Ozzy Osbourne: The Death of a Prince
Remembering heavy metal’s greatest singer
Ozzy’s onstage farewell was closer to his actual farewell than any of us realized.
The legendary frontman died Tuesday at his home at the age of 76, just 17 days after his appearance at Back to the Beginning, a farewell show that raised $190 million for three charities — Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Acorn Children’s Hospice and Cure Parkinson’s.
A statement from the Osbourne family read: “It is with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning. He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time.”
No cause of death has been announced, but the metal pioneer had lived with Parkinson’s Disease since 2003 and announced in 2020 that he had emphysema.
The health problems had kept him from being able to tour since the end of 2018, when he played his last full show on New Year’s Eve at the L.A. Forum.
He’d kept recording, most recently releasing the solid Patient Number 9 in 2022.
Back to the Beginning was a tribute show, with acts ranging from classic artists like Metallica, Slayer, Guns N’ Roses and Tom Morello (who served as musical director) to newer names like Yungblud. It was also a farewell for Ozzy, who was determined to perform live one last time.
Not being able to tour ate at him.
“I’ve made a pledge,” he told The Independent in 2022. “I will do whatever is physically possible until the summer of next year. If by then I can’t, then I can’t, but I’ll have given it my best. I’m pretty confident. I will get back on stage if it fucking kills me, because if I can’t do it then that’s what’s gonna happen anyway, I’m gonna fucking die. I love to see them audiences.”
Osbourne closed out the show, first with his solo band (including Zakk Wylde, the guitarist who spent over 20 years in various stints with him), doing five classics — “I Don’t Know,” Mr. Crowley,” “Suicide Solution,” “Mama, I’m Coming Home” and “Crazy Train.”
Unable to walk since earlier this year, Ozzy fittingly sang from a black throne, its top in a nod to his infamous past, evoking a bat.
He was there again for the final return of the classic Black Sabbath lineup. They performed live together for the first time in 20 years, as drummer Bill Ward didn’t take part in the 2013 reunion album 13 that marked the return of Ozzy and bassist Geezer Butler to the fold.
The band did four songs to end the night — “War Pigs,” “N.I.B.,” “Iron Man” and “Paranoid.”
Even not knowing Osbourne’s death was as imminent as it was, the affair was unavoidably poignant. Unlike, say, KISS, there were going to be no endless farewell tours to follow. This was it — the final time for the man and his fans to be gathered in the same place as he did what he loved.
If Ozzy wasn’t in perfect voice that night, he didn’t need to be. He’d worked his butt off to get back and he sang live, with a stadium of 40,000 or so in his corner.
It was so obvious that the man was moved, to see and feel that response one last time, to know that the audience shared the love he had for them.
The other striking aspect came through in his body language. More than once, you could see him reflexively move on that throne, as if he could stand and once again move all over the stage and work the crowd one more time. Had it been possible on sheer willpower alone, he would have.
Osbourne’s place in rock history was secured a decade into his 50-plus year career, thanks to his original run as the lead singer in Black Sabbath.
If not the first heavy metal band, Sabbath was definitely out of the gate early and quickly, with an emphasis on heavy, reflecting its origins in grimy post-war Birmingham. Guitarist Tony Iommi was a creative marvel, his sound with down-tuning and distortion would launch so many alternative rock bands a generation later. Bassist Geezer Butler (who penned nearly all of the lyrics) and drummer Bill Ward were locked in.
But you need a frontman to tie it all together, which Osbourne did masterfully.
There were many singers of the classic rock era who had more vocal chops than him. But it was a very short list of people who could sell material better. Ozzy delivered a damn absolute master class in salesmanship.
VIDEO: Black Sabbath “Paranoid”
That run of classic Sabbath albums — Black Sabbath, Paranoid, Master of Reality, Vol. 4 and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath — wouldn’t have landed as well as they did without Ozzy.
Critics of the time didn’t get it. The late Lester Bangs savaged the debut in Rolling Stone, finishing his review with “They even have discordant jams with bass and guitar reeling like velocitized speedfreaks all over each other’s musical perimeters yet never quite finding synch — just like Cream! But worse.”
As subsequent years showed, the only other Sabbath singer who could live up to those first four years was another legend — Ronnie James Dio.
“Being trashed by Rolling Stone was kind of cool, because they were the Establishment,” Osbourne wrote in his 2009 autobiography I Am Ozzy. “Those music magazines were all staffed by college kids who thought they were clever — which, to be fair, they probably were. Meanwhile, we’d been kicked out of school at 15 and had worked in factories and slaughtered animals for a living, but then we’d made something of ourselves, even though the whole system was against us.”
Certain religious types also weren’t impressed. Given how the internet spawned QAnon, it’s a good thing it wasn’t around to pour jet fuel on the Satanic Panic of the ’80s
Audiences got it, though. They found a lot to like in the lyrics’ darkness, honesty and, yes, even silliness. The unstinting musical approach was something to behold. Sabbath had its fans, many of whom went on to start their own bands.
Tributes have come from quarters expected (Morello simply saying “God Bless Ozzy” on Instagram) and not as much (Donny Osmond remembering Osbourne fondly from a commercial shoot they did over 20 years ago).
