In the summer of 2002, Queen Elizabeth II was celebrating 50 years since her ascent to the British throne, and it was a summer strewn with all kinds of batshit celebrations. Tower Bridge was illuminated to look gold, while 200 towns up and down the country played the Beatles’ All You Need Is Love at the same time, for some reason. Most random of all, though, was The Prince Of Darkness getting summoned by royal appointment to perform Black Sabbath’s Paranoid at Buckingham Palace.
Ozzy Osbourne played for the Royal Family as part of the Party At The Palace mini-festival on June 3, 2002. Other performers across the day included your expected UK pop figureheads, from Annie Lennox to Emma “Baby Spice” Bunton and Paul McCartney, making the bat-biting and potty-mouthed Double O a major outlier. And boy did he know it.
“When I went into the Palace for that fucking thing, there were signs saying: ‘No foul language,’ ‘No abusive terms,’ ‘No chasing the wild animals.’ I’m thinking, I’m sure this ain’t for anybody else,” Ozzy told Classic Rock in 2008. “‘Don’t chase the animals.’ ‘Don’t throw anything in the lake’… unless you’ve got a brick tied to your neck,” he joked.
Fortunately, the frontman didn’t go to the Queen’s house alone. For Paranoid, Ozzy was flanked by his longtime guitarist Tony Iommi, the pair having recently reunited under the Black Sabbath banner in 1997. Their performance was rounded out by the concert’s house band, which just so happened to include Genesis legend Phil Collins on the drums. As a result, three bona fide legends of UK rock ended up smashing out Sabbath’s signature song in front of the Queen, Prince Philip, Charles and the rest.
Watch footage of Ozzy, Tony and Phil’s impressive and history-making Paranoid performance via the video player below.
