Heaven and hell

Their rows and injuries-are legendary, but Black Sabbath explain why they are reforming for one last star-studded hometown gig

-  Alexis Petridis

ON A VIDEO CALL FROM HIS HOME IN LOS ANGELES, Ozzy Osbourne is struggling to recall the exact details of recent years, ones he calls "the worst of my life". "How many surgeries have I had?" he wonders aloud.

"I've got more fucking metal in me than a scrap merchants." The trouble began in earnest in early 2019, when he was midway through what his wife and manager Sharon had firmly told him was his farewell tour. For one thing, both of them had been working constantly since their teens; for another, Ozzy had been diagnosed with a form of Parkinson's disease, after years of insisting an intermittent numbness in one of his legs was the result of a drinking binge (or rather its aftermath, during which he says he didn't move for two days). The tour was going well, but then he caught pneumonia, twice.

"And then I had an infection. I'm still on antibiotics to be honest with you, I had a thing put in the vein in my arm to feed in IV shots of them." Six years later, "I've still got it on - it comes out this week, with a bit of luck. Antibiotics knock the hell out of you." The European dates of the tour were postponed to give him time to recover. Then, in February 2019, "I went to the bathroom in the night, I didn't put the light on. I thought I knew where the bed was. I was stupid, I dived and there weren't a bed there. I landed straight on my face. I felt my neck go crunch. I went: 'Sharon! Call an ambulance!' She said: 'Where the hell are you? Get into bed!' I said: 'Sharon, don't ask questions.' I thought I was going to be paralysed."