Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi has confessed to "excitement mixed with fear" as his band's last ever gig draws ever closer.
The original Black Sabbath line-up - Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward - will reunite once more to play their farewell show at Birmingham's Villa Park on July 5, and, in common with his bandmates, the guitarist admits to a certain amount of trepidation as to how the day might play out.
"This would be a big, monumental thing if it all comes good," he tells Music Week. "The worrying thing for me is the unknown. We don't know what's going to happen."
"Normally, when we'd tour, we'd rehearse and run through the thing for a while, and it's just us," he adds. "But with this event there are so many other moving parts."
The one-day Back To The Beginning event will see Sabbath's classic line-up play together for the first time since 2005, and will also feature Ozzy Osbourne's final solo performance.
A star-studded supporting cast which includes Metallica, Tool, Guns N' Roses, Slayer, Alice In Chains, Mastodon, Halestorm, Lamb of God and more will pay tribute to the Godfathers of Metal, and there will also be appearances from Billy Corgan, Fred Durst, Jonathan Davis, Wolfgang Van Halen, Papa V Perpetua, Sammy Hagar, Zakk Wylde, Jake E Lee and others, with Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine) acting as the event’s musical director.
