Geordie Greep played a medley of Black Sabbath covers during a show in Birmingham to pay tribute to the late Ozzy Osbourne.
- READ MORE: The NME Big Read – Ozzy Osbourne: “This album saved my life”
The Black Sabbath frontman and legendary soloist died yesterday (Tuesday July 22), aged 76. It came shortly after Osbourne took to the stage for his final-ever live shows at Sabbath’s huge ‘Back To The Beginning’ event in Birmingham on July 5.
Incidentally, Greep was performing at XOYO in the Black Sabbath members’ home city last night just as news of Osbourne’s death broke. To pay tribute, he played an instrumental medley of the Sabbath/Osbourne hits ‘Symptom Of The Universe’, ‘War Pigs’, ‘N.I.B.’, ‘Paranoid’, ‘Sweet Leaf’ and ‘Crazy Train’, with the audience singing along.
“Very cheesy to talk about this kind of thing, maybe,” Greep said afterwards. “But it’s actually pretty crazy to come to Birmingham when these four fucking guys — they made this music that really changed everything and they came from this town.”
Check it out below:
Greep joins the likes of Coldplay, Alice Cooper, Ghost Gojira and Wolfgang Van Halen in dedicating performances to Osbourne, as fans shared footage and memories from the artist’s final live appearances.
Tributes have since poured in from across the music world, including posts from Osbourne’s former bandmates Tony Iommi, Bill Ward and Geezer Butler. “So glad we got to do it one last time, back in Aston,” the latter wrote, adding: “Love you.”
Other major artists to have paid their respects include Elton John, Yungblud, Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day, Jack White and many more.
Elsewhere, social media users have been flooding platforms with humorous clips of the Prince Of Darkness in the beloved ’00s reality series The Osbournes. Meanwhile, gamers have been remembering his iconic advert for PlayStation’s virtual reality headset, the PSVR2.
A bizarre tribute to Osbourne saw The Alamo Cenotaph recall the time he urinated on the monument in the early ’80s while wearing Sharon’s dress.
