This Was Spinal Tap

"On July 5, a couple of days after I saw Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, Black Sabbath played its final show, at Villa Park, in Birmingham, England. Not only are these two phenomena related; they seem to have been impishly synchronized: Just when the troupe behind Rob Reiner's This Is Spinal Tap, the mockumentary that satirically exploded the genre of heavy metal, reunited after four decades for a sequel, the band that invented heavy metal called it quits."

"And then, two weeks later, Ozzy died: Ozzy Osbourne, Sabbath's front man, who at Villa Park had sung sitting down, enthroned on what looked like a satanic office chair, heroically managing a host of ailments (including Parkinson's disease). No one was more metal than Ozzy. At the same time, no one in metal was funnier, more in touch with his own bathos, more post- Spinal Tap, in a sense, than Ozzy, especially in his shambling-paterfamilias incarnation on MTV's reality show The Osbournes."

Spinal Tap II reunited the troupe behind the mockumentary and arrived just before Black Sabbath's final show at Villa Park in Birmingham. The reunion and Sabbath's farewell aligned impishly in timing. Ozzy Osbourne died two weeks later after appearing frail yet defiantly heroic at Villa Park, singing seated while managing ailments including Parkinson's. Ozzy combined elemental metal charisma with unexpected comic self-awareness, exemplified by his MTV-era persona. Despite age and infirmity, Sabbath produced an astonishing, magnified version of their trademark heavy-metal vision, conveying cosmic encumbrance and Man squirming under Fate, God, and madness. Spinal Tap II portrays band members dispersed and out of touch, pursuing mundane pursuits until a catalyst prompts reconnection.

Read at The Atlantic