This month’s Back to the Beginning concert served as a heartfelt goodbye to Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath, with many other significant acts also performing and paying their respects. One notable omission from the lineup, however, was legendary thrashers Megadeth, and longtime bassist James LoMenzo recently revealed why they weren’t at Ozzy and Black Sabbath’s farewell show.
What LoMenzo Said
Given that major rock and metal acts such as Mastodon, Metallica, Halestorm, Lamb of God, Gojira and Alice in Chains were involved in the concert, you’d think that Megadeth would’ve been, too. According to LoMenzo, though, they missed the moment simply because they weren’t invited.
Last Sunday (July 13), industry veteran Charrie Foglio posted an explanation in the Back To The Beginning – Black Sabbath’s Final Concert Facebook group. In particular, she shared a portion of her upcoming interview with LoMenzo for Japan’s Burrn! Magazine, during which she begins: “Hi brother, I sure missed seeing you here in Birmingham this week. It was noticeable that the Big Four was short one.”
Obviously, she’s referring to the fact that three out of the four “Big 4” bands of thrash metal – Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax – were at Back to the Beginning, whereas Megadeth weren’t.
“Charrie, I’m going to let the cat out of the bag. The truth of the matter is, I don’t believe that anybody asked us, which was fine.” LoMenzo responds.
He continues:
Not everybody gets invited to every party. But at the same time, when we were in Europe last week, David [Mustaine] said that he was reaching out to everybody and telling them that we were in the neighborhood and that we were close enough to come. And if they wanted us to, we could stay over for a few days and work it out. . . . If they wanted us to. I don’t know what our manager had accomplished with that, but it didn’t get accomplished, so we just came home.
So I know what you’re saying. Even before all of this started, everyone was saying, well, what about Megadeth? It was really funny to read because there was no invite and there was no talking to people, there was actually nothing to do with any of it. It was this exciting situation where we’re celebrating Ozzy in his Retirement… Is that the right word? Retirement? Isn’t that hard to believe? Anyway, the show was amazing! I would have loved to have been there.
He also clarifies that he “knew about the show months and months ago,” and that he was even “recording with [Black Sabbath drummer] Bill Ward.”
LoMenzo elaborates:
[Bill’s] been doing his record, and every now and then I’ll get this wonderful phone call from his assistant Walter saying that, “Bill would love to have you come down and do a song with him.” And you don’t know what that sounds like to my brain! It frazzles me, but I’ve been working with him for a while. And he intimated about the show. I would ask him if he had spoken to any of the guys in Black Sabbath, and he said that he spoke to Ozzy every day because Ozzy wasn’t feeling very well at that time, so I was curious. He said, “By the way, it looks we may do this final show.” So he knew about it, obviously, before they announced it. So I was excited when it came to fruition because I knew that it meant a lot to all the guys in Black Sabbath to have Bill up there.
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