“Ozzy was always just wonderful, heartfelt Ozzy, nonjudgmental, no airs about him,” Gene Simmons, who met him when Kiss opened for Sabbath in 1975, said on CBS Mornings Wednesday. “Reluctantly, I admit, sometimes I’m full of myself. Ozzy? Never.”
Things went south for Sabbath as the ’70s wore on. Ozzy wasn’t one to turn down a drink or 10 and he’d developed an appetite for cocaine after being introduced to it by Mountain’s Leslie West after a 1971 gig. The quality of the albums declined and the other three began to tire of the under-the-influence Ozzy’s act. He was fired in 1979.
Osbourne’s response was unsurprising, as he basically stayed at home and did nothing but use over the next few months. The most important relationship of his life would change that trajectory, even with his addictions.
Ozzy had known Sharon Arden since Sabbath had taken off as her father, Don, managed them. Having joined her dad’s company in the intervening years, she agreed to manage Ozzy solo.
The move, along with some of Don’s actions, led to an estrangement between Sharon and Don that lasted over 20 years. It also helped save Ozzy’s career and, ultimately, his life.
With his strong-willed girlfriend, later to be his wife of over 40 years, running the management side, Osbourne was able to get his solo career going, due in no small part to finding guitarist Randy Rhoads, who’d previously quit Quiet Riot because, ironically enough, he’d had enough of the lead singer’s bullshit.
VIDEO: Ozzy Osbourne “Crazy Train”
With Rhoads becoming a guitar god, Ozzy hit the ground running with Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman, two albums full of songs that would be in the man’s repertoire the rest of his career.
There would be more hits and more successful tours. Given how great of a band Sabbath was musically, the singer eclipsed them after his firing. His name became the brand, literally.
When Sharon couldn’t get Lollapalooza to bite on adding Ozzy, the alternative was to start a new traveling festival, which outlasted it as a yearly touring event.
Ozzfest gave the man himself a steady gig while platforming a number of acts who’d become known to metal fans, was held regularly from 1996 through 2005 then in subsequent permutations after that, ending with a single night one-off which was Ozzy’s last full show.
Brand success on the road didn’t translate to the charts for a while, as Osbourne went almost 13 years without a song on the U.S. rock charts, but the world of “reality” television put the man in front of a whole new audience. The Osbournes was an MTV hit for three seasons, with Ozzy being the befuddled dad in the show’s more comedic moments.
VIDEO: The Osbournes Season 1, Episode 1
It was quite the rebranding for someone whose addictions led to terrible actions.
This was not, say, a U.K. actor of yore who could be a raconteur over tea, telling stories that would end with lines like “And that’s how I woke up in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria wearing the Queen Mother’s underwear as a hat.”
This was a loaded Ozzy biting the head off a live dove during a meeting with CBS Records executives. This was Ozzy on booze and God knows what else shooting 17 cats dead on a violent bender. This was Ozzy, full of four bottles of vodka, trying to strangle Sharon in 1989 after returning home from playing the Moscow Peace Festival.
The Prince of Darkness onstage was classic rock theater, but there’s no denying that the man could be garden variety ill-tempered, like the time he tried to fire his entire band during the 1982 tour where Rhoads would later be killed in a plane crash when a tour bus driver, with no flying certificate and with cocaine in his system, lost control when trying to buzz Ozzy’s parked tour bus.
But domestic violence and executing cats is a different level of monstrous fuckery.
Osbourne went into rehab after his attack on Sharon, spending three months there. He was sober more often than not after that, including since 2014. The evil excesses died down, a good thing for the people and animals around him and for the man himself. At the pace he was on, there’s no way he lives to 76.
With the decreased likelihood of a loaded Ozzy screwing things up in multiple ways, the door eventually opened for various Sabbath reunion tours, starting with the 1997 Ozzfest and finishing with The End Tour in 2017-18.
But whatever the drama between the Sabbath camp over the years, the mood was good at Back to the Beginning. Iommi later recounted that there was playful banter between the four. He told Eddie Trunk that at one point he said to Ward, who performed shirtless, “Blimey, Bill, you look like Gollum.”
They ended in good spirits, with Iommi presenting Ozzy with a cake as the crowd roared after the last notes of “Paranoid.”
If this wasn’t the storybook ending, given Ozzy’s health problems, it went as well as could be expected — a farewell for Tony, Geezer and Bill as well as the man himself, a chance for the audience of 40,000 speaking for themselves and on behalf of Sabbath and Ozzy fans everywhere.
VIDEO: Black Sabbath “War Pigs”
Osbourne was a man whose life contained many truths. There are many stories of him being a man of kindness and good humor. He could also be capable of awful behavior that, even done while under the influence, are part of his story that can’t (and shouldn’t be) memory holed.
But for a man with big flaws at his worst, he found a way to stop those flaws from harming others and himself in the future.
There is also denying that Ozzy Osbourne helped define metal and hard rock for decades, the MTV reality cartoonishness unable to wipe away the sheer impact of Black Sabbath and the lasting solo years.
Capable of being angel and devil, the man leaves the world after a life that, all these years later, people know him from just the one name, unmistakably Ozzy.
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