Tony Iommi reveals which songs Black Sabbath almost played at final show

Black Sabbath played the final show of their career last July 5 at the Villa Park in their hometown Birmingham and their set had four songs: “War Pigs”, “N.I.B.”, “Iron Man” and “Paranoid”. However, the band could have played a couple of more tracks according to the guitarist Tony Iommi. He told Eddie Trunk that at first he thought Ozzy shouldn’t play songs of his solo career before to make sure his voice would be ok to sing with Sabbath afterwards.

Tony Iommi reveals which songs Black Sabbath almost played at final show

“Well, we started (to rehearse) with ‘Fairies Wear Boots’, and then we’d done ‘Black Sabbath‘. It was a little difficult for Bill ’cause he hadn’t played them for so long. And Geezer and I, of course, we played them on the last tour. And, of course, Bill hasn’t toured, don’t forget, for a long time. So we could have done six (songs), but we ended up doing four.”

(…) After it’s happened (the show), it’s fine. Yeah, of course. I mean, it raised a lot of money for the charities, and that was the main thing. And it was great to see the guys and all be together again for a few weeks, really, while we were rehearsing and got to know each other again. It was good, yeah. I live in England and the other three are in the States. So by everybody coming over, yes, we had time to talk and talk of old times. And it just slotted straight back into like we hadn’t left each other, which was great.”

He continued:

“And of course, a lot’s happened in the last — whatever — 10 years or whatever it was (since) we’d done a show (with Black Sabbath), and, of course, as I said to you before, we hadn’t played with Bill live for 20 years, so it was hairy wondering what’s gonna happen, really. Because Bill, when he plays, he plays different things every time. So you just have to be on your toes. But no, it went well. I mean, it was strange for us going on a big stage in a big audience, and then also being streamed to millions of people. It’s very nerve racking for a one-off show. Normally we would do a tour and we’d be rolling, but to get all worked up for one show and then — bang, it’s over — seemed really strange.”

“We worked out what we were gonna play, what songs we were gonna play. It was really a case of how long Ozzy could do it, really, because we didn’t know — with him doing his own set (right before), which I said to him I didn’t think he should do, because I didn’t want him to get burnt out by the time he’d come with us. But he didn’t, and he did his own set. We ended up doing four songs where we put aside sort of six or seven. But it worked out that we did four. So that was fine,” Tony Iommi said (Transcribed by Blabbermouth).

The final Black Sabbath festival

Besides the two headliners, many famous artists were part of the “tribute festival“, like Slayer, Metallica, Anthrax, Guns N’ Roses, Steven Tyler, Papa V Perpetua, Sammy Hagar, Jake E. Lee, Billy Corgan and Nuno Bettencourt.

The bands performed Black Sabbath and Ozzy covers, but also played some of their most famous songs in small sets, of 3 to 6 songs. Many covers from other bands were also performed, like the supergroup with Steven Tyler on vocals, which played, for example, Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love”. Ozzy Osbourne sang five songs of his solo career and four more with Black Sabbath.