Brian May of Queen Was Moved to Tears by Ozzy Osbourne’s Performance — And Here’s Why It Was So Emotional for Ozzy
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Ozzy’s surprise appearance at the show caught everyone off guard—and it was truly unforgettable.
Ozzy Osbourne Reflects on Emotional Final Performance at Birmingham Commonwealth Games
On August 8, 2022, Ozzy Osbourne took the stage at the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony in his hometown of Birmingham, England, delivering one of his last-ever live performances. Joined by his longtime Black Sabbath bandmate Tony Iommi, the “Prince of Darkness” performed two Black Sabbath classics, Paranoid and Iron Man, marking his first live show in nearly four years after struggling with health issues.
In his memoir Last Rites, Ozzy fondly recalls the experience, describing the raw power he still felt while performing Iron Man and highlighting the emotional response of another rock legend who witnessed the show.
“That first note of Iron Man gets me every time,” he wrote. “You feel it in your bowels, your teeth, your bones. It’s like the gates of hell grinding open. Like the groan of Heinkel bombers dipping below the clouds to target the Castle Bromwich Spitfire factory night after night. Like the thunder of the heavy machinery our fathers and grandfathers used to operate.”
Ozzy also reflected on the significance of performing in his hometown: “I’m looking out over Perry Barr… over Aston… over the place I grew up sixty, seventy years ago. Over a crowd that seems to stretch halfway to Wolverhampton. We’re live on BBC One. Prince Charles is here. I just think, what an honor. What a life. What were the chances it would turn out like this?”
He revealed that his wife and manager, Sharon Osbourne, later told him that Queen guitarist Brian May had become emotional while watching the performance.
“Later, as we were heading to the airport, Sharon told me Brian May had posted on Instagram that he was in tears watching the show,” Ozzy recounted. “I shed a few tears myself as all those fireworks went off. Tony probably did too, but he was wearing his shades, so you couldn’t tell. It was utterly overwhelming.”
Ozzy described the moment as deeply cathartic: “There are no words that could do justice to being up there. I was home. I’d made it. Everything I’d been through in the past few years… it just melted away. I just wished we’d done more songs. We were on such a roll, we could have played half a set.”