Jack Osbourne has spoken out about the amount of charity money raised by Black Sabbath’s ‘Back To The Beginning’ concert.
The star-studded show went down at Villa Park in Birmingham on July 5 last year, the final show in the career of the metal icons, and one that took on added poignancy when Ozzy Osbourne passed away less than three weeks later.
In the immediate aftermath of the concert, its musical director, the Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello, claimed on Instagram that it had raised “more than $190million”, which was to be split evenly between Cure Parkinson’s, Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Acorns Children’s Hospice.
Ozzy’s widow Sharon, however, quickly moved to distance herself from that number, describing it as “ridiculous”, and asking, “where does this stuff come from?”
Now, Ozzy and Sharon’s son Jack has also dismissed Morello’s claims in a new interview with the Painful Lessons podcast. “The number was complete bullshit,” he said.
“This is how you know the news is probably 90% bullshit, ’cause it was, like, CNN and New York Times was saying ‘Ozzy raised $150 million.’ And it wasn’t that,” he continued. “Because it was a charity gig, you still have to pay for the actual gig. No bands got paid, and most of the crew donated their time. But I think when all said and done, each charity got, like, one and a half or two million pounds each.”
“So, it was, I think, six or seven million pounds. That’s what was donated to the three charities. I mean, we would’ve loved it if it was hundreds of millions. We would have been, like, ‘Fuck yeah.’”
Sharon also said in an episode of The Osbournes podcast in November that the true number raised by the show was around $11million (£8.24million).
‘Back to the Beginning’ marked the first time that the full classic line-up of Sabbath – Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward – had played together since 2005. They played a streamlined four-song set of their classic songs, with Ozzy telling the live crowd: “It’s the last song ever. Your support has enabled us to live an amazing lifestyle, thank you from the bottom of our hearts.”
Touching on the generosity of Ozzy’s peers, Sharon went on to say “We paid the cost of bringing everybody in, everybody out, accommodation, everything. No one got paid. Nobody asked for a penny. They gave their time, their efforts, everything for free. People were just, oh God, so generous.”
In other news, Jack recently said that Ozzy is visiting family members in their dreams, telling them to “stop fucking crying”, while Roger Waters has doubled down on his insensitive comments about Ozzy from shortly after he died.
