British musician Ozzy Osbourne, who rose to fame in the early 1970s with pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath before becoming a solo artist and a TV celebrity via the hit reality show, “The Osbournes,” has died at the age of 76, just weeks after a farewell show.
The heavy metal rocker, who took on the moniker “The Prince of Darkness” during the height on his Black Sabbath fame, was aware that the destructive lifestyle of his past could have led him to die years ago.
“Do you feel immortal?” Osbourne was asked in a BBC interview before one of Black Sabbath’s final gigs in 2017. “No, I feel lucky to be alive,” he replied, “because I’ve done some pretty damn crazy stuff in my life.”
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
John Michael “Ozzy” Osbourne was born December 3, 1948 near Birmingham in the West Midlands, and was raised in the city that he credits with nurturing a unique musical movement — among countless Birmingham bands were Black Sabbath’s heavy metal rivals Led Zeppelin.
Leaving school at 15 to pursue various failed apprenticeships as a plumber and toolmaker, and also working in a slaughterhouse and a mortuary, Osbourne — who already took on the nickname “Ozzy” at school — soon found himself in prison for six weeks for theft.
In 1968, Osbourne, a budding vocalist who had played in several local blues bands, formed a group called Polka Tulk Blues with bassist Geezer Butler, guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward. They soon changed their name to Earth, and then to Black Sabbath.
Like the Beatles, which were a major early influence on Osbourne, Black Sabbath were able to work on their new heavy rock sound while playing a series of three-hour gigs at The Star Club in Hamburg.
Having secured a record contract, the band’s early heavy metal rock riffs and dark, occult-inspired lyrics sung by their eccentric long-haired frontman were showcased on two 1970 albums, the self-titled “Black Sabbath” and “Paranoid,” which each sold over a million copies. By 1973, with the release of “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath,” the band, and especially Osbourne, were global superstars.
Substance abuse
But amid the constant touring, Osbourne developed his infamous drugs and alcohol addiction. He recalled winding down after performances by drinking a bottle of hard spirits and taking a handful of sleeping pills. The rest of the band were also doing drugs, but by the late ’70s, Osbourne was often too drunk to rehearse and write songs, and the band’s output suffered.
In 1979, Osbourne was kicked out of Black Sabbath for his unreliability and excessive substance abuse. However, unlike fellow English rock legends like John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, who died at 32 in 1980 from alcohol abuse, Osbourne was determined to survive his addiction.
“The day I got fired from Sabbath was at the time the worst day of my life,” he said in an interview in the 1980s. “But then looking back now, it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Upon leaving the band, Osbourne went into a hotel room for three months and, in his words, “got smashed out of my brain everyday.”
But soon after, he kicked drugs and embarked on a highly successful solo career that included 13 studio albums. Up until his death, he sold upward of 40 million records.
Osbourne’s debut solo album, the 1981 “Blizzard Of Ozz,” included the US top 10 single “Crazy Train,” and was certified five times platinum.
A year later, the heavily tattooed, eyeline-wearing singer, whose style veered between glam and gothic, gained further infamy for biting the head off a live bat on stage during a US tour. Osbourne claimed he thought it was a toy — though he had allegedly bitten the head off two doves in front of a CBS Records PR executive the year before.
Back in Black
In 1997, Osbourne rejoined the band upon which his wildman persona was built. That same year, Black Sabbath played at the Ozzfest metal music festival that Osbourne founded the previous year with his wife and manager Sharon. He was a regular with the old band until they recorded a final studio album in 2013 titled “13.” The band’s final gig, billed “Back to the Beginning,” was performed in their hometown of Birmingham in July 2025.
The sometimes incoherent singer became a kind of ageing rock caricature in the early 2000s when he agreed to make his family, then living in LA, the subject of a reality TV show, “The Osbournes,” also starring two of the Osbournes’ three children, Kelly and Jack. Appearing on the Jay Leno Show with wife Sharon during the peak of his reality TV fame in 2005, Osbourne explained: “I don’t smoke anymore, I don’t drink alcohol anymore, I don’t take drugs anymore, in fact I’m quite boring these days.”
Straight to Hell
Despite Osbourne claiming he was “dying” in 2019 after suffering a fall in his Los Angeles home early that year and spending months in and out of the hospital following spinal surgery (which was complicated by pneumonia), Osbourne released a much-anticipated new single at the start of 2020, “Straight to Hell.” The song, which quickly garnered millions of YouTube hits, was from Osbourne’s 12th solo album, his first for a decade, titled “Ordinary Man” — the title track features a vocal duet with Elton John. His final album, “Patient Number 9,” was released in September 2022.
In an interview in January 2020, Osbourne and his wife also acknowledged that Ozzy had been diagnosed with a form of Parkinson’s, a neurodegenerative disease. Talking on the Good Morning America program, he was asked if he was on his deathbed. “Far from it,” he said.
“I hope they hang in there for me,” he said of his fans following the cancellation of his world tour. “Because I need them.”
Having often admitted that his drugs and drinking should have killed him decades before, Osbourne might have finally succumbed to his extreme lifestyle. But he never was an ordinary man.
Edited by: Elizabeth Grenier
