Ozzy Osbourne has plans that go beyond the band’s final Black Sabbath performance, despite the fact that he announced he would be retiring after the band’s most recent performance.
On July 5, Black Sabbath are getting ready to rock one last time.
Ozzy Osbourne has insisted his final live show next weekend won’t be the end of his career – and he is not the only band member struggling to be ready for the final Black Sabbath gig.
The singer, 76, revealed in a new interview he still has projects he hopes to complete despite his Parkinson’s disease. Ozzy told Metal Hammer magazine: “I am very blessed to say my goodbyes with the help of so many amazing musicians and friends. From the late 60s, we are probably one of the only bands where the original members are still alive and speaking with one another, as my wife says, it’s an invisible bond that can’t be broken.”
He continued, “I still enjoy doing my own work.” I also enjoy singing at other people’s music. I’ll continue to record if the projects appeal to me for the foreseeable future. It is very significant.
However, Ozzy is not the only Black Sabbath member who needs to focus on getting ready for their final performance at Villa Park, Back To The Beginning, on Saturday.
Ozzy Osbourne has insisted his final live show next weekend won’t be the end of his career(Image: AP)
Drummer Bill Ward hasn’t played a stadium performance in a while. In his late 70s, he is preparing for what will be a physically demanding performance the following weekend.
Continue reading the article.
He said: “I played for two hours yesterday, very loud. I’m doing sparring, boxing that keeps my upper body fit.”
When asked if he is returning to the band for another reason, he replies, “They’re still my brothers. They’ll always be my brothers. No matter how heated our disagreements are. I was a child of them. They are my favorites.
Bill continued, “Black Sabbath was the best thing that ever occurred to me.” If I had been a lost child in my teenage years, I would have had to identify with only drums and rock and roll.
He continued, “I knew we were good from the first time we played together; I believed we could do a lot of damage, change things, and take us to a new dimension,” adding from his Southern California home. And we succeeded.
Ozzy isn’t ready to pack in his music career just yet(Image: Mirrorpix)
Without Bill, bass player Geezer Butler said, “I wouldn’t have thought about it.” The original four of us playing together was the main goal of this last show’s conclusion.
Tony Iommi, a guitarist, said, “Sabath is over for me. This will be done, and that is it.
How do I want to be remembered? for the solutions we offered. for promoting the music and encouraging other bands to advance.
Ozzy and Black Sabbath will play their final performance at Villa Park in Birmingham on July 5th as part of a concert titled “Back To The Beginning.”
For the first time in 20 years, this show will bring together the original band members, including Bill Ward, Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Tony Ward.
Black Sabbath will perform their last gig in Birmingham this summer(Image: Getty Images)
Without Ward on the drums, the band played its “last” gig in 2017 in Birmingham with Osborne, guitarist Iommi, and bassist Butler.
Ozzy, who has Parkinson’s disease, described last month how he has been receiving physical therapy and training in Los Angeles in an effort to get fit enough to perform on stage after battling a list of ailments.
Sharon, Ozzy’s wife, stated that he collaborates with his therapist daily. He’s actually doing really well. Because of his fans, Ozzy’s top priority in life is to be ready for them, making this show the ideal ending.
* Black Sabbath – End of an Era, by Mirror Collection, can be ordered HERE.
EXCLUSIVE: Ozzy Osbourne has plans that go beyond the final Black Sabbath gig – despite announcing that he will be retiring after the band’s last ever performance
Black Sabbath are getting ready to rock one last time on July 5
Ozzy Osbourne has insisted his final live show next weekend won’t be the end of his career – and he is not the only band member struggling to be ready for the final Black Sabbath gig.
The singer, 76, revealed in a new interview he still has projects he hopes to complete despite his Parkinson’s disease. Ozzy told Metal Hammer magazine: “I am very blessed to say my goodbyes with the help of so many amazing musicians and friends. From the late 60s, we are probably one of the only bands where the original members are still alive and speaking with one another, as my wife says, it’s an invisible bond that can’t be broken.”
He added: “I still enjoy doing my own work. I also enjoy singing on other people’s work. For the foreseeable future, I will keep on recording if the projects interest me. It’s very important.”
But Ozzy is not the only Black Sabbath member needing to prepare hard for their final show next weekend at Villa Park, called Back To The Beginning.
