“The wreckage of my previous is haunting me, it simply gained’t go away me alone,” sang Ozzy on “Street to Nowhere,” the reflective nearer on his bestselling 1991 album No Extra Tears. It’s a standout in a solo profession that endeared him to Gen Xers as a lot as his Black Sabbath albums did for boomers and The Osbournes for millennials, by which level Ozzy’s standing as a top-tier rock legend was irrefutable. The institution didn’t take him severely—his first Rolling Stone cowl story wasn’t till 2002 (he graced the duvet twice that 12 months), and the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame didn’t induct Sabbath nor Ozzy solo till a few years after their earliest eligibility. Which will have endeared Ozzy all of the extra to followers who packed amphitheaters for Ozzfest and purchased tens of millions of his information that FM radio was hesitant to play. Like David Lynch or Pee-wee Herman, he was a really public weirdo who offended puritans and made different weirdos really feel protected. Folks needed to dismiss this pastor-terrorizing, bat-chomping, Alamo-desecrating hellion as a shock-rocker, however these of us who listened knew a part of what made the Ozzman such a placing artist was how exhausting he labored to persuade us of the other.
In Penelope Spheeris’ unforgettable “The Decline of Western Civilization Half II: The Metallic Years,” rockers are wanting to be filmed displaying off their excesses—beset by younger groupies, or chugging vodka in a non-public swimming pool, maybe. Ozzy gave probably the most memorable interview by displaying himself making breakfast in his kitchen. (We now know that the orange juice spill is staged, which additional speaks to Ozzy’s humor.) He consistently dismissed his music’s heaviness (“I’ve by no means felt comfy about that title that they placed on me — ‘steel,’…it was at all times simply rock music”), Satanism (“We couldn’t conjure up a fart”), and irritated his extra severe bandmates by leaping round on stage an excessive amount of. He duetted with Miss Piggy on the 1994 Muppets album Kermit Unpigged. He was much more more likely to sing the praises of the Beatles or Peter Gabriel than his Ozzfest brethren, although he actually elevated quite a few younger and underappreciated artists on tour.
He insisted Black Sabbath had been “the final hippie band” (“We had been into peace”) and sang about leaning to like and forgetting to hate in his greatest solo hit. Most famously, he performed the befuddled father on an MTV present that will have been the worst attainable publicity for somebody extensively referred to as the Prince of Darkness, or the Godfather of Metallic. In a Rolling Stone profile driving on the success of the hit present “The Osbournes,” Ozzy recounted being not too long ago invited to Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee, the place he bashfully tried to cowl up his tattooed fingers (O-Z-Z-Y) for the monarch. He differentiated himself from different rock stars by noting that he stayed married to somebody his personal age. Ozzy wasn’t making an attempt to get folks to disregard the person backstage, he needed to reassure us the person on stage wasn’t so unhealthy.
However just like the wolfman Ozzy sang about in “Bark on the Moon,” or the Robert Louis Stevenson character he referenced on an Ozzmosis deep minimize, one thing horrifying stored breaking out of John Michael Osbourne. Irrespective of how a lot he downplayed his darkish aspect, there was one thing unpredictable and unnerving in his persona. No different rock musician can appear so convincingly possessed. A part of it was the debauchery—if Ozzy’s friends and his fabulous autobiography I Am Ozzy are to be believed, he lived by way of and forgot about extra depravity than most rock stars have loved (anybody who can gross out the members of Mötley Crüe is on one other stage). However probably the most gorgeous factor about Ozzy Osbourne will at all times be his music. “I don’t need to change the world, I don’t need the world to alter me” chanted Ozzy in one other No Extra Tears banger, which ultimately (talking of surprising) gained him a Grammy. It doesn’t matter what he meant, the world modified for Ozzy Osbourne, a troubled, impoverished boy from an abusive family, a highschool dropout with undiagnosed ADHD and dyslexia, who struggled to struggle off bullies or maintain down a gentle job, and grew as much as be some of the celebrated artists of his lifetime.
