Farewell Ozzy Osbourne: Rock’s most lunatic frontman

Ozzy Osbourne was absolutely one of a kind, pictured in 1986 - Ross Marino/Getty Images

Ozzy Osbourne is no more. It hardly seems possible. The 76-year-old was one of those iconic rock characters who appeared indestructible. He was the self-styled Prince of Darkness, the original heavy metal horrormeister, the hard-drinking, drug-snorting, bat-biting manic clown who practically invented the iconography of music’s darkest genre with his predilection for capes, crosses and tattoos. In his prime, he was rock’s most lunatic frontman, whose unpredictable behaviour brought a lunatic edge to the sinister sonic aggression of his band Black Sabbath.

In later years, when over-indulgence had taken a toll on his health and old age and infirmity restricted his scope for nonsense, he rose again with a comic charm that emphasised the humour that has always lurked beneath metal’s posturing Guignol. And somehow, in the process, one of rock’s most notorious monsters became a beloved household family favourite. He was absolutely one of a kind: unafraid to be ridiculous, inherently funny, and absolutely in love with music.

“I’m living on borrowed time because of my wild years,” Ozzy told me when I interviewed him in 2013. I have never been the biggest heavy metal fan but I warmed to Ozzy immediately. He was exactly the figure imprinted on public consciousness from a three-year stint on MTV’s pioneering reality show The Osbournes. The bumbling, warm-hearted Brummie head of a dysfunctional Hollywood family, Ozzy was genial, accommodating, candid and self-deprecating. “I don’t understand music, f---ing Beethoven, whatever,” he told me. “I get a feeling and the hairs on my arms stand on end, that’s how I judge a song.”

Ozzy Osbourne performing with Black Sabbath - Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

There is a sense that Osbourne stumbled into his own life, and that he was either the luckiest or unluckiest guy in town. “You couldn’t make my life up, considering I come from Aston and didn’t have any hope for the future,” was his own assessment.

Born in 1948, he grew up in a Birmingham suburb in a large working-class household, where drinking and fighting was the norm. Suffering from dyslexia, his education was a disaster. “I couldn’t understand what was on the blackboard, so I’d go and play down by the canal all day, throwing stones, going fishing.”

Music was Osbourne’s only passion, but even the invention of heavy metal was a combination of accident and opportunism. He teamed up with local band Earth, featuring guitarist Tommy Iommi, who had lost the tips of his fingers in an industrial accident and developed a new way of playing, lending a heavy droning burr to their blues rock. Osbourne would wail on top, often without lyrics.

They rehearsed in a community centre opposite a cinema, and one day bassist Geezer Butler pointed out that horror movies always drew a good crowd. “He said ‘Why don’t we do scary music?” The band renamed themselves after the advertised movie, Black Sabbath. It was as simple, almost as innocent as that. “The words heavy metal, I f---ing hate even saying it. It’s all rock and roll to me.”

The Osbournes: Ozzy and his wife Sharon in 2008 - Dave Hogan/Getty Images

But there was evidently something in the music’s darkness that connected deeply with Osbourne. He suspected its roots lay in his childhood dyslexia. “I’ve always been in fear. Alcohol made it temporarily go away but as time went on the fear was coming through the alcohol, but by then I couldn’t put the alcohol down.”

Osbourne got himself into such a state he was kicked out of Black Sabbath in 1979. Supported by his young wife Sharon, daughter of Sabbath’s legendary hard man manager Don Arden, he successfully relaunched himself as a solo act. Over his lifetime, Ozzy was responsible for some 150 million album sales. But madness always followed him, as he became notorious for biting the heads off live bats and birds, once snorting a line of ants and eating his own faeces. “I was like a loony crazy guy: ‘Did you see Ozzy came in and went through this and fell down the stairs?’ It’s funny to talk about but when you wake up in a jail cell and you don’t know what you’re there for and your family are looking at you like you’re pathetic, I got fed up with it.”

The ‘Prince of Darkness’ in his Beverly Hills swimming pool in 1987 - Eddie sanderson/Getty Images

Although he got sober in the early 2000s, Ozzy experienced many relapses. He was realistic about his addictive nature. “I’ve said I’m done a thousand times, I’m finished, then the next week somebody’ll get a picture of me lying on the floor of a bar and it’ll be on the front page of the National Enquirer: Aliens Eat Ozzy’s Brain.” It was during one of his sober periods in 2002 that he allowed the MTV cameras into his home. The contrast between his image as a satanic rock god and family man provided high comedy. Sharon went on to parlay her TV profile into a brand of her own. Their children, Kelly and Jack, both developed broadcasting careers but also suffered drug and alcohol problems. “It was an experiment that went out of control,” Ozzy told me. “A bit like my life really.”

Ozzy continued to make music, presiding over heavy metal festival Ozzfest. Black Sabbath reunited in 2011, touring extensively and making one final album, 13, before finally retiring the band for good in 2017. Their frontman was a sadly diminished figure by then. Where once his energy, charisma and craziness made him a manifestation of the band’s furious power, in later gigs Ozzy rarely strayed from his centre spot, hanging on to his microphone stand as if he needed it for support.

Ozzy Osbourne managed one last emotional farewell earlier this month with Black Sabbath - Ross Halfin

But he still roared the songs like they mattered, and crowds could be relied upon to do the rest. Then in 2020, Osbourne was forced to postpone a farewell tour (actually the second of his career) following a diagnosis with Parkinson’s disease. It was beginning to look like Ozzy had finally run out of luck, yet he still managed one last emotional farewell earlier this month with Black Sabbath. Confined to a chair, and clearly in poor health, he croaked what he could of his signature anthems and the band and the crowd did the rest. It was an extraordinary occasion that gave him a send-off he surely deserved.

“Is it the end, my friend?” Osbourne sang on the 1970 anthem that gave the band their name. Five decades on, the great Oz has finally fallen silent. Bats and doves may rest a little easier. But his music and his legacy seem assured of a long life after death. Wherever heavy metal fans gather to wave the two-fingered devil salute, the spirit of Ozzy lives on.

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