It is with great sadness that the heavy metal community lost an icon when Ozzy Osbourne passed away on July 22^nd, 2025.

Only 17 days earlier, on July 5^th, Ozzy and Black Sabbath band mates Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward gave the world the band’s last live performance at Birmingham’s Villa Park Stadium, alongside a star-studded line up for the band’s retirement gig Black Sabbath: Back to the Beginning.

Over the years, Clair Global has been lucky enough to work with Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne, helping to provide engineers with the tools needed to bring the prominent sounds of rock royalty to live audiences. So, when Back to the Beginning Production Director, Jake Berry, asked Clair Global if Ozzy’s vision to play a final show - where it all started in Aston, Birmingham, in 1968 – would be possible as a mutli-band live stream, the answer was always going to be ‘yes’.

Sabbath transcended music sub-culture to become a household name, a status made perfectly clear by the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Zafar Iqbal, who told the BBC in light of his passing, that Ozzy had “put Birmingham on the map…. put Aston on the map,” cementing his importance to the region by stating he is a ‘son’ of the city.  

Further from his roots, this influence ran deep, penetrating the creativity of some of the biggest names in rock music. Paying homage and supporting Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne (solo) on July 5^th were Mastodon, Rival Sons, Anthrax, Halestorm, Lamb of God, Alice in Chains, Gojira, Pantera, Tool, Slayer, Guns N' Roses & Metallica. Plus, all-star supergroups featuring members of Megadeth, Halestorm, Disturbed, Faith No More, Anthrax, Yungblud, Extreme, the Rolling Stones, Smashing Pumpkins, Aerosmith, Tool, Van Halen, Rage Against the Machine, Ghost, Living Colour, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Blink-182.

It took a cross-continental team effort to execute one of the largest shows in the world during the UK’s busiest live events season, but with the unfaltering teamwork across audio, comms, radios and live recording, together, Clair Global paid its respects in what would become the most poignant of goodbyes to a client of decades.

And in true Sabbath style, the project made a loud and lasting impact; 42,000 fans (20% of which were international) flocked to the venue, 5 million viewers streamed the show online, and millions has been generated for charitable causes.

The gravity of Back to the Beginning could not be missed; with determination to give back, Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Acorns Children’s Hospice were beneficiaries of funds raised, alongside Cure Parkinson’s, a charity dedicated to finding a cure for the progressive neurodegenerative disorder that affected Ozzy in his later years.

Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath and Metallica FOH Engineer, Clair Global’s Greg Price, has a reputation of mixing live audio to the very highest standard, capturing the essence of the artist in the way they always intended.

His history with Ozzy has been an incredible journey: "I have spent 30 years of my 50-year career with Ozzy and Sharon,” Greg begins. “When I moved to LA in the 80s, to get work, they were the only ones that gave me a chance. Sharon and Ozzy let me grow my talent with them. I met Martha, my wife of 27 years on my first Ozzy tour, and the Price family has toured with the Osbourne family together all this time. We did all 17 years of Ozzfest together, too. When you add Black Sabbath into the equation, I have mixed both bands since 1995.”

This passion for building lasting relationships and results that forge total trust led to Greg establishing Diablo Digital, which creates turnkey, live-recording systems, alongside fellow engineer Brad Maddix. He furthers: “Diablo Digital was set up to provide added value to clients and this is why Sharon and Ozzy kept me around for 30 years. I’ve provided them with the tools to continue to increase their brand and monetize it. Clair Global is now positioned in a way that we do this daily.”

Back to the Beginning UK Account Executive, Tom Brown, who worked closely alongside US Account Executive Greg Smith, agrees: “On top of virtual sound checks etc, live recording scales up our capability and technical prowess measurably. As a company, we have chosen to use and expand on it to give real value to the musical client, rather than only being a tool for the engineers to utilize.”

Greg continues: “What we offer from Clair Global is the new dawn of how we work with artists. Let's face it… we all want to go and see a band live, and I want to bring that excitement, that texture of what happened in that show, on that night, that feeling you feel just from looking at the stage, to listeners long after the show has ended.”

Diablo Digital’s critical live recording expertise was accompanied by Britannia Row Productions’ ability to assemble the right team for the event. Swiss colleagues AudioRent brought in a Cohesion CO12 PA and undertook onsite system engineering.

In front of the technical juggernaut, the magnitude of legendary musical talent on stage was somewhat unprecedented. Greg continues: “I had senior production managers telling me that what we wanted to do for this show was not possible, but if you put people such as Jake Berry and Tom Brown in charge, guess what? We were ahead of schedule, and had rapid changeovers on the day.

“The show sounded incredible. Everything was recorded to perfection, and I tip my hat to Ollie Nesshman, the broadcast engineer from Red TX, because his work was phenomenal. Knowing that a broadcast truck was going to pull up to the backstage area for our feeds, the infrastructure that Tom, Josh Lloyd, myself, a few Clair Global folks put together, worked seamlessly.”

Tom agrees: “We were ready. There was never a hiccup, and that shows the senior management skill and the vision required to do something like this. We meticulously & relentlessly designed a system that was going to work. We provided pure, clean audio feeds to the truck and provided the clients, the Osbourne family and Black Sabbath, a usable product for a board market.”

The core equipment from Clair comprised a Cohesion PA, Avid and Yamaha consoles in monitor world, DiGiCo and Avid packages at FOH, a Riedel Communications matrix system and Bolero wireless intercoms, Motorola Radios and Shure Axient Digital for RF and PSM1000 IEMs.

Working as a Special Projects Manager on this event, Britannia Row’s Josh Lloyd says: “For us to take complete ownership of this event for Greg Smith in the US, it shows the trust between people within our organization. I’ve worked across so many of these one-off, multi-headliner, multi-artist events, but we had the extra complexity of various acts bringing consoles in, so how we were delivering splits for broadcast varied. There was a huge number of moving pieces. Around 80% of the artists who played are our touring clients, which can also be key to successfully delivering these high-profile projects.

“Having said that, we don't promise something we don't think we're capable of delivering. When Jake Berry asked, I was confident that we could do it. I had every faith that the team we have could achieve what was needed for Ozzy’s retirement show.”

Tom adds: “This was a great moment for so many of us. As an Account Handler, to work alongside people I’ve known for a long time, including Josh and our Crew Chief, Pete McGlynn - who runs a stage like no one else can - and our crews who are at the top of their game, it really was a wonderful bit of teamwork.

“I've grown up inside the Britannia Row ranks in terms of rock & roll live audio, so it’s easy to forget that not every company can do what we can do…. Back to the Beginning was complex, but that is part of our DNA. There's a very clever skill set at work inside the company, which is never solely about design and engineering; we deliver a highly trained stage craft, and we were very proud to be trusted to help deliver Sabbath’s final concert as the world watched.”

“You realize you're very lucky to have these experiences,” Josh concludes. “Fundamentally, I got into this industry because I’m a music fan, and so to work on something as unique as this, to see Sabbath’s last show, and all those artists come out and perform because Sabbath’s music has meant something to them, well, that's a once in a lifetime opportunity. It was very emotional on the night, seeing how thankful Ozzy was to his fans, and since his passing, it’s even more special that he was able to sing in an arena for them one last time.”

In closing, Greg reflects on his time mixing his legendary friend: “These were truly special moments in my life. If Ozzy was on stage, I was at FOH... An arrangement made in Heaven."