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.
Ozzy Osbourne has already stated that he won't be able to do a full set with Sabbath due to his ill-health, but promises that he will try to do "little bits and pieces" on the night.
"You're used to Ozzy running around, but he certainly won't be doing that for this show," Iommi states in Music Week. "I don't know if he's going to be standing or sitting on a throne or what."
He also emphasises that this is definitely The End for the band.
“It’s absolutely the end,” he insists. “This show has come up because of the situation [with Osbourne’s illness] and because it’s a charity thing. But there’s no way we could go out and do a tour.
"Everybody in the band is looking forward to doing it, though it’s a nerve-wracking thing, as we’ll be touching on some stuff that we haven’t done for a long time.”
Last month, Geezer Butler admitted that he's been having nightmares ahead of the show.
“I’m already having palpitations,” Butler revealed in an interview with The Guardian. “In fact, I had a nightmare last night. I dreamed everything went wrong on stage and we all turned to dust. It’s important that we leave a great impression, since it’s the final time that people will experience us live. So it has to be great on the night.”
The Back To The Beginning concert will be available as a global livestream.
Beginning at 3pm BST on July 5, the livestream will be hosted on the Back To The Beginning website: tickets are on sale now.
