Ozzy Osbourne, the iconic heavy metal vocalist who helped to pioneer the genre as the frontman of Black Sabbath and went on to launch a successful solo career, the influential traveling music festival Ozzfest, and the reality TV sensation The Osbournes, has died. As the BBC reports, Osbourne's family issued a statement today confirming his passing after a yearslong battle with Parkinson's Disease: "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." Osbourne's death comes just weeks after he performed with Black Sabbath one last time in his native Birmingham at a high-profile farewell concert. He was 76.
Osbourne's influence on heavy rock music is incalculable. As the singer for Black Sabbath, he lent his voice to a string of albums that charted the course for heavy metal. Osbourne brought a fiery, wide-eyed presence to the band's recordings and contributing to the archetype of the dark, debaucherous metal frontman, adopting the nickname "Prince Of Darkness" and sparking numerous moral panics along the way. His legend kept growing with a solo career that saw him release classics like "Crazy Train" and engage in extremely metal behavior like biting the head off a live bat onstage in 1982. With Ozzfest, a touring festival in the vein of Lollapalooza, Osbourne put his stamp on a new generation of heavy rock bands in the '90s and 2000s. And then, post-Y2K, he punctured his own mythic status (but further ramped up his fame) by starring in The Osbournes, an MTV reality show about his family life that reframed him as more funny than ferocious.
Born John Michael Osbourne in 1948, he grew up in the Aston area of Birmingham in England's West Midlands, picking up the nickname Ozzy as a child. He had a rough childhood, including struggles with dyslexia and sexual abuse at the hands of high school bullies, and has said he attempted suicide multiple times as a teenager. At age 14, after hearing the Beatles' "She Loves You," he dedicated his life to becoming a rock star. It wouldn't come immediately, but he'd get there rather quickly.
At age 15, Osbourne dropped out of school to work various blue-collar jobs and spent six weeks in jail at age 17 after being convicted of robbing a clothing shop. The following year, bassist Geezer Butler recruited Osbourne to sing in a short-lived band called Rare Breed. After that band's breakup, Osbourne and Butler teamed with guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward under the name Polka Tulk Blues. The group was renamed Earth for a while but, after being mistaken for a different Earth, rebranded as Black Sabbath in the summer of '69, taking their name from the Italian horror anthology.
Matching themes of horror and the occult with down-tuned instruments that made their heavy version of rock 'n' roll feel even darker and harder, Sabbath mapped out a template that would be built upon for generations. Starting with their 1970 self-titled debut — which dropped on Friday the 13th, naturally — Sabbath spent the '70s releasing one monumental album after the next. On classic songs like "Black Sabbath," "The Wizard," "Paranoid," "War Pigs," "Iron Man," "Sweet Leaf," and "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath," the band laid the foundation for everything from thrash to doom. Osbourne's fiery vocals and dark-tinged lyrics were a huge part of the band's appeal, and they put a devilish tint on songs that might otherwise have played more like rock 'n' roll.
The Prince of Darkness began to lose interest in Sabbath in the latter half of the decade. Osbourne quit the band in 1977 and was briefly replaced by Dave Walker, only to rejoin in 1978, just in time for Sabbath to be blown off the stage by the opening act on a tour with hungry young openers Van Halen. With drug use rampant among the band members and Osbourne's alcoholism becoming an impediment, Iommi, who had maintained a contentious relationship with Osbourne from the beginning, made the call to fire the singer in 1979, replacing him with Rainbow's Ronnie James Dio.
Thus began Osbourne's solo career. He formed a band featuring Quiet Riot guitarist Randy Rhoads and recorded 1980's Blizzard Of Ozz, his solo debut. Rhoads' guitar work merged brilliantly with Osbourne's vocals on the album's lead single "Crazy Train," which now stands as Osbourne's most famous solo track. Also on the tracklist was the Aleister Crowley tribute "Mr. Crowley," which fueled rumors that he was a Satanist. (By 1992, Osbourne was a member of the Church of England.) Blizzard Of Ozz also included "Suicide Solution," which led to controversy in 1984 when California teenager John McCollum died by suicide while listening to the song. McCollum's family sued Osbourne, but the rocker prevailed in court. A similar suit followed in 1991 after the suicide of Michael Waller under similar circumstances, but Osbourne once again avoided liability.
After appearing on one more Osbourne solo album, 1981's Diary Of A Madman, Rhoads died in a plane crash in 1982. Osbourne moved forward, releasing 1983's Bark At The Moon, highlighted by its fan-favorite title track and "So Tired." While continuing to make rock hits like "Shot In The Dark," Osbourne also branched out into dance-pop as a guest on the Was (Not Was) hit "Shake Your Head (Let's Go To Bed)." In 1988, he reached the Top 10 of the US pop chart with the Lita Ford duet "Close My Eyes Forever." All the while, Osbourne continued to drink heavily, which led to moments like the aforementioned bat incident onstage in Des Moines in 1982.
Osbourne maintained a presence on MTV and rock radio in the '90s with hits like "Mama, I'm Coming Home." But as the decade wore on, he moved into more of an elder statesman role, especially once Ozzfest got off the ground. Osbourne founded the fest with Sharon Osbourne, his wife and manager, after her attempts to get him booked for Lollapalooza were thwarted. It began as a two-day event in Phoenix, AZ and Devore, CA in the fall of 1996 with support acts including Slayer and Danzig, but was so well-received that it returned as a touring operation in 1997.
For the 1997 Ozzfest, Osbourne re-teamed with Black Sabbath and performed a solo set. The bill also featured Pantera, Marilyn Manson, and a wave of nu-metal bands that heralded a sea change in the genre. The tour expanded to the UK for one year in 1998 and forged into other parts of Europe later on but became a fixture of North American summers for many years to come, emerging as the defining live music franchise of turn-of-the-millennium heavy rock. The fest continued through 2008 and was revived in 2010, with occasional resurrections in Japan or in partnership with Slipknot's Knotfest throughout the 2010s. But by then, another act of Osbourne's career was well underway.
In 2002, MTV premiered The Osbournes, a lighthearted reality series depicting Osbourne's home life in Los Angeles with Sharon and their children Jack and Kelly. (Another son, Louis, made occasional appearances, while eldest daughter Aimee opted not to participate.) The series became a cultural sensation, making stars out of all of the Osbourne family members and presenting Ozzy as a doddering sitcom dad, like a foul-mouthed Homer Simpson. Though he was already a living legend before launching into reality TV, The Osbournes made the Ozzman famous on a whole other level, with a far broader audience. It was another instance of Osbourne laying the groundwork for many imitators to come, as The Osbournes helped to create the template for reality TV as we know it today.
In his later years, Osbourne has released new music intermittently, sometimes collaborating with younger musicians like Yungblud and Post Malone. He retired from touring in 2023, citing declining health due to Parkinson's and other ailments. He reunited with Sabbath several times over the years, most recently for this month's all-star farewell concert Back To The Beginning, which assembled nearly all of the biggest names in metal to pay tribute to Osbourne's legacy. The show became the highest grossing charity concert of all time, raising an estimated $200 million to be split between Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Acorn Children’s Hospice, and Cure Parkinson’s.
Below, look back on a fraction of Osbourne's memorable contributions to music and pop culture.
