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BLACK SABBATH - "The End" Tour - Live from London

adrien
Feb 3, 2017
4 min read

In this life time I had the opportunity to see Black Sabbath live on one of the very last concerts of their very last tour; "The End".

Coming to London to see them..; well they never made it to Istanbul... We, in the family consider it like a pilgrimage journey. A musical one...

Last summer in June at a family gathering my sister announced the last dates of the tour "The End". With my father, a devoted fan, soon all agreed to make this trip to one of the last concerts in London. Within a few days with the purchase of tickets the dream became a real organisation of the trip.

A lot have happened afterwards in Istanbul: changes in political situations, terror attacks, the military coup attempt in July, causing limitations to trips abroad etc... but finally the time has arrived and we've made it to London and 31st of January 2017, time of the concert has arrived.

The concert took place in O2 Arena. O2 Arena was a huge tent, designed for concerts with all the needed facilities, easily accessible by the underground. Once we took our place inside, we could not help thinking, how much it is needed to have a facility like this in Istanbul too. A plain concert hall fit for such large audience. Not a concert hall inside a shopping mall, nothing on the outskirts of the city that you can't come back home once the concert is over, no gym or other transformed place unsuitable for a concert... With all the construction boom in Istanbul of the last decades, there probably exists not even the free piece of land for it close to the city center(s).

Before Black Sabbath, event gave us another gift, the support act was the Californian rock band "Rival Sons"; they are a real kick ass group that we all loved to meet. Listen to them...

Then Black Sabbath took the stage with Ozzy Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and replacement drummer Tommy Clufetos. Their performance was "perfect". I was enchanted by their music. The concert of course came with a powerful visual show too. They were on fire. Well, actually half of the stage was literally on fire...

With the help of the technical possibilities of the space; the sound and lights surrounded ones existence completely. At some point I felt like I was just a spiritual being, stripped off my body, hanging in the air, surrounded at all sides by the music and lights.

Everything kind of felt like going by the book though. The performance went very smoothly. At some point, black and purple balloons started to rain from the ceiling and crowd pushed them onto the stage, the whole arena turned into a playground. In between all the songs Ozzy Osbourne kept asking the crowd "are you having fun?"...

The London crowd was perhaps very well behaved(?). Even for one encore song Osbourne started the cheering himself in the dark, and then the audience followed his lead. So that was basically a continuation of the real performance anyway. And once the last song was over everybody silently left the premises. There were no goodbyes, nothing felt like it was the end. Me, I was probably tended to get emotional with the traditional Istanbulian melancholia, but the general mood did not gave way to me. London crowd felt too organised and perhaps even sterile. After the concert we were directed back to the underground. There were announcements about not cutting the line, and signs saying "crowd control in progress".

The last performance of the tour will be held in Birmingham, the band's hometown, this evening (Feb 4th).

Most of the tours in Europe come all the way to the Turkish borders and return without making a stop in Istanbul. In 2000s it was slightly better, but with all the things happening in the world what hopes lie for the future I don't know. Istanbul has a very devoted, energetic and affectionate audience. Unlike European audience Istanbul crowd is literally hungry for such meetings. Concerts are a burst of emotions. I remember the concert of Steve Vai in 2000. Although in a lousy concert hall it was a performance to remember. Love was flowing from the audience to the stage. I can't remember for how many songs they came back for encore and the audience was still cheering, and soon the love spread all over and the amazed performers started to hug each other on stage. One of my first travels abroad as a first year architecture student was to Athens to join a concert of Dream Theater. Unlike the audience I was used to, this crowd held the stillness, even a little bit of indifference of being full. All these music that we loved, went to them, concerts had been easily accessible and many. But Istanbul fans did not have that many opportunities. Is it the hunger or the fire coming from soil I don't know, but if Black Sabbath could make it to Istanbul, even if they did not trigger emotional goodbyes themselves, their audience here would not let them leave just like that. They would be called back over and over and be surrounded by waves of sincerity and love.