Ozzy Osbourne has insisted his final live show next weekend won’t be the end of his career(Image: AP)
Drummer Bill Ward hasn’t played a stadium gig for many years. He is building up to what will be a physically demanding performance next weekend, in his late 70s.
Article continues below
He said: “I played for two hours yesterday, very loud. I’m doing sparring, boxing that keeps my upper body fit.”
Asked for the other reason why he is returning to the band he says “They’re still my brothers. They’ll always be my brothers. It doesn’t matter how much we argue. I grew up with them. I love them.”
Bill added: “Black Sabbath was the best thing that ever happened to me. My life would have been terrible otherwise I was a lost kid in my teenage years, all I could identify with was drums and rock and roll.”
Speaking from his home in Southern California, he added: “I knew we were good from the first time we played with each other, I had this feeling inside that we could do something bold and strange and could do a lot of damage and change things and propel us into a different dimension. And we did.”
Ozzy isn’t ready to pack in his music career just yet(Image: Mirrorpix)
Bass player Geezer Butler told Metal Hammer magazine: “I wouldn’t have contemplated it without Bill. The whole point of this last show was to finish with the original four of us playing together.”
Guitarist Tony Iommi added: “For me, it’s all over with Sabbath. We’ll do this and then that’s it.
“How do I want to be remembered? For what we brought to the table. For bringing the music out and inspiring other bands to build on it.”
Ozzy and Black Sabbath will headline their final gig on July 5th at Villa Park in Birmingham, as part of an event titled “Back To The Beginning”.
This show will reunite the original band members – Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward – for the first time in 20 years.
Black Sabbath will perform their last gig in Birmingham this summer(Image: Getty Images)
The band played its “last” gig in 2017 in Birmingham with Osborne, guitarist Iommi and bassist Butler but without Ward on drums.
Ozzy, who is suffering from Parkinson’s disease, told last month how he has been having physical therapy and training with a trainer virtually living with him in Los Angeles in a bid to get him fit enough to perform on stage after a catalogue of illnesses.
Ozzy’s wife Sharon said: “Ozzy’s working with his therapist every single day. He’s doing really well, actually. Ozzy’s number one thing in life is his fans, so he’s working hard to be ready for them, to make this show the perfect way to end things.”
* Black Sabbath – End of an Era, by Mirror Collection, can be ordered HERE.
A surprise guest stole the show at Rizzle Kicks’ performance on The Other Stage. As the musicians took to the stage at Glastonbury fans went wild as Jordan Stephens made a special announcement.
He introduced his mum mid-way through the set and she made a memorable appearance on stage. She donned a green wig during their hit ‘Mama Do the Hump’, prompting Stephens to exclaim, “Give it up for my mum!” The ecstatic crowd went wild with cheers.
Even the renowned DJ Fatboy Slim, who joined the duo on stage, couldn’t match the enthusiasm sparked by Stephens’ mum. Despite the chaos, with thousands of fans packed in and jostling to get closer to the stage, the set list was full to bursting.
Rizzle Kicks play the Other Stage at Glastonbury 2025(Image: Rowan Griffiths / Daily Mirror)
Among those played were fan favourites like ‘Lost Generation’, ‘When I Was a Youngster’, along with some of their latest tracks.
In a tongue-in-cheek moment, Stephens stood on a podium labelled “LOSER” during the song ‘When I was a Youngster’. However, judging by the crowd’s adoration, Rizzle Kicks are definitely winners in their eyes, reports Somerset Live.
Article continues below
Elsewhere on Friday, Lewis Capaldi made a surprise comeback. The Scottish singer returned to the stage after a two-year hiatus.
Earlier today, Lewis released a new song called Survive. Alongside his announcement post, Lewis shared a video and captioned it: “It’s been a while.”
The new song is full of emotion with lyrics including “I swear to God I’ll survive” and “I’m going to get up and live until the day that I die,” his first new release since stepping out of the spotlight because of his mental health.
Lewis has been open about his mental health and hypochondria in recent years. .In 2022, he said: “If I’m having a panic attack there’s nobody else that can help me out of it except my mum, for sure.
“My mum has had to sleep in my bed as recently as a month ago because of how bad my anxiety got at one point. But I think that was alcohol related to be honest, I had been on a bit of a bender.”
