Due to scheduled conflicts, Judas Priest couldn’t make it to Black Sabbath’s final festival “Back to the Beginning”, which sadly marked Ozzy Osbourne‘s final performance, just a few weeks before his death at the age of 76. As a tribute to them, Priest released at the time a cover of “War Pigs” and now, they put out a new version featuring Ozzy Osbourne’s vocals.
According to the singer Rob Halford, it was Sharon Osbourne’s idea to feature Ozzy’s vocals on the new version, as he recalled in an interview with Full Metal Jackie. “She approached me with this idea, she said, ‘I love your version of ‘War Pigs.’ Is there a way we can get Ozzy? I was (like), ‘You’re asking me? This is gonna happen.'”
“So you get Ozzy singing a line and then I’m singing a line and Ozzy’s singing a line and I’m singing a line. It’s the first ever time in my entire life that I’ve been able to do a duet with Ozzy and I’m so eternally grateful and blessed that I was able to do that… it’s just going to a really special place,” Rob Halford said.
Sony Music Entertainment UK Ltd and Epic Records UK will donate all profits from audio streams, downloads, and physical sales to the Glenn Tipton Parkinson’s Foundation and Cure Parkinson’s. Like Ozzy, who suffered from Parkinson’s disease, Judas Priest guitarist Glenn Tipton has also struggled with the condition since 2018. Although he rarely performs live with Judas Priest these days, he is still involved in the studio recordings and played on this track.
Hear the Judas Priest version of “War Pigs” cover featuring Ozzy Osbourne
Rob Halford curiously was for a few nights the vocalist of Black Sabbath. The first time happened in the early 1990s when Black Sabbath at the time agreed to be Ozzy Osbourne’s opening act and Ronnie James Dio, who was their frontman at the time, refused to play that show because he thought it was a wrong move to be the opening act for their previous singer. So he was called and performed a full show with the band. More than a decade later, when Sabbath would reunite with Ozzy at Ozzfest, his festival, the singer was feeling sick and couldn’t perform with them
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