Already when Ozzy Osbourne canceled his European tour in February 2023, the fans began to suspect trouble. Then the hard rock icon told in an emotional statement that he was too weak to perform the concerts and thanked for "a life he never even could dream of".
He became known in the music industry as The Prince of Darkness – the prince of darkness – but was born as John Michael Osbourne in a working-class family in Birmingham. He finished school as a 15-year-old and supported himself with low-paid jobs. During a period, he took part in a local criminal gang, made burglaries, and got caught.
I tried to do some burglaries but I was no good at it. Fucking worthless, he said much later in an interview in Big Issue, and told that a prison sentence of six weeks made him completely give up the criminal career.
Blues and occultism
And luckily so. Osbourne started instead singing in local rock groups and formed the band Earth together with guitarist Tony Iommi. To not be mixed up with another band with the same name, they changed their name to Black Sabbath, after an old film with horror film icon Boris Karloff.
Black Sabbath mixed rock and blues with devilish tone intervals, ear-deafening riffs, and lyrics about occultism, war, and drugs, and in the middle of it all was Ozzy Osbourne's shrill singing voice. He was far from a technically perfect singer, but few could dress their words in as much feeling as Osbourne – whether it was about horror and paranoia or manic joy.
It became eight albums in as many years and millions of copies sold. But the band's great successes got an abrupt end for Ozzy Osbourne when he in 1979 was fired, officially due to his alcohol and drug abuse. That the other band members also drank and did drugs made no difference – Ozzy was considered "unreliable" and excessive in comparison.
His second wife Sharon (born Arden) encouraged him to bet on a solo career, and in 1980 came the debut album "Blizzard of Ozz", which became a sales success. The next album "Diary of a madman" was sold in five million copies.
Bite the head off a bat
In the myth of Ozzy Osbourne's "crazy" image, a spectacular incident is included in connection with the subsequent tour when he bit the head off a real bat on stage, believing it was a rubber toy. When the truth came out for those involved, he was taken to the hospital.
Every night for the rest of the tour, I had to find a doctor who could give me more rabies shots. One in each buttock, one in each thigh, one in each arm. Each of them hurt like hell, he told Des Moines Register in 2001.
Already in 1992, Ozzy Osbourne claimed that he would retire from rock life, but he was lured back to the recording studios and tour life all the time. In the late 1990s, he reunited with his old bandmates in Black Sabbath for a tour and the live album "Reunion", and in 2013, he recorded his first studio album ("13") in 35 years with the band.
Dysfunctional TV family
Ozzy Osbourne helped invent heavy metal in the 1970s, but maybe it was as a TV star in the 2000s that he made his biggest impact on popular culture. "The Osbournes" – with its unconventional and confused hard rock dad and his dysfunctional family – revolutionized the music video channel MTV and paved the way for other reality families like Kardashian and Wahlgren/Ingrosso.
In the film "God bless Ozzy Osbourne", his son Jack tried to nuance the image of his father afterwards.
I was frustrated. His fans know who he is, but ordinary people have no idea. Instead, they believe in a lot of stereotypical images of a comic, mumbling person who never leaves his house. He is sober, engaged, and feels good, I wanted to show that, said Jack Osbourne in an interview with TT Spektra in 2011.
In recent years, however, Ozzy Osbourne's health has been poor. An accident with a four-wheeler over 20 years ago and a later fall accident at home gave him severe neck injuries. In connection with an operation to address this, he was also diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.
His wife Sharon explained in an interview with Daily Mail in November 2023 how fragile her husband was:
It's like he's made of porcelain and you have to put cotton around him, she said.
