Black Sabbath vocalist Ozzy Osbourne has died aged 76 leaving behind a legacy as a pioneer of heavy metal.
But the frontman made just as many headlines for his off-stage antics as his genre-defining works. Below, 10 pivotal points from the self-anointed “prince of darkness” and his unforgettable reign.
While his erratic acts earned him notoriety, Osbourne first and foremost rose to fame for his music achievements. Formed in Birmingham in 1968, Black Sabbath are one of the most influential heavy metal bands of all time, having sold more than 70 million records worldwide.
When inducting the band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006, Metallica‘s Lars Ulrich said: “Black Sabbath is and always will be synonymous with heavy metal.”
Appearing on CBS News to discuss Osbourne’s legacy, Rolling Stone contributor Joe Levy said: “It was not so popular with critics like myself but it was awfully popular with kids”.
“That music was dark, doomy and it partook of all the signs and symbols of horror movies really in order to tell a certain kind of truth about the way that kids felt.”
Despite their commercial success Osbourne’s position as the frontman was jeopardised in the late 1970s because of the singer’s excessive alcohol and drug use. Osbourne was fired in 1979 and replaced by Ronnie James Dio. He launched a solo career the next year.
Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi later said: “At that time, Ozzy had come to an end. We were all doing a lot of drugs... and Ozzy was getting drunk so much at the time. We were supposed to be rehearsing, and nothing was happening.”
Osbourne first met Sharon in 1970, when her father worked for Black Sabbath. When Osbourne started his solo career in 1979 Sharon started managing him. They married in 1982, the same year Osbourne divorced his first wife Thelma Riley. A father to two children with Thelma, Osbourne went on to have three children with Sharon: Aimee, Kelly and Jack.
The relationship had its ups and downs, often marred by Osbourne’s drug use and subsequent erratic behaviour. “I wasn’t a saint. Ozzy wasn’t a saint,” Sharon told People in 2022. “I gave him as good as he gave me. We’re just meant to be.”
After a brief split in 2016, the couple renewed their vows in May 2017 and celebrated their 43rd wedding anniversary this month. Asked once what his proudest moment was, Osbourne said it was “having a marriage that lasted”.
By far Osbourne’s most infamous moment occurred on stage in 1982 in Des Moines, Iowa, when he bit the head off a bat after mistaking it for a rubber toy.
On TV show Night Flight in 1982, Osbourne said: “The taste of bat is very salty. It tastes like salt”. Asked if bat tasted like anything else, the musician responded: “Well yes, but I can’t really say that on the air can I?”
Osbourne described the incident in his memoir I Am Ozzy, writing in part: “Immediately, though, something felt wrong. Very wrong. For a start, my mouth was instantly full of this warm, gloopy liquid, with the worst aftertaste you could ever imagine. I could feel it staining my teeth and running down my chin.”
That wasn’t the end of Osbourne’s animal run-ins.
In 1981, after signing his first solo career record deal, Osbourne allegedly bit the head off a dove during a meeting with CBS Records executives in Los Angeles.
Osbourne also reportedly snorted ants in 1984 while on tour with Mötley Crüe.
The musician has abused alcohol and other drugs for the majority of his adult life, which more than once landed him in legal hot water. In February 1982, Osbourne was arrested for urinating on the Alamo Cenotaph, a monument in San Antonio, Texas, commemorating the Battle of the Alamo of the Texas Revolution.
After the incident, Osbourne was banned from performing in Alamo City for 10 years. He later apologised for the incident and returned to the Alamo in November 2015, when he took a tour of the Texas landmark as part of filming for the History Channel.
Osbourne and his family earned widespread attention and a new generation of fans in 2002 with the debut of MTV reality TV show The Osbournes.
The unscripted series followed the family’s surprisingly mundane domestic dynamic, celebrity encounters and run-ins with their Hollywood neighbours. The show’s first season was cited as the most-viewed series ever on MTV.
As well as day-to-day interactions (one of the show’s most memorable scenes tracked Osbourne in a protracted struggle to work a complicated television remote), the show documented the family dealing with major personal challenges such as the aftermath of Osbourne’s near-fatal ATV accident.
In 2002, at the peak of his reality TV career, Osbourne was invited to The White House Correspondence Dinner. Addressing guests, President George W. Bush singled out the rocker, welcoming “Washington power brokers, celebrities, Hollywood stars, Ozzy Osbourne”.
In return, Osbourne, who had made good use of the open bar, stood on the table and blew exaggerated kisses to the room. The President then muttered: “Okay Ozzy... this might have been a mistake.”
Osbourne was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative nervous system disorder, in 2003 but kept the news private until early 2020.
In 2022, he said of the illness: “You think you’re lifting your feet, but your foot doesn’t move. I feel like I’m walking around in lead boots. I reached a plateau that was lower than I wanted it to be. Nothing really felt great. Nothing.”
He also revealed he had started taking antidepressants to help with the mental toll of the disease, saying: “You learn to live in the moment because you don’t know [what’s going to happen]. You don’t know when you’re gonna wake up, and you ain’t gonna be able to get out of bed. But you just don’t think about it. Without my Sharon, I’d be f***ing gone. We have a little row now and then, but otherwise, we just get on with it.”
On July 5, Black Sabbath made their final appearance as a band, headlining Back to the Beginning, a one-day show in their hometown of Birmingham.
Some 45,000 fans gathered at Villa Park (home to Osbourne’s football club of choice, Aston Villa) to witness the band’s farewell set and some of the other biggest names in rock pay musical homage to the band.
Osbourne performed his half-hour set sitting in an ornate black chair.
“I’ve been laid up for six f***ing years, you have no idea how much this means to me,” he told the crowd.
When the concert was announced, Sharon Osbourne said her husband had been determined to farewell his fans. “This is his full stop,” she said.