In May this year, Black Sabbath members Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward attended the Grammy Salute To Music Legends ceremony in Los Angeles to receive a Lifetime Achievement award.
Rival Sons performed for Sabbath on the night, but there was no sign of frontman Ozzy Osbourne. Ozzy’s wife and manager Sharon has now explained exactly why the vocalist didn’t join the trio at the city’s Dolby Theatre.
She tells Celebrity Access: Encore: “I think it’s brilliant that they’ve got the bridge in their name. It’s lovely for them. They deserve it.
“They really, really do deserve it because I was just so pissed off at the Grammys this year because they gave them a Lifetime Achievement award, but wouldn’t give it to them on the TV show that we all know as The Grammy Awards.
"They did it at a separate ceremony which goes out on another network later on. I wouldn’t let Ozzy go because I just thought it was shocking what they did to them.”
Sharon adds: “Listen, there were artists there that got awards that deserved it too. But I just thought because Sabbath’s catalogue still sells and their last record that was out 6 years ago was no.1 in many countries worldwide, so while the other artists they were honouring had great careers and deserved to be honoured, they still didn’t have the careers that Sabbath had.
“So not to put them on the proper TV show, it was like, ‘How dare you?’ I was so angry. I just thought, ‘Fuck you. I am not going to give you the honour of having Ozzy at your shitty ceremony.’”
Last week, drummer Ward said in a video message he was “open-minded” about playing with his old Black Sabbath bandmates again some point in the future.
His comments came after Butler, who told Classic Rock: “If it came up I wouldn’t say never. I can’t imagine it ever happening, but then I said that about the Sabbath tour, and it happened, so who am I to know?”
Both Ozzy and Iommi have expressed an interest in Black Sabbath possibly reuniting in 2022 to mark the Commonwealth Games in their home city of Birmingham.
A major exhibition celebrating 50 years of Black Sabbath is currently open in Birmingham and will run through September 29.
