Just weeks after closing the curtain on Black Sabbath’s final show, Terence ‘Geezer’ Butler finds himself in a quieter, more private stage, one marked not by roaring amplifiers but by profound loss.
On July 22, news broke that Ozzy Osbourne, the band’s inimitable frontman and Terence’s friend for almost six decades, had died at age 76.
Now, in a heartfelt essay for The Sunday Times,Terence, 76, has offered a moving glimpse into “57 incredible years of friendship,” from that first barefoot knock on his door to the bittersweet farewell at Villa Park.
For Terence and Ozzy, both Birmingham natives, Villa Park held special meaning long before it hosted Black Sabbath’s All Hope Is Gone farewell concert on July 5, 2024. The stadium, home of Aston Villa Football Club, had been part of their neighborhood backdrop as boys growing up in the city’s industrial heart.
In 2024, Aston Villa invited them back for an advertising campaign, a reunion that Terence admits rekindled a connection he thought was dormant.
“Prior to the spot, I hadn’t seen or spoken to Ozzy since The End tour in 2017,” he writes. “So it was quite fitting, for Ozzy and Black Sabbath to end the long journey from our beginning in 1968 to our final show back in Aston at Villa Park.”
© RedfernsYet Terence admits that evening carried an unanticipated weight. “I didn’t realize then that I would never see Ozzy again after that night.”
Rehearsals for the final concert began a month before, with Terence, guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward laying the groundwork.
© Getty Images“Then it was time for Ozzy to join us,” Terence recalls. He knew his friend’s health was fragile, but the reality of Ozzy’s condition hit him in that first session.
“He was helped into the rehearsal room by two helpers and a nurse and was using a cane, being Ozzy, the cane was black and studded with gold and precious stones.”
When Ozzy sang, he did so sitting in a chair. “We ran through the songs, but we could see it was exhausting him after six or seven songs. We had a bit of a chat, but he was really quiet compared with the Ozzy of old.”
© Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for TheThat final night on stage presented an unexpected dilemma. Traditionally, the band would gather center‑stage, arms around one another, and bow together. Instead, Ozzy remained on his ceremonial throne, and the surviving trio, Butler, Iommi and Ward, paused in mid‑cheer. Iommi reached across to shake Ozzy’s hand, and Terence ceremonially presented him with a cake.
“It was such a strange feeling to end our story like that,” Terence writes. He wishes he’d had more time backstage, but indicates that in typical Osbourne fashion, life’s ironies run deep. “As Ozzy used to say: ‘Wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which comes first.'”
The bassist’s essay then reaches back to a quieter moment in 1967, when the nascent band, then called Earth, took its first steps.
Terence remembers a youth with few pretensions. One day, Ozzy turned up unannounced at Butler’s family home, barefoot and grinning. Without hesitation, Terence told him, “Okay, you’re in the band.” With Iommi, then 77, and Ward, now 77, the four formed an unbreakable bond. “We became inseparable brothers in arms…We always looked out for each other. There was always an invisible link between Ozzy, Tony, Bill and me.”
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