When Black Sabbath’s Back To The Beginning event was announced in February, it was met with excitement from every corner of the globe. For one day only, the heavy metal godfathers’ founding lineup – Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward – will reunite in a stadium spectacular raising money for charity. The resulting demand led to tickets selling out within minutes and hotels in a multi-mile radius hiking up their prices… but what if we told you this exact thing has happened before?
In 1985, it had been six years since Osbourne got booted from metal’s founding foursome, and internal disarray following 1983 album Born Again (featuring ex-Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan, plus a butt-ugly baby on the cover) had put the entire band on ice. However, none of that stopped Bob Geldof’s charity bonanza Live Aid from reaching out, seeing if they’d regroup in the name of raising funds for famine-afflicted Ethiopia.
