Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath singer and godfather of heavy metal, dead at 76
CNN Newsource
By Hilary Clarke, CNN
(CNN) — Ozzy Osbourne, the hellraising frontman of Black Sabbath and reality TV star, died Tuesday, his family shared.
He was 76.
“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,” Osbourne’s family said in a statement to CNN. “He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time.”
No details surrounding cause of death were immediately available.
The news comes just weeks after Osbourne performed with Black Sabbath in his hometown of Birmingham, England, where he reunited with bandmates, including bassist Geezer Butler, drummer Bill Ward and guitarist Tony Iommi. The show was a concert event called Back to the Beginning and marked Black Sabbath’s first performance in two decades. It was billed as Osbourne’s “final bow,” according to Black Sabbath’s official website.
Famed for his outrageous antics on stage, including once biting the head off a bat and throwing raw meat onto concertgoers – along with repeated bouts of alcohol and substance abuse – Osbourne was respected by the rock establishment and reviled by the religious right, who believed him to be a devil-worshipper.
He had a second career in later life, playing himself in the popular reality TV show “The Osbournes,” a fly-on-the-wall family formula later maximized by the Kardashians.
Beginnings
John “Ozzy” Osbourne was born on December 3, 1948 in the central English city of Birmingham, the son of a toolmaker and a factory worker.
He left school at age 15 and after a series of jobs, including construction-site laborer and slaughterhouse worker, he tried burglary. That career ended badly, with a six-week prison sentence after his father refused to pay a fine, according to Osbourne’s 2009 autobiography, “I Am Ozzy.”
Osbourne was musically inspired by The Beatles, crediting the Fab Four’s 1963 smash “She Loves You” for his becoming a musician.
In 1967, Butler, Black Sabbath’s bassist and principal lyricist, formed a group – then called Rare Breed – and asked Osbourne to join, along with guitarist Iommi and drummer Ward.
After a couple of name changes, the band finally settled on Black Sabbath, because, as Butler told Rolling Stone magazine in 2016, “if people paid money to feel scared at the movies, then the same must be true of concerts.”
The band’s self-titled first album was recorded in just two days in 1969, Rolling Stone reported.
“Once we’d finished, we spent a couple of hours double-tracking some of the guitar and vocals, and that was that. Done,” Osbourne wrote in his autobiography. “We were in the pub in time for last orders. It can’t have taken any longer than 12 hours in total. That’s how albums should be made, in my opinion.”
The ‘Godfather of Heavy Metal’
Black Sabbath’s loud, gloomy music, the satanic aura conjured by the use of the tritone, the irregular interval in music associated with the Devil since the Middle Ages, was immediately popular.
The group’s second album, “Paranoid,” released in 1970, shot to number one in the UK album chart. Black Sabbath didn’t repeat that feat again until the release of their album “13” in 2013.
Often referred to as the Godfather of Heavy Metal, Osbourne preferred his other “title,” The Prince of Darkness, which he used on his Twitter account.
“I have never, ever, ever been able to attach myself to the word ‘heavy metal’ – it has no musical connotations,” Osbourne told CNN in a 2013 interview. “If it was heavy rock I could get that but the 70s was kind of like a bluesy thing, the 80s was kind of bubblegum-frosted hair, multi-colored clothes, and the 90s was kind of grungy.”
Osbourne was fired from Black Sabbath in 1979, after the group had already made eight albums together, over his alcohol and drug use. He went on to have a successful solo career, releasing 11 more albums before getting back together with the group in 1997.
The bat-biting incident occurred at Osbourne’s show at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, Iowa on January 20, 1982 on his “Diary of a Madman” tour.
He later claimed he thought the bat was made of rubber.
It was a stunt that followed him. “Every time I do an interview they ask me ‘What do bats taste like, Ozzy?’ Like my mother-in-law’s cooking,” he told NBC’s Today Show in 1987.
Osbourne’s substance abuse – the reason for his divorce from his first wife, Thelma Mayfair – followed him.
Also problematic was his relationship with his father-in-law and former manager Don Arden, who had managed some of the biggest acts of the 1960s and 1970s, including Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard.
