In August 2022, Ozzy Osbourne made an emotional return to his hometown of Birmingham, England, headlining the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games. It was his first major appearance after years of health setbacks, and it would become one of the final landmark performances of his career. Surrounded by roaring crowds inside Alexander Stadium, he stood where his story began and delivered a ferocious reminder of who he has always been — the Prince of Darkness, back on home soil.
Sharing the stage with Tony Iommi, the guitarist who formed Black Sabbath with him more than 50 years earlier, Ozzy tore through two of the band’s most defining songs: Paranoid and Iron Man. Supported by drummer Tommy Clufetos and bassist/keyboardist Adam Wakeman, the performance was tight, loud, and emotionally volcanic. Ozzy later described the moment with stunning clarity. When the first note of Iron Man hit through the stadium, he said it went straight through him — “in the bowels, your teeth, your bones.” It felt, he wrote, “like the gates of hell grinding open.”
For Ozzy, the night was more than nostalgia. It was homecoming and closure. He looked out over Birmingham, the same streets and neighborhoods he had once tried so desperately to escape, and felt the arc of his life folding back into itself. “I was home. I’d made it,” he said. The only regret he voiced afterward was that they couldn’t play longer. The energy, he insisted, was still rising when the night had to end.
The emotional resonance spread far beyond the stadium. Brian May of Queen — another giant of British rock — later admitted that the show made him cry. Watching Ozzy and Iommi stand side by side again, he called it “epic” and said he was moved “more than I expected.” When Sharon Osbourne told Ozzy about May’s reaction, he was “totally, utterly overwhelmed.” The praise from a peer meant as much as the cheers from the crowd.
What no one fully knew at the time was that Ozzy only had a handful of live appearances left. He would go on to perform only twice more before his death in July 2025. With that knowledge, the Commonwealth Games show has taken on a nearly mythic aura. It wasn’t just a performance; it was a final salute from a man who helped invent heavy metal.
It was the sound of a legacy coming full circle: Ozzy in Birmingham, with Iommi at his side, roaring to the sky while the crowd erupted around him. The spark was still there. The voice, bruised but unmistakable, was still pure steel. And the emotion — from fans, from family, from fellow legends like Brian May — proved what the music always did: as long as Ozzy stood at a microphone, rock was alive.
