Although Guns N’ Roses has been one of the biggest bands in the world since the late 1980s and has been touring for nearly four decades, Axl Rose and Ozzy Osbourne had never met until a few weeks before the Black Sabbath vocalist passed away. The first and only time they had the chance to speak to each other was during Black Sabbath’s final show at the Back to the Beginning festival, where Guns N’ Roses also performed.
The meeting was arranged by Slash, who had the opportunity to play with Ozzy on multiple occasions over the years, including on his final two solo albums, “Ordinary Man” (2020) and “Patient Number 9” (2022).
Slash recalls arranging the only meeting between Ozzy Osbourne and Axl Rose
“It was an amazing day. There was just such a massive feeling of warmth and camaraderie with all the different musicians. There was no attitude, there was no egos – all checked at the door – and it was the nicest get-together of musicians and crew and the fans. I’ve never experienced anything in my career that was as special as that particular event. Everybody wanted to go back and pay homage to Ozzy. So I went back there, and I got Axl back there to meet Ozzy for the first time, because they’d never met each other.”
“Axl, obviously, was always a fan of Ozzy. But what Axl didn’t know was that Ozzy was a huge fan of his! And so it was nice to see them actually meet. Ozzy and I had been buddies for a long time and I’d recorded with him a bunch of times. So we talked on the phone about getting together and he says, ‘Yeah, we should get together soon.”
He continued:
“I guess it was about a week after the gig. I thought, ‘Okay, at some point we’ll converge in a studio somewhere,’ and that was it. I was off on the road with Guns; we went off and finished what we were doing. And then all of a sudden I got that f*cking phone call. It was unbelievable,” Slash told Rolling Stone Australia (Transcribed by Ultimate Classic Rock).
During Guns N’ Roses’ performance at the Back to the Beginning festival, the band played “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Paradise City”, and also covered four Black Sabbath songs: “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath”, “Junior’s Eyes”, “Never Say Die”, and “It’s Alright”. The latter is a ballad originally sung by Bill Ward, which Guns N’ Roses had previously performed live and featured on their double live album “Live Era ’87–’93” (1999).