Lewis Capaldi surprised fans at Glastonbury
Article continues below
He went on: “It never really reached a tipping point until after getting famous, I never had a panic attack until after I was famous, or after I was a musician or after I got to a height.
“The hypochondria – I guess looking back, I was such an anxious kid, but now because I understand it a lot more with therapy and I speak about it a lot more with people and try to learn more about it, I look back at it and think the behaviour was a result of anxiety.”
A surprise guest stole the show at Rizzle Kicks’ performance on The Other Stage. As the musicians took to the stage at Glastonbury fans went wild as Jordan Stephens made a special announcement.
He introduced his mum mid-way through the set and she made a memorable appearance on stage. She donned a green wig during their hit ‘Mama Do the Hump’, prompting Stephens to exclaim, “Give it up for my mum!” The ecstatic crowd went wild with cheers.
Even the renowned DJ Fatboy Slim, who joined the duo on stage, couldn’t match the enthusiasm sparked by Stephens’ mum. Despite the chaos, with thousands of fans packed in and jostling to get closer to the stage, the set list was full to bursting.
Rizzle Kicks play the Other Stage at Glastonbury 2025(Image: Rowan Griffiths / Daily Mirror)
Among those played were fan favourites like ‘Lost Generation’, ‘When I Was a Youngster’, along with some of their latest tracks.
In a tongue-in-cheek moment, Stephens stood on a podium labelled “LOSER” during the song ‘When I was a Youngster’. However, judging by the crowd’s adoration, Rizzle Kicks are definitely winners in their eyes, reports Somerset Live.
Article continues below
Elsewhere on Friday, Lewis Capaldi made a surprise comeback. The Scottish singer returned to the stage after a two-year hiatus.
Earlier today, Lewis released a new song called Survive. Alongside his announcement post, Lewis shared a video and captioned it: “It’s been a while.”
The new song is full of emotion with lyrics including “I swear to God I’ll survive” and “I’m going to get up and live until the day that I die,” his first new release since stepping out of the spotlight because of his mental health.
Lewis has been open about his mental health and hypochondria in recent years. .In 2022, he said: “If I’m having a panic attack there’s nobody else that can help me out of it except my mum, for sure.
“My mum has had to sleep in my bed as recently as a month ago because of how bad my anxiety got at one point. But I think that was alcohol related to be honest, I had been on a bit of a bender.”
Lewis Capaldi surprised fans at Glastonbury
Article continues below
He went on: “It never really reached a tipping point until after getting famous, I never had a panic attack until after I was famous, or after I was a musician or after I got to a height.
“The hypochondria – I guess looking back, I was such an anxious kid, but now because I understand it a lot more with therapy and I speak about it a lot more with people and try to learn more about it, I look back at it and think the behaviour was a result of anxiety.”
Ukraine’s European allies pledged increased levels of military aid to Ukraine this year, making up for a United States aid freeze, as Russian President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed his ambition to absorb all of Ukraine into the Russian Federation.
“At this moment, the Europeans and the Canadians have pledged, for this year, $35bn in military support to Ukraine,” said NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte ahead of the alliance’s annual summit, which took place in The Hague on Tuesday and Wednesday, June 24-25.
“Last year, it was just over $50bn for the full year. Now, before we reach half year, it is already at $35bn. And there are even others saying it’s already close to $40bn,” he added.
The increase in European aid partly made up for the absence of any military aid offers so far from the Trump administration.
In April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offered to buy the US Patriot air defence systems Ukraine needs to fend off daily missile and drone attacks.
The Trump administration made its first sale of weapons to Ukraine the following month, but only of F-16 aircraft parts.
At The Hague this week, Zelenskyy said he discussed those Patriot systems with Trump. At a news conference on Wednesday, Trump said: “We’re going to see if we can make some available,” referring to interceptors for existing Patriot systems in Ukraine. “They’re very hard to get. We need them too, and we’ve been supplying them to Israel,” he said.
Russia has made a ceasefire conditional on Ukraine’s allies stopping the flow of weapons to it and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov repeated that condition on Saturday.
On June 20, Vladimir Putin revealed that his ambition to annex all of Ukraine had not abated.
“I have said many times that the Russian and Ukrainian people are one nation, in fact. In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours,” he declared at a media conference to mark the opening of the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum on Friday, June 20.
“But you know we have an old parable, an old rule: wherever a Russian soldier steps, it is ours.”
