Tom Morello says it ‘felt like Ozzy knew’ he was dying at Black Sabbath farewell concert

Guitarist who served as curator for Osbourne’s farewell show in Birmingham reflected on the rocker’s state of mind during the emotional day

Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello says that he felt Ozzy Osbourne “knew” he would be dying shortly after his final Black Sabbath show in Birmingham earlier this year.

Osbourne, whose band are widely credited with pioneering the heavy metal genre, died aged 76 on 22 July, just two weeks after their farewell performance at Villa Park.

“If you have got to go — I mean, I wish Ozzy lived another 30 years — but if you’ve got to go out, it really felt like he knew,” Morello told Chicago’s Q101 radio show.

“On the day, a million things could have gone wrong, and maybe like three things did,” he explained about the experience. “But it felt like a spiritually great moment for all fans of rock and roll.”

Morello said that his friends saw Osbourne, whom he called one of the “all-time greats”, a week later. His death had come as”terrible” news, he said, although he added that the singer had been “frail for a while” and it was a “miracle” that he lived for as long as he did.

Fans who watched the performance also felt that Osbourne had been intent on sticking around long enough to play his final gig.

Osbourne died two weeks after his farewell performance in Birmingham, UK (Getty Images for The Rock and Ro)

“Ozzy knew he was only days from passing away, and still pulled through with the most legendary concert in recent history,” one viewer claimed after the legendary musician’s death.

On social media, fans hailed the gig as the “most moving moment in metal history”.

The event, which was live-streamed around the world to an audience of 5.8 million, raised funds for charity to be split between Cure Parkinson's, Birmingham Children’s Hospital, and Acorn Children’s Hospice.

“It’s so good to be on this f***ing stage, you have no idea”, Osbourne, who overcame a number of health issues in order to play the concert, told his audience.

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In a five-star review for The Independent, critic Mark Beaumont called the gig a “celebration of the delicious darkness Osbourne and his coven unleashed over five decades ago, and the behemoth it’s become”.

Tom Morello paid tribute to an ‘all-time great’ (AP)

Osbourne’s official death certificate listed his cause of death as “acute myocardial infarction” – typically meaning the death of tissue resulting from a failure of blood supply to an organ – and “out of hospital cardiac arrest”, or heart attack.

The certificate also listed coronary artery disease and Parkinson’s disease with autonomic dysfunction as “joint causes” of death, according to the publication.