In the direct aftermath of last month’s ‘Back to the Beginning’ event that saw Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath finally call it a career, reports came out about the exorbitant amount of money that was raised for charity. Figures were in the roughly $150 million range, with the “official” tally coming in at close to $190 million. It was touted as a massive win for the charitable organizations that stood to benefit from the show.
Unfortunately, it turns out that reported figure is significantly flawed. At least that’s what Sharon Osbourne herself said during a recent interview with music industry trade publication Pollstar.
“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?
“It takes a really long time [to arrive at the final number that will be donated to charity], 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.”
Though Sharon lambasted the media for getting the figure wrong, it should be noted that the $190 million amount came from an Instagram post made by the event’s musical director and Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello. In it, he said approximately $190 million (or 140 million British pounds) would be donated equally to Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Acorn Children’s Hospice and Cure Parkinson’s.
Though she readily states that the concert was a success by any metric, Sharon said it didn’t come close to the 5.8 million online viewers that Billboard initially reported.
“I mean, the streaming was 275,000 bought it. But Mercury [Studios], which produced and was saying that a lot of rock clubs all over the world bought it and played it in-house. So there were 200, 300 people watching it in one facility.”
Regardless of how much the event did or didn’t raise, Sharon said the whole thing was in service of Black Sabbath and her beloved husband Ozzy, who passed away weeks later at 76 years old from a heart attack.
“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.”