“Wherever a Russian soldier steps, he brings only death, destruction, and devastation,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the next day.
In a post on the Telegram messaging platform on June 21, Zelenskyy wrote that Putin had “spoken completely openly”.
“Yes, he wants all of Ukraine,” he said. “He is also speaking about Belarus, the Baltic states, Moldova, the Caucasus, countries like Kazakhstan.”
German army planners agreed about Putin’s expansionism, deeming Russia an “existential threat” in a new strategy paper 18 months in the making, leaked to Der Spiegel news magazine last week.
Moscow was preparing its military leadership and defence industries “specifically to meet the requirements for a large-scale conflict against NATO by the end of this decade”, the paper said.
“We in Germany ignored the warnings of our Baltic neighbours about Russia for too long. We have recognised this mistake,” said German chancellor Friedrich Merz on Tuesday, highlighting the reason for an about-turn from his two predecessors’ refusal to spend more on defence.
“There is no going back from this realisation. We cannot expect the world around us to return to calmer times in the near future,” he added.
Germany, along with other European NATO allies, agreed on Wednesday to raise defence spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product by 2035.
It was a sign of the increasingly common threat perception from Russia, but also a big win for Trump, who had demanded that level of spending shortly after winning re-election as US president last year.
Of that, 1.5 percent is for military-related spending like dual-purpose infrastructure, emergency healthcare, cybersecurity and civic resilience.
Even Trump, who has previously expressed admiration for Putin, seemed to be souring on him.
“I consider him a person that’s, I think, been misguided,” he said after a moment’s thought at his NATO news conference. “I’m very surprised actually. I thought we would have had that settled easy,” referring to the conflict in Ukraine. “Vladimir Putin really has to end that war,” he said.
In the early weeks of his administration, Trump appeared to think it was up to Ukraine to end the war.
Putin continued his ground war during the week of the NATO summit, launching approximately 200 assaults each day, according to Ukraine’s General Staff – a high average.
Ukraine, itself, was fighting 695,000 Russian troops on its territory, said Zelenskyy on Saturday, with another 52,000 attempting to create a new front in Sumy, northeast Ukraine.
“This week they advanced 200 metres towards Sumy, and we pushed them back 200–400 metres,” he said, a battle description typical of the stagnation Russian troops face along the thousand-kilometre front.
(Al Jazeera)
Terror from the air
Russia continued its campaign of demoralisation among Ukrainian civilians, sending drones and missiles into Ukraine’s cities.
Russian drones and missiles killed 30 civilians and injured 172 in Kyiv on June 19.
“This morning I was at the scene of a Russian missile hitting a house in Kyiv,” said Zelenskyy. “An ordinary apartment building. The missile went through all the floors to the basement. Twenty-three people were killed by just one Russian strike.”
“There was no military sense in this strike, it added absolutely nothing to Russia militarily,” he said.
Overnight, Russia attacked Odesa, Kharkiv and their suburbs with more than 20 strike drones. At least 10 of the drones struck Odesa. A four-storey building engulfed in flames partly collapsed on top of rescue workers, injuring three firefighters.
A drone attack on Kyiv killed at least seven people on Monday this week. “There were 352 drones in total, and 16 missiles,” said Zelenskyy, including “ballistics from North Korea”.
A Russian drone strike on the Dnipropetrovsk region on Tuesday killed 20 people and injured nearly 300, according to the regional military administration.
(Al Jazeera)(Al Jazeera)
Ukraine focused on drone production
Ukraine, too, is focused on long-range weapons production. Five of its drones attacked the Shipunov Instrument Design Bureau in Tula on June 18 and 20. Shipunov is a key developer of high-precision weapons for the Russian armed forces, said Ukraine, and the strikes damaged the plant’s warehouses and administration building, causing it to halt production.
“Thousands of drones have been launched toward Moscow in recent months,” revealed Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin last week, adding that air defences had shot almost all of them down.
But Ukraine is constantly improving designs and increasing production.
On Monday, the United Kingdom announced that Ukraine would be providing its drone manufacturers with “technology datasets from Ukraine’s front line” to improve the design of British-made drones that would be shipped to Ukraine.
“Ukraine is the world leader in drone design and execution, with drone technology evolving, on average, every six weeks,” the announcement from Downing Street said.
On the same day, Norway said it would invert that relationship, to produce surface drones in Ukraine using Norwegian technology.
