Ozzy Osbourne, lead singer of Black Sabbath and godfather of heavy metal, dies at 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. He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time,' a family statement said. In 2020, he revealed he had Parkinson's disease after suffering a fall.
Either clad in black or bare-chested, the singer was often the target of parents' groups for his imagery and once caused an uproar for biting the head off a bat. Later, he would reveal himself to be a doddering and sweet father on the reality TV show 'The Osbournes.'
Black Sabbath's 1969 self-titled debut LP has been likened to the Big Bang of heavy metal. It came during the height of the Vietnam War and crashed the hippie party, dripping menace and foreboding. The cover of the record was of a spooky figure against a stark landscape. The music was loud, dense and angry, and marked a shift in rock 'n' roll.
The band's second album, 'Paranoid,' included such classic metal tunes as 'War Pigs,' 'Iron Man' and 'Fairies Wear Boots.' The song 'Paranoid' only reached No. 61 on the Billboard Hot 100 but became in many ways the band's signature song. Both albums were voted among the top 10 greatest heavy metal albums of all time by readers of Rolling Stone magazine.
'Black Sabbath are the Beatles of heavy metal. Anybody who's serious about metal will tell you it all comes down to Sabbath,' Dave Navarro of the band Jane's Addiction wrote in a 2010 tribute in Rolling Stone. 'There's a direct line you can draw back from today's metal, through Eighties bands like Iron Maiden, back to Sabbath.'
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Atlantic
a minute ago
- Atlantic
Ozzy Osbourne's Wild, Normal Life
When I was growing up in the early 2000s, few cultural figures confused me more than Ozzy Osbourne. He was, I understood, the 'Prince of Darkness,' a legendary influence upon Tool, Linkin Park, and various other fearsome and dour bands I worshipped. But Osbourne was also the bumbling, profanity-dribbling star of The Osbournes, the smash reality show about his life of Hollywood domesticity with his wife and kids. On TV, Osbourne wasn't a demon; he was just some dude. Years later it's clear that this cognitive dissonance is precisely why he was regarded as a titan. The Black Sabbath front man, who died Tuesday at age 76, helped invent heavy metal—a sound and a countercultural identity with terrifying connotations. But he showed how that identity was rooted in the very thing that it superficially seemed to obscure: the warm, soft human core inside each of us. Osbourne knew that metal is not the music of hell but rather the music of Earth, not a fantasy but a survival guide. His own survival story began early in life. Raised in a working-class family of eight in the industrial English town of Birmingham, Osbourne had parents who put in long hours at factories. His father was 'one of those guys who'd go to work if he'd been in a car accident, if his house had been blown up,' Osbourne later said. Dyslexia caused Osbourne to struggle with academics, and his headmaster once humiliated him by sending him home for looking, as Osbourne remembered it, 'not clean enough.' Two classmates routinely sexually abused him—an experience whose effects festered in his psyche for years. 'I was afraid to tell my father or mother and it completely fucked me up,' Osbourne said. Like many kids of the '60s, Osbourne had his mind blown by the Beatles and felt called to form a band. It was first called the Polka Tulk Blues Band, then called Earth, and then called Black Sabbath. Bloody serendipity helped create Sabbath's signature sound: When guitarist Tony Iommi sliced the ends of his fingers on the job at a sheet-metal factory, he was forced to create false fingertips out of soap bottles, which in turn caused him to play in an eerie, leaden-sounding fashion. But the nightmarish vibe of the band's self-titled 1970 debut was also the result of strategic thinking—inspired, in part, by the knowledge of how popular horror movies were at the time. Osbourne sang in the high howl of a man being burned at the stake, and his melodies unfolded in a slow, hypnotic smolder. The lyrics—chiefly written by other bandmates, with input from Osbourne—were about devils and wizards and men made of iron, but they were also about reality. 'Wicked World,' a B-side from the debut, delivered peacenik thoughts with a snarl: 'People got to work just to earn their bread / While people just across the sea are counting their dead.' The protest epic 'War Pigs,' from 1970's Paranoid, portrayed military generals as evil occultists. Despite what Christian activists during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s would claim, much of Osbourne's music was doing the opposite of sympathizing with the devil. Black Sabbath partied like any rock band, but Osbourne was famous for partaking of drugs and alcohol at extremes. The group kicked him out in 1979 after he slept through a concert and didn't wake up until a day later. He went in and out of rehab repeatedly. He described many of his most notorious experiences as resulting from confusion—confusion that seems inextricable from living life intoxicated. When he bit off a bat's head in 1982, it was because he thought it was a stage