Ozzy had labored as a plumber, tea boy, slaughterhouse worker (“The stink was unbelievable”), mortuary assistant (“I’d have visions of the lifeless folks’s faces after I bought house”), and automobile horn tuner (“Are you able to think about being in a room with that fucking racket?”), in addition to frolicked in jail (“One of the best factor my father ever did for me was he refused to pay the wonderful”) by the point he began inserting advertisements to begin a band. He discovered Black Sabbath, which appeared like nothing earlier than it when their first album dropped in February 1970. Each steel act of their wake owes one thing to them.
It’s nonetheless startling how up to date Sabbath nonetheless sounds with right now’s cutting-edge steel bands. Purists wish to level out that guitarist Tony Iommi was the riff architect and bassist Geezer Butler wrote a lot of the band’s lyrics, whereas Sabbath’s reunion minus authentic drummer Invoice Ward emphasised his essential percussion. However Ozzy’s skill to personal and outline songs he didn’t write underscores his place as heavy steel’s Elvis, its first world celebrity arriving as a jaw-dropping, irreplaceable expertise.
No person sings like Ozzy—most steel vocalists are operatic (Rob Halford, Bruce Dickinson) or growlers (Lemmy, James Hetfield), none of whom can obtain Ozzy’s banshee wail. He might pull off wild harmonies with himself by way of multitracked vocals or go from singsong to maniacal inside seconds. He articulated insecurity (“Goodbye to Romance,” “Tonight”) and uncertainty (“I Don’t Know,” “Time After Time”) in addition to probably the most rowdy or foreboding characters he’s identified for.
He articulated insecurity, uncertainty, and even love in addition to probably the most rowdy or foreboding characters he’s identified for. It was not the form of voice folks develop with singing classes. Ozzy could have the excellence of being each steel’s most influential and inimitable vocalist. Analyzing a few of steel’s greatest vocalists in a function for steel weblog Invisible Orangesfamend voice instructor Claudia Friedlander famous that the “Struggle Pigs” singer’s method was all unsuitable, asking, “How lengthy did his profession final?” Ozzy’s howl didn’t sound prefer it was meant to final, which is a part of what stored us hooked to each word, at the same time as he appeared to face up to each ingested narcotic, car collision, lethal sickness, or different disaster thrown his manner.
When Ozzy was unceremoniously fired from Black Sabbath in 1979, one might be forgiven for pondering he’d be steel’s Artwork Garfunkel, adrift with out his corresponding songwriters. However with a assist of a brand new group (Ozzy was at all times fast to attribute his solo success to spouse/supervisor Sharon Osboune and prodigy guitarist Randy Rhoads), Ozzy cast a brand new path on his knockout solo albums Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madmanpioneering a velocity steel sound with sufficient pop hooks to make songs like “Mister Crowley,” “Over the Mountain,” and “Flying Excessive Once more” into eventual anthems, armed with probably the most revolutionary younger rock guitarist this aspect of Eddie Van Halen.
Like a steel Iggy Pop with David Bowie, Ozzy and Rhoads will at all times be linked as collaborators for his or her two genre-changing albums collectively, establishing the frontman as his personal astonishing voice rising from his earlier band’s implosion. After Rhoads was tragically killed in a airplane crash, Ozzy soldiered on with new guitarist Jake E. Lee for some much less constant albums that also have some gems and a deserved following. Ozzy appeared to have extra enjoyable than ever when the Satanic Panic preachers and PMRC mother and father began blaming him for society’s ills, and he was completely happy to mock Jimmy Swaggert within the “Miracle Man” video or play a televangelist in 1986 horror film Trick or Deal with. Trying again on the goofball on the duvet of Diary of a Madman or within the “Shot within the Darkish” music video, it’s exhausting to consider so many individuals had been afraid of him.
The physique of labor he created is flexible sufficient to be liked by glam rockers, grunge musicians, punks, thrashers, and the choice nation, making him a uncommon artist to thrive throughout a number of generations. Rappers preferred him sufficient for sampling (Trick Daddy’s hit “Let’s Go” riffs on “Loopy Prepare”) and collaboration (from “For Heaven’s Sake 2000” with the Wu-Tang Clan by way of “Take What You Need” with Submit Malone and Travis Scott, giving the septuagenarian his biggest Billboard success in three many years).
