A Royal Send-off for Ozzy Osbourne, Prince of Darkness
A regal carriage. A procession through crowd-lined streets. A brass band playing. And throngs of devoted, likely tearful, admirers paying their respects as the coffin passes.
It's time to say goodbye to the Prince of Darkness.
On Wednesday, such a tribute is planned for Ozzy Osbourne, a founder of the pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath, in Birmingham, England — his hometown — ahead of a private family funeral. As part of the event, which is scheduled to start at 1 p.m. (8 a.m. Eastern), Osbourne's family is to visit the Black Sabbath Bench, a tourist attraction that has become a place of pilgrimage.
It's the third time this month that fans have descended on Birmingham for an Ozzfest of sorts. On July 5, they flocked here for Osbourne's final concert at a soccer stadium just a few minutes from his childhood home. Last week, the black-clad, tattooed throngs returned after the singer died at age 76. Now, they're back for his funeral procession.
Some had rushed across borders to make it in time. Niclas Sundsborn, 53, a maintenance worker from Sweden, said that after learning about the procession on Tuesday, he and a metal-loving friend had each spent about $1,300 on plane tickets to fly to Britain. Sundsborn said that his own family 'probably think I'm mad' for spending that much, but that Osbourne was 'an icon.'
In Britain, mourners typically take to the streets in large numbers only for the death of queens or kings. After John Lennon died in 1980, some 20,000 fans gathered in Liverpool for a vigil, but few other artists have provoked such devotion. There was no procession for David Bowie's death, in 2016.
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The Hill
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