Ozzy Osbourne may have left us in July, but his legacy, larger-than-life, chaotic, and deeply human, is only growing in stature. With two major documentaries (No Escape From Now and Sharon & Ozzy Osbourne: Coming Home) and a posthumous memoir (Last Rites, out October 7) on the horizon, the world is reflecting on the Prince of Darkness’ extraordinary final chapter.
And in a newly published excerpt from Last Rites, Ozzy opened up about the most emotional moment of his farewell concert, Back To The Beginning, held on July 5, 2025, at Villa Park in Birmingham, a night that proved to be both a celebration and a goodbye.
The show itself was monumental. Rock and metal’s biggest names, Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Slayer, Tool and more, assembled to pay tribute to Ozzy and Black Sabbath. Just 17 days later, he would pass away at home in Buckinghamshire.
Yet Ozzy almost didn’t live to see that final performance. “It really was touch and go,” he wrote, recalling a terrifying battle with pneumonia and sepsis just months before the gig. “At my age, with Parkinson’s and blood clots and all the other shit that’s going on, I had about as much chance of surviving a major sepsis infection as I did of winning the next season of Love Island.”
Even Sharon and their children thought he wouldn’t make it. “Sharon didn’t tell me at the time, but the whole family basically thought I was a goner,” he admitted. “They sat at the bottom of the stairs and sobbed their hearts out.”
But Ozzy did make it. He performed five solo tracks before reuniting with Sabbath for a four-song set,War Pigs, N.I.B., Iron Man, and Paranoid. Yet nothing hit harder than Mama, I’m Coming Home.
“We got through I Don’t Know, Mr Crowley and Suicide Solution no problem at all,” he wrote. “I was having a ball. But I choked up when I started Mama, I’m Coming Home. I mean, it’s Sharon’s song, y’know? One of her favourites. Lemmy wrote it with the two of us in mind. That alone was enough to bring tears to my eyes.”
Elsewhere in the memoir, Ozzy dismisses “b*****it” rumours of a suicide pact with Sharon, clarifies his funeral wishes (“I don’t want to be cremated… I wanna make the flowers grow”), and shares his refusal to prolong life artificially: “If that happens to me, please… turn me off. Or fly me to Switzerland, give me one final sip of the jolly juice and send me out like a Viking.”
It’s vintage Ozzy, irreverent, brutally honest, and fiercely human. And Mama, I’m Coming Home now stands as more than just a classic power ballad, it’s the most poignant moment of a farewell that was never just a concert, but a goodbye from one of rock’s greatest ever icons.
