Who’s Still Alive From Black Sabbath?

Black Sabbath formed in 1968, when four lads from Birmingham— Tony Iommi, Bill Ward, Geezer Butler and Ozzy Osbourne, who passed away on July 22, 2025, at age 76 —came together to change music forever. With a dark sound and darker lyrics, the group created what we now know as heavy metal.

The band connected with rock fans who craved something harder than the Flower Power of the 1960s. Throughout the following decade, Sabbath would release a run of albums—Black Sabbath, Paranoid, Master of Reality, Vol. 4—that few metal bands would rival. They would strike fear in the hearts of concerned parents, while kids would band their heads and throw up the “horns” in salute to their rock idols.

But success and excess would get the better of the group. Black Sabbath famously fired Ozzy in 1979 over his drug and alcohol use (though the band would also struggle with their vices). The group would go through different singers, from the late Ronnie James Dio to Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan to Glenn Hughes and Tony Martin.

Eventually, time healed all wounds, and the group reunited for Back To The Beginning, a farewell show for both Black Sabbath and Ozzy as a solo artist, which took place on July 5, 2025. Sadly, Ozzy would pass away  less than three weeks after taking his final bow.

Who is still alive from Black Sabbath’s original lineup? And are they still playing?

Tony Iommi (77)

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Tony Iommi is credited with being the father of heavy metal. He lost the tips of his middle and ring fingers while working at a sheet metal factory, requiring him to outfit his fingers with thimbles and to tune his guitar down a few notches; the resulting dark tone ushered in a sound that would create a totally new genre of music.

Though Black Sabbath endured numerous breakups and reformations, Iommi never stopped playing. Iommi recently played on Robbie Williams’ song “Rocket, and after the Black Sabbath farewell show, he told Blabbermouth that he was working on his first new solo album since 2005’s Fused.

Bill Ward (77)

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Bill Ward, whose drumming defined percussion for the genre, stuck with Black Sabbath until the 1980s, leaving after the release of Heaven and Hell. He has rejoined the group intermittently since then. Ward released three solo albums, the most recent being 2015’s Accountable Beasts. Health issues has kept him from playing full-time.

At the start of the 2000s, Ward had an internet-only radio show called Rock 50. The program ended in 2018, but in June 2025, he announced that he would return to the airwaves and internet as part of the LA Radio sessions.

Geezer Butler (76)

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While bassists are often the butt of the joke when it comes to bands, Black Sabbath wouldn’t the band it was without Terence “Geezer” Butler. As the group’s primary lyricist, Butler penned the dark lyrics that would come to define the heavy metal group’s sound and attitude. And his forbidding basslines still echo across heavy metal today.

Geezer retired in 2023 with the release of his memoir, Into The Void. “I don’t want to do anything anymore,” he told Rolling Stone. The only exception: one final Black Sabbath show.