Jack Osbourne was recently asked about one of the biggest unsolved metal mysteries of 2025 on Jamie Kennedy‘s ‘Hate To Break It To Ya Podcast‘. Ahead of the July 2025 all-star live sendoff (‘Back To The Beginning‘) for Jack‘s father Ozzy and his heavy metal pioneering band Black Sabbath, word got out that one artist had been uninvited from the festival. Their removal came about after demanding an exorbitant amount of money to perform.
Despite featuring many of the biggest artists in metal and hard rock playing that concert in Birmingham, UK, ‘Back To The Beginning” saw all of the participating artists waiving their standard fees. After all, proceeds from the event were being earmarked for three charities handpicked by Ozzy himself, including Cure Parkinson’s, the Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Acorn Children’s Hospice. Ultimately some $11 million was raised via the concert, its official livestream and an associated auction.
While ‘Back To The Beginning‘ served as an emotional conclusion to the career of Ozzy & Black Sabbath, weeks ahead of it, Sharon Osbourne, wife and manager of Ozzy, publicly stated that a financial disagreement with a big artist led to a band being ejected from the bill. in June of 2025, she told Metal Hammer:
“I had a huge, huge to-do with a manager over this celebration for Ozzy and Sabbath. And it was probably the worst way I’ve felt in years. And I don’t care what this person says about me, thinks about it, because he doesn’t know me. And he’s now going around making up bullshit lies because I threw his band off the bill.
I don’t care what people say. Because do you know what? I don’t love them. I care about people who love me, what they say about me. You can’t care what an industry says, because you don’t love them, so how can it hurt you? It doesn’t.”
In a subsequent interview with Billboard in July of 2025, Sharon vowed to publicly out the offending artist, stating, “It’s not the time to make a profit. After the show I’ll let everybody know who it was. I think people will be shocked.” Ultimately, that reveal never took place, as Ozzy tragically passed away from a heart attack just weeks after performing the show, with the magnitude of his passing greatly overshadowing the prior squabble.
Still, fans have remained curious as to who would let money get in the way of sending off the the heavy metal godfather. Kennedy brought up the matter to Jack during an appearance on his above-mentioned podcast that was released earlier this month [transcribed by theprp.com]:.
“Here’s what I will say, ’cause a lot of stuff online was about ‘Oh, it’s um…’ I cannot say the band. I cannot. I cannot. But what I will say is this. Everyone’s online speculating who it is, and I have not seen a single accurate [guess,] Not even close. Like I saw something that it was Wolfgang Van Halen and it was absof*ckingutely not.
Like Wolf wanted to be there so badly and it was just a clash in schedule [Wolfgang Van Halen withdrew due to a scheduling conflict with his tour with Creed] and hey, he was getting a paid gig versus an unpaid gig. Go do the paid gig. You know?”
“Here’s the caveat [about ‘Back To The Beginning‘,] it was like listen, we’ll pay for your crew, we’ll pay your hard costs, but no one is, no one’s getting paid, like individually, like the band. But what ended up happening was a lot of crew donated their time. So, they were like, ‘No, we’re not charging for this.’ Because you know, a lot of the crews we’d all worked with for years anyway.”
“And the one band, I will say at this point, it’s like it was in the high hundreds of thousands of dollars what they said their hard costs would be… For them just to show up without any talent fee. It was… It was very frustrating.”
“…But here’s the thing, it was like, ‘Are you f*cking serious?’ And then you know and then you start… Here’s what, I will give the band the benefit of the doubt, and I will say it was probably the manager, but I don’t know, you know? I don’t know.”
When asked by Kennedy if the Osbournes suspected the band/manager intended to pocket the money, Jack stated:
“Yeah, ’cause there’s no way… My mom has worked in touring since the 1960s. So like since the 60s she’s worked, you know, in some capacity in the music industry. She knows what hard costs are and what things… what the real is. And when you start saying… they were like, ‘well, all our crew flies business class’. And you’re like, ‘excuse me?’
And so this person was just like saying all this sh*t and like I was just like, ‘You f*ckin… like you motherf*cker.’
Reflecting later on the concert and how it all went down, Jack went on to say:
“It was just, it was amazing. It was like the most perfect. And here’s the cool thing about it. Some people were like only playing for like 10 or 15 minutes. But at first I was like, ‘Are people going to be bummed at only seeing like three songs from a certain artist?’ But we had the spinning stage, so the longest you were waiting between music was like five minutes. So it was just like this epic playlist all day long.”
After further being pressed by Kennedy to reveal the offending band, or at least give a hint, Jack remained evasive, but did rule out some potential candidates. Speaking on why he chose to remain silent, he offered, “I can’t [reveal the band] because there’s like the fallout.”
When Kennedy asked if the band in question had been helped out by Ozzy and had toured with him, Jack replied, “Oh yeah, Oh yeah.” Kennedy then got more aggressive with his questioning, suggesting the likes of Mötley Crüe, and Foo Fighters, both of which Jack denied. Kennedy also got broader and humorous with his choices, suggesting Van Halen, U2, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, Good Charlotte and Celene Dion, all of which Jack laughed off.
Jack ultimately ruled out naming the artist, stating he opted not to, ‘Because the fallout from it would like, I don’t think would be helpful to anyone.’ He also revealed that the band in question contacted them afterwards and apologized. Jack said, ‘They were like, ‘Please tell us what happened, we want to know the whole story.’ When Kennedy asked why one of the band didn’t get involved amid the dispute, Jack said, ‘Yeah that’s how I’m just like bullsh*t. You f*ckin’ knew.’
The deep roster for ‘Back To The Beginning” was absolutely stacked with each artist performing an abbreviated set, complete with a tribute to the catalog of Ozzy or Black Sabbath. Among those who performed were:
Mastodon
Rival Sons
Anthrax
Halestorm
Lamb Of God
Jack Black (Tenacious D)
Alice In Chains
Gojira
Pantera
Tool
Slayer
Fred Durst (Limp Bizkit)
Guns N’ Roses
Metallica
Rage Against The Machine‘s Tom Morello also oversaw various all-star covers that included members of Disturbed, Extreme, Sleep Token, The Smashing Pumpkins, Living Colour, Ghost, Aerosmith and YUNGBLUD, among others. In the immediate aftermath of Sharon‘s initial revelation of the allegedly greedy band, various other artists were ruled out by her and her family. Among those confirmed not to be the artist in question were:
Megadeth
Mötley Crüe
Iron Maiden
Wolfgang Van Halen
Judas Priest were also ruled out, as the band had prior commitments with the Scorpions and expressed their heartbreak at not being able to play the event. Members of Soundgarden were originally set to take to the stage at ‘Back To The Beginning‘, but ran into scheduling conflicts.
While Slipknot had also been bandied about as a possible choice, their own Sid Wilson served as a DJ at the event. Given his close ties to the Osbournes, which saw him propose to Kelly Osbourne backstage at ‘that festival ‘Back To The Beginning‘ (the couple reportedly recently ended their engagement), one could presumably rule out the masked Iowan metal band as well.