At the 68th Annual Grammy Awards, held Feb. 1 in Los Angeles, guitar god Nuno Bettencourt was in a fantastic mood as he spoke with me (and other remote reporters from around the globe) at the Recording Academy’s Virtual Red Carpet press box. And that was before he even won his very first Grammy, for his work on Yungblud’s “Changes (Live from Villa Park),” which took home the prize for Best Rock Performance.

Bettencourt had only been nominated one other time, at the 1991 Grammys for Extreme’s “More Than Words.” But this was an especially important honor, as Yungblud’s performance was taped at Ozzy Osbourne’s Back to the Beginning all-star tribute concert in Birmingham, England — where the Prince of Darkness sang live for the very last time, just 17 days before his death.

Yungblud’s Back to the Beginning performance — which included not just Bettencourt, but also fellow 2026 Grammy-winners Frank Bello (Anthrax, Helmet, Satyricon), Sleep Token drummer II, and Osbourne keyboardist/rhythm guitarist Adam Wakeman — was the breakout moment of the July 5 event. The fact that it was an unbilled appearance, that its arrangement was switched at the last minute, and that it was the only official single to be released from that concert, made the Recording Academy’s acknowledgement all the more special and meaningful.

“It was something that was crazy, because the night before we actually performed it, we didn’t really have an arrangement for it,” Bettencourt revealed. “The original was just piano and vocal, and I was like, ‘Why don’t we make this the “Purple Rain” version of this song? Let’s make it like emotional, and we include the band rocking.’ And we didn’t know it was going to touch people the way it did.”

While Yungblud has certainly had his share of haters, who’ve wrongly dismissed as some sort of pop-punk poser, the British rocker radically reinvented himself last year with his Idols opus, which also scored nominations for Best Rock Song (for “Zombie”) and Best Rock Album. However, it was his surprise Ozzy tribute in Birmingham that finally silenced many rockist doubters.

“He obviously came from the pop world initially, but I think he’s that kid that’s kind of like, when you’re around him, you feel the rock ‘b’ roll in him,” said Bettencourt. “And with the vocal performance he had that night on that song, I think changed his career — because the emotionality of it, it was touching, and it was magic.”

When I mentioned that what Queen was to Live Aid, Yungblud’s performance was to Back to the Beginning, Bettencourt marveled, “It’s incredible that you said that, because the text that we got when we got offstage was from a Queen member. It was from Brian May, who was in a box, and he said, ‘That performance really touched me.’”

As for Osbourne’s feedback and Bettencourt’s memories of that historic night, the guitarist said with a chuckle, “Well, the crazy thing is, back in the 1900s as a kid, when Randy Rhodes was still in the band and before he passed away in that accident, after he passed away, there was an ad in Circus magazine that Ozzy’s looking for a new guitar player. I think I was about 14 or 15. I’m like, ‘This is my gig! I’m getting this gig!’ So, I borrowed gear from my friends, played two Ozzy songs, sent it in. Every day after school, I was asking my mom, ‘Dd they call? Did they call?’ And I’m like, ‘No, really? They didn’t call me?’ So, then of course, Jake Lee got it. Ten years later, Ozzy reached out to my booking agent and said, ‘There is a jet waiting for Nuno at Heathrow. He’s got the gig.’ And as he’s telling me this, the only thing I could say is, ‘They heard the cassette!’ … To me, he’d finally heard it.

“And the last words that Ozzy said to me, when we were taking that photo [at Back to the Beginning last year], is he grabbed my wrist really hard and he said, ‘You are the only beep that said no to me. I think that’s pretty special.’ So, that’s the last thing he said,” Bettencourt added a bit more somberly. ‘We didn’t know we were going to lose him after that.”

Another way in which Bettencourt’s Birmingham experience was a full-circle career moment was — as a remote journalist from Music for Music People pointed out — Prince, whose “Purple Rain” inspired that day’s “Changes” arrangement, once declared Bettencourt one of the three greatest guitarists of all time.

“I am still in therapy because of it. I’m still in therapy, because he’s one of my idols, if not the top,” Bettencourt joked. “And yes, when he came to see me perform live and said that to one of my best friends after the show, they were messing with me: ‘We’re not going to tell you what he said!’ And that meant the world to me, because I have so much influence in the funk part of what Extreme is and everything that we did. And yes, this [Grammy] partly has to go to [Prince], because those are the words that came out of my mouth at rehearsal: “Let’s do the “Purple Rain” version of “Changes.”’ And that’s what it was. And I believe that that’s why it was as emotional as it was, as ‘Purple Rain’ was. We all cried. It’s one of my favorite songs of all time.”