Osbourne had known Arden’s daughter, Sharon, since she was a teenager.
They began a relationship in 1979, when she was 28, much to Arden’s displeasure.
When the two decided to marry in 1982, Arden gave Sharon her new husband’s contract as a wedding present.
She returned the favor by taking her husband off her father’s record label and signing with the much bigger US company, CBS.
Arden sued and eventually won a million-dollar settlement, according to his obituary in the Daily Telegraph. Sharon – who went on to become Ozzy’s manager – didn’t talk to her father again for nearly 20 years.
‘Looking back, I should have died a thousand times’
Osbourne, meanwhile, continued his rock n’ roll lifestyle.
“Looking back, I should have died a thousand times but never did,” he said in the 2011 documentary “God Bless Ozzy Osbourne.”
“By 12 o’clock in the old days I’d have powder up my nose, f*****g s**t in my veins, all kinds of stuff.”
The drugs and alcohol contributed to volatility at home.
In an interview with CNN in 2011, Sharon Osbourne spoke of her husband’s violent outbursts. “It was damn pretty scary,” she said. “You’re in a house, no neighbors each side, the kids asleep, you know you’re on your own, what the hell do you do?”
Reality royalty
But as dysfunctional families go, the Osbournes were very popular, and their reality television show, “The Osbournes,” won a 2002 Primetime Emmy.
The show became a vehicle for his family members to build their individual popularity, with wife Sharon transitioning into a television media career primarily on chat shows, and daughter Kelly enjoying her own music career before also becoming a television personality.
Other accolades bestowed on Osbourne include multiple Grammys, including one in 1993 for his solo song “I Don’t Want To Change The World.” He won two more Grammys as recently as 2023, when he took home gongs for best rock album and performance, and also garnered music’s top honor several times as part of Black Sabbath.
In March 2006, Osbourne and the members of Black Sabbath were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Later on Tuesday, Butler posted a tribute to his late bandmate on Instagram, writing, “Goodbye dear friend- thanks for all those years- we had some great fun.”
Referring to the area within Birmingham from which they hail, Butler added, “4 kids from Aston- who’d have thought, eh? So glad we got to do it one last time, back in Aston.”
Iommi also posted about the “heartbreaking news,” writing on X that he “can’t really find the words, there won’t ever be another like him. Geezer, Bill and myself have lost our brother.”
“Where will I find you now?” Ward asked in his tribute on X. “In the memories, our unspoken embraces, our missed phone calls, no, you’re forever in my heart.”
Health struggles
In early 2019, Osbourne had to cancel a string of concerts following a bout of pneumonia and a severe fall at his Los Angeles home.
But his health issues didn’t stop there. In the ensuing years, the rocker endured multiple surgeries – including one that he said went wrong and virtually left him “crippled.” He revealed his Parkinson’s disease diagnosis in January 2020.
Nonetheless, Osbourne performed intermittently during that period, including at the closing ceremony of the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
In a 2023 interview with Rolling Stone, Osbourne said he would “die a happy man” if he could perform one more show to express his gratitude to his fans from the stage.
“If I can’t continue doing shows on a regular basis, I just want to be well enough to do one show where I can say, ‘Hi guys, thanks so much for my life.’ That’s what I’m working towards, and if I drop down dead at the end of it, I’ll die a happy man,” he said at the time.
Earlier that year, the “Iron Man” singer announced that his touring career was over, saying he was no longer “physically capable (of it)” after suffering several health setbacks. That summer, he withdrew from an appearance at a music festival scheduled for October 2023.
“I’m taking it one day at a time, and if I can perform again, I will,” he told Rolling Stone at the time. “But it’s been like saying farewell to the best relationship of my life. At the start of my illness, when I stopped touring, I was really pissed off with myself, the doctors, and the world. But as time has gone on, I’ve just gone, ‘Well, maybe I’ve just got to accept that fact.’”
Osbourne leaves behind his wife, three children from his first marriage, and three with Sharon; Jack, Kelly and Aimee.
This story has been updated.
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