Garden. So if there’s never another show, then that’s quite a way to go out.”
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