Sharon Osbourne has taken to dispelling the notion that the July 05th ‘Back To The Beginning‘ concert raised as much as $190 million for charity. That all-star event served as the final live sendoff for her now late husband Ozzy Osbourne and the pioneering heavy metal band he fronted, Black Sabbath. That concert sold out the 42,000 cap Villa Park in Birmingham, UK. Millions at home also paid to watch the livestreamed broadcast, while an associated charity auction further raised funds.
Boasting unique performances from Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Slayer, Pantera and countless others, the funds being raised by the one-of-a-kind were earmarked for Cure Parkinson’s, the Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Acorn Children’s Hospice.
Word of that amount of money raised appears to have first began circulating in part due to a post shared by Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello, who served as a ringleader for the various collective covers and tributes that were staged at the event. However, Morello‘s post on the matter has since been edited to omit that claim.
In an interview conducted with Pollstar on July 17th — days ahead of Ozzy‘s untimely July 22nd passing — Sharon poured some cold water on the erroneous reporting of the sum raised by the concert:
“…One of the things that’s frightening me is all this false press about [how], we’ve made $140 million and all of this, and I’m like, ‘God, I wish we could have, for one gig.’ It’s just ridiculous, the different stories. I went on the internet the next morning and it was like, $140 million, $160 million. And I’m like, ‘Where does this stuff come from?’ And people like Billboard have printed it.”
When it was pointed out that Billboard reported $190 million, Sharon went on to state, “Oh, $190 million? Thank you, Billboard, for getting it wrong. Just ridiculous.” As for the actual final tally, she added:
“It takes a really long time, because we’ve had all of the bands that we had come in and their expenses, and it’ll take a good six weeks to get the final number. Because we’re selling merch for another two weeks from the gig. So, we’ve got another two weeks of sales yet to add to it. It’ll be another four weeks and it’ll be done.”
After the interviewer mentioned that the exaggerated reports may have given some false hope to the charities earmarked for the funds, Sharon replied, “Oh my God! It’s the Children’s Hospital, a children’s hospice, and Parkinson’s research. Everybody thinks that they’re going to cure everything with this much money, but it’s not the real world.” Ultimately feflecting on the concert itself and how it went down, Sharon remarked:
“It was a huge success, because it was a phenomenal event. It was the first time, I think, that anybody’s gone into retirement and done it, where the show is streamed and it goes to charity. So it’s the first time anybody has said goodnight like that, it’s the perfect way, when you’ve had such a long career, to end it.
I never wanted Ozzy to just disappear without some big event. And it’s the best way then to go home to where it all started, to go to his favorite stadium in the world (Villa Park), which is [home to] his beloved Aston Villa (soccer) team, and it was just perfect. It was the perfect storm, put it that way.”
