2 days ago
Black Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne dies at the age of 76
MICHAEL ROWLAND, REPORTER: He was the black-clad, demon worshipping wild man of heavy metal, but Ozzy Osborne could not have been more obliging when photographer Tony Mott dropped by his Sydney hotel room in 1997.
TONY MOTT, PHOTOGRAPHER: As soon as you put the camera on him, he lit up. He lit up in front of you. He did all that and all the metal, and it was all good. He had Ozzy tattooed on his knuckles. It was easy to get a portrait.
MICHAEL ROWLAND: Things became even more cordial when the pair emerged into the light.
TONY MOTT: We went outside, and I got shots of him on Sydney Harbour and I just come, a couple of years earlier, I toured with Paul McCartney and he was aware of that and he's a massive Beatles fan, and we spent 20, 30 minutes just discussing Paul McCartney and The Beatles.
I can't emphasise what a lovely guy he was. He was really, really, really, really polite, very obliging, and he was Ozzy, a dead set legend.
MICHAEL ROWLAND: Ozzy Osborne was also a dead set musical innovator. Black Sabbath burst on to the scene with their self-titled debut album in 1970 and the music world was never the same.
PAUL CASHMERE, MUSIC JOURNALIST: And that first Black Sabbath album when it came out it was groundbreaking. That set the pattern for then what became hard rock music for decades after that.
MICHAEL ROWLAND: Black Sabbath pioneered heavy metal music. Sure, there were the angry guitar riffs and foreboding beat but there was something about the band's frontman. A Black Sabbath concert was as much about the bone shaking music as it was Ozzy Osborne's outrageous stage antics.
He paced, he growled. He was fond of throwing raw meat into the audience. And, of course, there was the bat.
OZZY OSBOURNE: All I did was go out there and make a mistake of biting the head off a bat and I tell you what guys it ain't fun when you get them rabies shots.
TONY MOTT: He was a born performer. It's performance. It wasn't just singing. Yeah, he was fantastic. It's really difficult to put into words because the best way to describe Ozzy Osborne is he's Ozzy bloody Osborne. That's who he is
MICHAEL ROWLAND: Born John Michael Osborne in Birmingham in 1948, the future rock idol had a troubled childhood. He was sexually abused when he was 11 and spent time in jail for burglary offences.
His demons spilled into his adult life and after Black Sabbath took off, so too did Osborne's drug and alcohol addictions.
By 1979, Ozzy's erratic behaviour became too much for even his heavy metal bandmates, and he was sacked from the group.
But there were two sides to this rock and roll beast.
PAUL CASHMERE: But all of that legendary wild man image that Ozzy had, you had to then look at his family life and the loving father, the great husband. He was just marvellous to his kids. And when you have a look at the two sides of Ozzy, yes, he was the madman on stage, but when he came off stage, he was the average Birmingham bloke.
MICHAEL ROWLAND: Ozzy Osborne's marriage to wife Sharon wasn't without its dark periods. In 1989, Osborne was arrested for attempting to murder Sharon while drunk.
SHARON OSBORNE: He just said we've come to a decision that you've got to die, and then just suddenly he lunged across at me.
MICHAEL ROWLAND: But the relationship endured, and in 2002 the singer's family life became the subject of a hit reality TV show.
(Extract from The Osbornes)
PAUL CASHMERE: Oh, look, the fact that we could see on a day-by-day basis how a rock star lived, it was just eye opening.
MICHAEL ROWLAND: In later years and after a long period of sobriety, Osbourne admitted he had been drinking and taking drugs again.
In 2020, he announced he'd been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.
Along with the many tributes today from music industry giants, were these deeply personal messages from Ozzy's Black Sabbath bandmates Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler who were there with the singer in Birmingham when it all began more than 35 years ago.
And it was somewhat fitting Black Sabbath returned to Birmingham earlier this month to play what turned out to be Ozzy Osborne's final gig.
VOX POP: He's had such an amazing career and he's clearly such a funny guy, he's enjoying it and it's fantastic.
VOX POP 2: A little bit emotional actually.
VOX POP 3: Yeah it's the end of an era.
VOX POP 4: I have endless love for Ozzy and I sobbed the whole way through.
PAUL CASHMERE: What a fantastic way to end. It was only four songs, but Ozzy also opened the show with a five-song solo set, and it was the swan song. No one was expecting what we heard today, but what a way to go out.
TONY MOTT: If you're doing the top 30 of all time influential artists, et cetera, et cetera, Ozzy's in there. He wasn't the greatest singer by a long shot, but his voice was perfect for what Black Sabbath were, but yet he's up there amongst them without a doubt, and from a heavy metal point of view, it could be easy argued, he's number one.