However whereas Ozzy up to date his sound with new ranges of heaviness (particular due to first mate guitarist Zakk Wylde, who’s carried out on Ozzy’s greatest work for the reason that ‘90s), and expanded his vary as a singer (the beautiful “Mama, I’m Coming Residence,” a music few of Ozzy’s friends might have pulled off, is as enduring as something he recorded), he didn’t chase traits. He maintained his older fanbase however by no means stopped drawing in younger followers. No person questioned Ozzy’s skill to headline over the mightiest thrash, doom, loss of life, and black steel bands of his day, to not point out the nu-metal and rap-rock traits he outlasted. Anybody with a passing curiosity in steel can impersonate Ozzy’s garbled, f-bomb-heavy stage banter, offset by leaping and clapping, or the hunched, stalking, variation he adopted when his physique began slowing down, like a heavy steel Crypt-Keeper inviting listeners in for a narrative. Ozzy wasn’t at all times a sober or coherent performer, however he was at all times magnetic, and the final time I noticed him (2016 at Madison Sq. Backyard, one in all two sold-out nights) he was transcendent.
The world has been catching as much as Ozzy. After years of solely making uncommon appearances on rock radio, he’s nearly ubiquitous on traditional rock and steel playlists, to not point out athletic occasions and film soundtracks. A couple of seconds of Ozzy might be the perfect scene of a nasty film (his “Jerky Boys” and “Little Nicky” cameos are price a YouTube search), or the perfect line of film (his priceless supply in “Non-public Components”).
His Rock Corridor induction, with an impassioned speech by Jack Black and performers starting from Billy Idol to Maynard James Keenan to Jelly Roll, didn’t happen till final October. On July 5, 2025, seventeen days earlier than his passing, Ozzy and Black Sabbath headlined the highest-grossing charity live performance thus far, elevating over $190 million for Treatment Parkinson’s, Birmingham Youngsters’s Hospital, and Acorn Youngsters’s Hospice, (inspiring some to level out that Ozzy has at all times been a extra beneficiant humanitarian than any of his non secular proper adversaries), full of the best all-star steel lineup ever assembled, together with Metallica, Weapons N’ Roses, Slayer, Pantera, Instrument, Gojira, Lamb of God, and Mastodon. On the finish of the sold-out stadium present, Ozzy seems to be awestruck, as if he nonetheless can’t consider all that is taking place to him. For somebody who supposedly had seen and carried out all of it, it’s not exhausting to see the misfit Brummie up on stage, nonetheless processing ten hours of tributes from a number of the world’s greatest steel bands, whereas he’s handed a cake and watches fireworks go off in his honor.
I met Ozzy as soon as. I used to be interning at a radio present the place he was being interviewed, and I begged for an opportunity to provide Ozzy his waiver to signal. Ozzy’s handler was agency with me: I used to be to not discuss to, acknowledge, take a look at, or breathe close to Ozzy, except Sharon was within the room. I understood.
Sharon and Ozzy arrived collectively, and Ozzy sat peacefully in a chair whereas Sharon schmoozed. Sharon was pleasant (after we didn’t have the drink she requested for she fortunately took a substitute) and signed her waiver, no downside. However after I turned to Ozzy together with his waiver, Sharon walked out of the room.
I by no means came upon if Sharon left as a result of she didn’t care concerning the handler, or as a result of she knew it’d make me euphoric to have a second alone with Ozzy Osbourne. I can’t keep in mind what I gushed to him about for 30 seconds (what does one even say to the Prince of Darkness? Shouldn’t we be kneeling?). However I’ll at all times really feel blessed that he took a second to see out from behind his purple-tinted sun shades and gently supply me a handshake. “Thanks,” stated Ozzy.
A minute later, I watched Ozzy cackle and lift his arms when the DJ launched him. There he was.
Thanks, Ozzy.
Ben Apatoff is the creator of Physique Depend (33⅓) and Metallica: The $24.95 Ebook, two books about bands that steadily cite Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath’s affect. Order Physique Depend (33 ⅓) from Bloomsbury right here.