More details revealed about Megadeth’s absence at Black Sabbath’s farewell show

James LoMenzo, the bassist for Megadeth, has stated that the band was not invited to participate in the charity event “Back To The Beginning” in Birmingham, UK earlier this month. Charrie Foglio, who studied under Doc McGhee (Bon Jovi, KISS) for ten years as an artist manager for McGhee Entertainment, posted a clip of her interview with LoMenzo on July 9 for Japan’s BURRN! magazine in the Back To The Beginning – Black Sabbath‘s Final Concert Facebook group. According to Foglio, three of the so-called “Big Four” of 1980s thrash metal—Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax—performed at the event, but not Megadeth.

Charrie, I’m going to let the cat out of the bag. The truth of the matter is, I don’t believe that anybody asked us, which was fine. Not everybody gets invited to every party. But at the same time, when we were in Europe last week, David said that he was reaching out to everybody and telling them that we were in the neighborhood and that we were close enough to come. And if they wanted us to, we could stay over for a few days and work it out… If they wanted us to. I don’t know what our manager had accomplished with that, but it didn’t get accomplished, so we just came home. So I know what you’re saying. Even before all of this started, everyone was saying, ‘Well, what about Megadeth?’ It was really funny to read because there was no invite and there was no talking to people, there was actually nothing to do with any of it. It was this exciting situation where we’re celebrating Ozzy in his retirement… Anyway, the show was amazing! I would have loved to have been there. I knew about the show months and months ago. I’ve been recording with Bill Ward. He’s been doing his record, and every now and then I’ll get this wonderful phone call from his assistant Walter saying that ‘Bill would love to have you come down and do a song with him.’ And you don’t know what that sounds like to my brain. It frazzles me, but I’ve been working with him for a while. And he intimated about the show. I would ask him if he had spoken to any of the guys in Black Sabbath, and he said that he spoke to Ozzy every day because Ozzy wasn’t feeling very well at that time, so I was curious. He said, ‘By the way, it looks we may do this final show.’ So he knew about it, obviously, before they announced it. So I was excited when it came to fruition because I knew that it meant a lot to all the guys in Black Sabbath to have Bill up there. I don’t see it as controversy or anything. I do know that conspicuously we were missing, but nobody was invited.