As Bettencourt headed back the Premiere Ceremony learn the results of the Best Rock Performance category (which included worthy nominees Amyl and the Sniffers, Linkin Park, Turnstile, and Hayley Williams), Bettencourt already felt like a winner.

“[Osbourne] attended his own life celebration, his own funeral, his own everything. What a legend,” he gushed. “To me, the win was already that day. Whether we win or not [tonight], it’s beautiful thing to be here.”

The Instagram interview video above is courtesy of the Recording Academy.

In December 2022, I conducted my second (and, tragically, last) interview with Ozzy Osbourne, who died at age 76 on July 22, 2025.

In many ways, at least professionally, Ozzy had had a very good year. He’d followed up his critically acclaimed 2020 comeback LP, Ordinary Man, with Patient Number 9, which had just received four Grammy nominations — his most nominations ever for a single album — and spawned two back-to-back No. 1 rock radio singles. But he wasn’t going be satisfied until he was able to perform that material live. Even when I tried to pivot our conversation back to his latest achievements, being onstage again is all he wanted to talk about.

“I just wanna get back on that stage. I’ve gotta get back on that stage. It’s driving me nuts, not being able to,” he Ozzy lamented, speaking with me for to Yahoo Entertainment via Zoom from his Los Angeles home. “I can’t relax. I’ve always gotta be doing something. … I mean, I could say let’s call it a day, but I can’t stop. There’s nothing like a good gig, and there’s nothing like a bad gig — because a bad gig makes you wanna do a good gig, better than before! A great gig is better than any sex or drug. There’s nothing to compare it to.”

Ozzy, who had just turned 74 when this interview took place, had been spotted out and about looking frail and walking with a cane, but when he spoke about the possibility of performing again, he absolutely lit up with youthful energy. However, he admitted that he was feeling his age. “I can remember when I was 69 and thinking, ‘I wonder when I’ll start to feel old, when I’ll start to feel everything?’” he said ruefully. “And suddenly, when I turned 70, the floodgates opened. It was one thing after the other. … This is the longest time I’ve been sick in my life.”

Ozzy’s many health issues had understandably put him in funk, but when super-producer Andrew Watt approached him back in 2019 to guest on Post Malone’s single “Take What You Want,” that collaboration led to Ozzy’s first full album in a decade, the Watt-produced Ordinary Man. And that put a spring Ozzy’s step, so to speak. “It got me out of the shithole that I’d got into. I thought it was fun to do. It was a different kind of music, I suppose, but it kept my head above water,” he said. “Andrew was a good help. I mean, this kid can fucking sweat songs. … It just kept me going, because when I ain’t thinking about me and getting back on the stage, I had nothing else to think about. It was like my life raft.”

Ozzy had hoped to tour in 2023, which sadly did not happen, but he got his wish on July 5, 2025 — just 17 days before his death — at the all-star Back to the Beginning concert in his native Birmingham, England. There, he took his rightful place on his Prince of Darkness throne and performed six solo classics (including the sob-inducing “Mama, I’m Coming Home”) and four Black Sabbath songs with Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi, and Bill Ward, and got the send-off and flowers he deserved.

“It’s not a job, what I do. It’s a passion,” Ozzy told me in 2022, when speaking about his more than 50-year career. “I don’t have to get up at 7 in the morning to trudge through the day to go to work. It’s a pretty good life. … So, considering all the things I’d gotten away with over the years, I can’t really complain. … Even today, when I think of some of the things that I’ve done, I shiver, you know? Because I could have been dead. … You name it, I’ve been there, I’ve done it, and I’ve survived. It eventually caught me and bit me on the butt, but it ain’t killed me. And I ain’t gonna stop.”

Watch Ozzy Osbourne’s full charming interview above, in which he also discussed the 20th anniversary of The Osbournes, his rumored biopic, moving back to the U.K., and Taylor Hawkins playing on Patient Number 9.

“When the first Black Sabbath album came out, I remember thinking, ‘This will be OK for a few years.’ And here we are … 50 years later.”

So says metal legend Ozzy Osbourne, reclining in the darkly appointed rock ‘n’ roll den of his Gothic Los Angeles mansion, while his wife/manager Sharon, children Kelly and Jack, and a pack of adorable purse dogs hang out in the backyard. He has invited the media into home to discuss his just-announced “No More Tours 2” solo farewell trek (Black Sabbath’s goodbye tour wrapped in February 2017, with an “emotional” show in the band’s native Birmingham, England) — and although he stresses that he’s not retiring entirely from performing or making music, he’s ready to focus on his family.

“I just want to slow it down and spend more time with my grandchildren, my family, my wife, because it gets lonely,” he tells Yahoo Entertainment. “Because now I don’t drink or get loaded. I don’t go out; I just stay in my room. And I think my life passes me by. Suddenly I’m 69, 70 — I’m 70 next December.”

