Ozzy Osbourne, the self-styled Prince of Darkness, has finally shuffled off this mortal coil, leaving a legacy of ear-splitting riffs, bat-biting theatrics, and a reality TV show that proved even the undead can be domesticated. Born John Michael Osbourne in 1948 in Birmingham—a city whose soot-choked skies surely inspired his gloomy oeuvre—he rose from factory-floor drudgery to become heavy metal’s most enduring caricature. He was 76, though his body seemed to have been through several additional centuries of hard living.
Osbourne’s career began with Black Sabbath, a band that sounded like a foundry accident set to music. Their doom-laden chords and lyrics about war pigs and iron men were less a genre than a cry for help from industrial England. As frontman, Ozzy’s voice—part wail, part gargle—lent a jabbing authenticity that no conservatory could teach. His onstage antics, from decapitating doves to snorting ants (allegedly), as well as infamously urinating on the Alamo wearing his wife's clothes, made him a tabloid fixture, though one suspects the doves had it coming.
After Sabbath sacked him in 1979 for being more intoxicated than their collective amplifiers, Osbourne reinvented himself as a solo act. With guitarist Randy Rhoads, he crafted albums like "Blizzard of Ozz", which proved he could howl at the moon without a band to prop him up. Hits like “Crazy Train” became anthems for misfits who found solace in headbanging. His marriage to Sharon, a managerial Svengali with a glare that could curdle milk, kept him alive and solvent, though their reality show "The Osbournes" revealed a man less demon than dotty dad, bumbling through Beverly Hills with a vocabulary permanently stuck on “f***ing hell, Sharon.”
Osbourne’s later years were a parade of self-inflicted wounds and improbable survival. Spinal surgeries, substance abuse, and a voice reduced to a gravelly mutter didn’t stop him from touring, a testament to either resilience or masochism. His Grammy wins and Hall of Fame induction with Sabbath cemented his legend, though one wonders if the bat he famously bit the head off would agree.
He leaves Sharon, their children, and a fanbase that worshipped his chaos. Ozzy didn’t so much live as detonate, repeatedly, in slow motion. If there’s a hell, he’s probably already headlining it, shouting “I can’t f***ing hear you” to the damned to the strains of "Paranoid".