Music Correspondent
Getty PicturesOzzy Osbourne, probably the most recognisable and influential musicians in rock, has died on the age of 76.
As frontman of Black Sabbath, the Birmingham-born musician is credited with inventing heavy metallic, because of songs like Iron Man and Paranoid.
Lower than three weeks in the past, the self-styled “Prince of Darkness” carried out a farewell live performance in his hometown, supported by lots of the musicians he had impressed, together with Metallica and Weapons ‘n’ Roses.
In an announcement, his household stated: “It’s with extra disappointment than mere phrases can convey that we’ve got to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has handed away this morning. He was along with his household and surrounded by love.”
They didn’t specify a reason for demise, though the star had a sequence of well being issues and was recognized with Parkinson’s in 2019.
A spokesperson for the household confirmed to BBC Information that Osbourne died within the UK.
Born John Michael Osbourne, he dropped out of faculty aged 15, holding a number of low-paid jobs and spending a brief spell in jail for housebreaking earlier than embarking on his musical profession.
After singing with a number of native bands, he joined Black Sabbath alongside guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler, and drummer Invoice Ward within the late Sixties.
They developed a singular sound, impressed by the blues however slower, louder and extra sinister – with frequent references to the occult.
Thought-about pioneers of heavy metallic, they launched their self-titled album in 1970 and adopted it up with platinum information corresponding to Paranoid and Grasp of Actuality all through the remainder of the last decade.
Fired from the band in 1978, he launched a profitable solo profession with the 1980 album Blizzard of Ozz, that includes the traditional single Loopy Prepare.
The next yr’s Diary of a Madman was much more common, promoting greater than 5 million copies.
Alongside the best way, Osbourne developed a status for his unhinged stay performances, exemplified by the (probably apocryphal) story that he had as soon as bitten the top off a bat throughout a live performance, having mistakenly thought it was a toy thrown on stage by a fan.
His consumption of drink and medicines was legendary, resulting in some peculiar behaviour. The rock band Motley Crue as soon as described how Osbourne, in a contest to see whose habits had been probably the most debauched, snorted a line of ants from a lodge ground.
There was additionally a darkish aspect to his dependancy. In 1989, he wakened in jail, having been arrested for the tried homicide of his second spouse, Sharon.
Following the arrest, Osbourne was ordered by the court docket to spend six months in rehabilitation. Believing he was remorseful, Sharon determined to not press expenses.
Talking within the 2020 documentary The 9 Lives of Ozzy Osbourne, she recalled: “I advised him, ‘I do not need the cash however when you do that once more, both I’m going to kill you or you will kill me. And would you like that for the children?’”
Within the Nineties, his wild picture reworked because of the MTV actuality present The Osbournes – which portrayed the star because the well-meaning, ceaselessly befuddled patriarch of an unruly family.
This, he stated, was his true persona.
“All of the stuff onstage, the craziness, it is all only a position that I play, my work,” he advised The New York Occasions in 1992. “I’m not the Antichrist. I’m a household man.”
The Osbournes additionally made stars of his manager-wife Sharon, and youngsters Jack and Kelly – with whom he duetted on a chart topping model of the Sabbath tune Adjustments in 2003.
Getty PicturesThe identical yr, nevertheless, he suffered a spinal harm in 2003 after a crash involving an all-terrain automobile, or ATV.
The harm was exacerbated by a late-night fall in 2019, that required a number of rounds of intensive surgical procedure.
In 2020, the star revealed he had been recognized with Parkinson’s and largely stepped again from touring after enjoying the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Video games in 2022.
Nonetheless, he was decided to make one final look, bowing out along with his final live performance at Birmingham’s Villa Park on 5 July – a stone’s throw from his childhood house in Aston.
The musician sang whereas seated on a black throne – clapping, waving his arms and pulling wild-eyed appears as he carried out hits together with Loopy Prepare, Mr Crowley and Battle Pigs.
He appeared overwhelmed at some moments. “You don’t have any thought how I really feel. Thanks from the underside of my coronary heart,” he advised the viewers – and nearly six million extra individuals who tuned in for the stay stream.
Talking on stage, Pantera frontman Phil Anselmo stated the artists on the invoice “would all be completely different folks” with out Osbourne and Black Sabbath.
“That is the reality. I would not be up right here with this microphone in my hand with out Black Sabbath. The best of all time.”
A number of stars together with Rolling Stones’ Ronnie Wooden and Metallica have paid tribute to Osbourne. Elton John stated he was “an expensive good friend and an enormous trailblazer who secured his place within the pantheon of rock gods – a real legend”.
Singer Yungblud, who carried out a canopy of Adjustments on the farewell live performance with Black Sabbath in Birmingham simply weeks in the past, hailed Osbourne as a “legend”.
“I did not suppose you would depart so quickly,” he wrote on Instagram, including “the final time we met you had been so vigorous and your chortle stuffed up the room”.
Osbourne is survived by his spouse and their three youngsters, Aimee, Kelly and Jack Osbourne, and several other grandchildren. He is also survived by three youngsters from a earlier marriage: Jessica, Louis and Elliot.