prop. When he devoured two doves during a record-label meeting in 1981, he was drunk. When he tried to strangle his wife, Sharon, in 1989, he woke up in jail with no memory of what had happened. (He later spoke of that incident with horror and regret.) Accordingly, Osbourne's music captured the viewpoint of someone out of touch with their own mind, whose good intentions are thwarted by horrible urges. On 'Paranoid,' Osbourne shouted monotonously from within a maze of riffs, like he was trapped and needing help. On 'Crazy Train,' the enduring single from his 1980 solo debut, Blizzard of Ozz, his high notes sounded like the Doppler-distorted cries of someone strapped into a vehicle they can't control. The parents of a teen who died by suicide in 1984 sued him over the lyrics to 'Suicide Solution,' claiming that it encouraged self-harm. But the song was really about alcoholism, a 'reaper' that stalks its helpless victims. Osbourne's public rebirth with The Osbournes— the MTV reality series that ran from 2002 to 2005—transmuted his erratic nature and past struggles into a miraculous joke. Living in a taupe-painted mansion rather than a haunted castle, Osbourne was clearly mismatched to his surroundings—hence all the befuddled stammering and incongruous black outfits. But he also obviously wanted to be a good dad and husband. This normalcy was something he'd prized for decades. A lifelong Christian, he told The New York Times in 1992, 'I am not the Antichrist. I am a family man.' He also eagerly played the role of rock elder statesman by founding the influential Ozzfest with Sharon and seemingly showing up to most any awards show or commercial shoot that would have him. Weeks before his death, Black Sabbath reunited for a final show featuring a host of bands it had influenced (including my beloved Tool). It now seems like it was an early wake for Osbourne. Frail from Parkinson's disease and other health issues, he sat on a throne, grinning at the crowd's adulation. Being so known, so loved, and so loving might not seem very metal. But it takes iron to last like he did.
USA Today
30 minutes ago
- USA Today
Coldplay gives Ozzy Osbourne an emotional tribute at Nashville concert
Coldplay is honoring a heavy metal titan with his own lyrics. During the Nashville stop of the group's latest world tour, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin interrupted the band's usual set list to pay tribute to Ozzy Osbourne, the rock legend who died Tuesday, July 22, at 76. The band, whose tour has found itself at the center of a much-discussed viral controversy, then launched into a cover of Black Sabbath's 1972 ballad "Changes." Osbourne was the group's longtime vocalist. "We'd like to dedicate this whole show to the incredible genius, talent and character-full gift to the world who was Ozzy Osbourne," Martin, 48, told the crowd. "We send our love to his family." Rock star Ozzy Osbourne dies at 76: Weeks after final Black Sabbath show Martin then treated audience members to a rendition of "Changes" that stripped down the song from its usual high-octane sound to match Coldplay's more acoustic tendencies. The track, off of Black Sabbath's 1972 album "Vol. 4," was reportedly inspired by the end of guitarist Bill Ward's first marriage. Osbourne, alongside his famous daughter Kelly, released a duet of the track in 2003, rewritten to match their own story. The sentimental father-daughter remake served as a microcosm for the rocker's contradictions: a harsh, heavy metal shredder onstage, and a family man behind the scenes. "I feel unhappy, I feel so sad\I've lost the best friend that I ever had," Martin crooned, stopping short of covering the full song, repurposing the lyrics to be a quasi-mourner's tune. "Ozzy, we love you, wherever you're going," he added at the end, before beginning the band's usual set. Ozzy Osbourne tributes: Elton John calls legendary rocker 'a huge trailblazer' Osbourne's death was announced by his family who said the rocker had died in his native Birmingham, England, "surrounded by love," on the morning of July 22. "It is with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy has passed away this morning," the statement read. "He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time." He leaves behind Sharon Osbourne, his wife of more than 40 years, as well as daughters Jessica, Aimee and Kelly and sons Elliot, Louis and Jack. Tributes from other stars poured in immediately after the news of Osbourne's death was reported. Elton John called Osbourne "a true legend," and former Black Sabbath band mate Tony Iommi lamented the "heartbreaking news."
Axios
30 minutes ago
- Axios
In photos: Ozzy Osbourne in Chicago
Ozzy Osbourne, known as the "Godfather of Heavy Metal," died Tuesday at the age of 76. Zoom in: While Ozzy is from England, his music brought thousands of Chicago fans together over the years. Ozzy and his band Black Sabbath have played everywhere from the Rosemont Horizon to the Aragon Ballroom. He also brought the "Ozzfest" tour to the New World Music Theatre in Tinley Park in the 1990s. In the photo above, Ozzy appeared at Rolling Stone Records in Norridge in 1981. Ozzy's last Chicago-area concert was with Black Sabbath at the United Center in 2016. They also performed at Lollapalooza in 2012.