Zelenskyy said this Build with Ukraine programme, in which Ukraine and its allies share financing, technology and production capacity, would ultimately work for missile production in Ukraine as well.
His goal is ambitious. “We want 0.25 percent of the GDP of a particular partner state to be allocated for our defence industry for domestic production next year,” he said.
Among Ukraine’s projects is a domestically produced ballistic missile, the Sapsan, which can carry a 480kg warhead for a distance of 500km – enough to reach halfway to Moscow from Ukraine’s front line.
Asked whether the Sapsan could reach Moscow, Zelenskyy’s office director, Andriy Yermak, told the UK’s Times newspaper: “Things are moving very well. I think we will be able to surprise our enemies on many occasions.”
Trouble with club membership
Ukraine’s ambition to join NATO and the European Union, leaving Russian orbit, is what triggered this war, and Russia has said that giving up both those clubs is a condition of peace.
NATO first invited Ukraine to its 2008 Summit in Bucharest. But in February, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said NATO membership for Ukraine was not a “realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement”, and a “final” ceasefire offer from the White House on April 17 included a ban on NATO membership for Ukraine.
Despite this, on Wednesday, Rutte told Reuters: “The whole of NATO, including the United States, is totally committed to keep Ukraine in the fight.”
Earlier this month, Rutte told a discussion at the Chatham House think tank in London that a political commitment to Ukraine’s future membership of NATO remained unchanged, even if it was not explicitly mentioned in the final communique of the NATO summit.
“The irreversible path of Ukraine into NATO is there, and it is my assumption that it is still there after the summit,” Rutte said.
If that gave Ukrainians renewed hope, this was perhaps dashed by the European Union’s inability last week to open new chapters in its own membership negotiations.
That was because Slovakia decided to veto the move to do so in the European Council, the EU’s governing body. Slovakia also blocked an 18th sanctions package the EU was set to approve this week, because it would completely cut the EU off from Russian oil and gas imports.
Slovakia and Hungary have argued they need Russian energy because they are landlocked. Their leaders, Robert Fico and Viktor Orban, have been the only EU leaders to visit Moscow during the war in Ukraine. Zelenskyy has openly accused Fico of benefiting personally from energy imports from Russia.
In a week of disruptive politics from Bratislava, Slovakia also intimated it could leave NATO.
“In these nonsensical times of arms buildup, when arms companies are rubbing their hands … neutrality would benefit Slovakia very much,” Fico told a media conference shown online on June 17. He pointed out that this would require parliamentary approval.
Three days later, the independent Slovak newspaper Dennik N published an interview with Austria’s former defence minister, Werner Fasslabend, in which he said Slovakia’s departure from NATO might trigger Austria’s entry into the alliance.
A Syrian youth and alleged supporter of the Islamic State group were charged with a plot to attack a Vienna concert by US pop star Taylor Swift in a press release on Friday.
Federal prosecutors charged the suspect with supporting a foreign terrorist organization and setting up a serious act of violence that would endanger the state, Mohammad A., who was only partially identified.
He had been in contact with a young Austrian adult who was allegedly planning a bomb attack at one of Swift’s concerts as a child and had started following IS ideology from April last year at the latest, according to reports.
Federal prosecutors said in a statement that the accused assisted the young adult in his preparations by, among other things, establishing contact with an IS member abroad via the internet and translating bomb-making instructions from Arabic.
The young adult used the template for the IS oath of allegiance that the accused also used to join the organization.
Also read: Taylor Swift Buys Back Rights To Old Songs In “My Greatest Dream”  
Mohammad A. was taken into custody by police in Frankfurt an der Oder, where he was then 15 years old, at the time, but he later was released.
The Karlsruhe federal prosecutor’s office announced on Friday that the charges were brought against them on June 17 in a Berlin higher regional court, which will decide whether or not they are admissible.
Authorities issued a warning about a terror plot by IS sympathisers last summer, forcing the cancellation of three Vienna shows that were scheduled for Swift’s record-breaking “Eras” tour.
The United States claimed to have shared intelligence with the police in the lead investigation and that a 19-year-old Austrian with North Macedonian roots was among the three suspects being detained.
Swift later claimed on Instagram that “the reason the cancellations caused me to feel very anxious and repulsed because so many people planned to attend those shows.”
