Ozzy tells Esquire: "What I'm really happy about is, if this is Black Sabbath's last hurrah, then we'll have ended it on an up note rather than when I left in 1979 and everybody was f***ed up on one thing or another and I was marked out as being the worst, you know. It ended on a bad note, so..."

"The only thing sad about it is I hope Bill Ward can get his stuff together to do this because... one of the biggest things I'm proud of in my life was that Black Sabbath wasn't a band that was created by some business mogul in London or New York. That we were four guys who had a great idea and it worked from record one, and we still... Would you believe that it took 45 years to get our first number-one album in America? It was amazing to me."

Asked if the band have started writing songs for the final Sabbath album, Ozzy says, "No. Although I texted [guitarist] Tony [Iommi] the other day. I said, 'It would be a great idea if you could send me some musical ideas so I can try and work some melodies around so we don't have to go searching for the song structure.' So I'm not starting from a cold block, you know?"