It’s interesting, and heartening, to hear Ozzy speak of his desire to spend quality time with his wife of 35 years, considering that not long ago, it seemed like the Osbournes’ tumultuous marriage was over. In May 2016, the two announced their separation amid reports of Ozzy’s infidelity, but they eventually called off their divorce — and by July 2017, they were on the mend, even renewing their vows in a Las Vegas ceremony.

“We went astray for about half a year, and then I said to Sharon, ‘You know what? Let’s start again,’” says a beaming Ozzy, who appears to have a new lease on life in many ways. “It’s great, better than ever. We just fell in love all over again. I renewed my vows in Las Vegas, and it’s been, so far, better than it’s ever been. We’ve renewed our vows about three times now, but this time, I was sober … so I remember it!”

The Osbournes have endured more ups and downs than typical couples — even rock ‘n’ roll couples — but Ozzy seems grateful that their union has survived against all odds. “Marriage is the heaviest contract you will ever sign. You are basically saying, ‘I will give me to you, and you will give you to me,’ and whatever comes along with it,” he muses. “So, it’s for better for worse, for sickness and in health.” As for his marital advice, he says, “When it’s a good bit, everybody likes it. But when it’s a bad bit, don’t jump off, because you made the commitment in the first place! I mean, it gets rough, it gets good.”

Sharon, Kelly, and Jack will join Ozzy on select dates of his tour, but Ozzy seems regretful about bringing his children on the road when they were little, during his wild ’80s heyday. “It’s no place to bring kids. … There’s bad things, drinking,” he says. “By the time we got to the TV show [MTV’s The Osbournes], my son was an alcoholic. … They grew up too quick, and when I’m working, I can’t really spend quality time with them.”

Both Kelly and Jack are sober now, and Ozzy says he hasn’t indulged in alcohol or drugs for five years. He’s been sober before, of course, but now, as he looks to a mellower future, he seems confident that he can stay clean, thanks to daily AA meetings, even while he’s on the road. “Unfortunately, if I want to stay sane-er, I gotta go to these meetings,” he chuckles. “I have my sponsor, who’s my sober companion, that I’ll be going to the meetings everywhere now. It’s good fun, actually, because I’ve been to meetings in Stockholm, where they don’t speak English. You go to a meeting, and it’s good.”

Ozzy is proud that his children have successfully fought their own addiction battles, but he refrains from counseling or lecturing them. “I’m not good at advice, because you’re responsible for your own thoughts, and you gotta piss or get off the pipe,” he shrugs. “They say, ‘Dad, what do you think I should do?’ Well, I can tell them what I did, or what I’m trying to do, but ultimately, the person who’s the [addict] has to do it for themselves.

“I tried doing it for my family, my band, my audience, and I could never do it until I said, ‘Look, what are you going to do?’ Because anyone can be dry, but I suddenly realized the alcohol and the drugs were a symptom of the problem,” he continues. “I was self-medicating with alcohol. My thought process was wrong, and so it took me a long time. I couldn’t appreciate anything I did. I thought making lots of money would fix it. It didn’t. A bigger house didn’t. Marriage to two different women [Ozzy was with his first wife, Thelma, from 1971 to 1982] didn’t. So, I got to a point where I ran out of options, and I thought, ‘Well, what the f*** is it?’ You know, it’s me. It’s me. I’ve got to learn to live life on life’s terms.”

With Ozzy’s final concert run being named “No More Tours 2″ — a cheeky reference to “No More Tours” in 1992, which was supposed to be his farewell tour — it’s understandable that some fans might think he is crying wolf. But he’s serious this time and explains that he attempted to quit touring before only because he had been mistakenly diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. (Ironically, Ozzy’s son Jack was correctly diagnosed with MS in 2012.)

“People were saying to me, ‘What’s wrong with you? You’ve got this tremor,’” he recalls. “While we were doing this show, this tremor thing wouldn’t go away, and I used to think it was from the booze — the DTs, you know.” After a run of tests, he was told he had “a little bit of MS,” to which Sharon said, “‘What do you mean, a little bit of MS?’ It’s like telling me I’m a little bit pregnant. You either are or you aren’t.” Eventually, Ozzy was diagnosed with Parkin syndrome, a genetic condition with symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease, which he controls with daily medication. And he canceled his retirement plans.

Even now, the older, sober, and “sane-er” Ozzy isn’t going away quietly. “The only thing I want to get straight is I’m not retiring; I’m just not touring the world like a road rat anymore,” he stresses. “No More Tours 2″ begins Aug. 30 in Allentown, Pa. Watch his entire Yahoo Entertainment interview (in which he discusses family, marriage, the perils of reality TV “megastardom,” Black Sabbath, and more) below.

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.