Ozzy Osbourne obituary: heavy metal wildman and lovable reality TV dad

For Osbourne, metal was 'not the music of hell but rather the music of Earth, not a fantasy but a survival guide'

Ozzy Osbourne performs at the Alpine Valley Music Theater, East Troy, Wisconsin, May 29, 1982
'The closest we ever got to black magic was a box of chocolates'
(Image credit: Paul Natkin / Getty Images)

As the frontman of Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, who has died aged 76, did not only help invent heavy metal, said The Daily Telegraph, he also pioneered its outrageous lifestyle: "preposterous theatrics", rumours of satanism and shocking excesses.

"I'm something of a madman," Osbourne said. "If it's booze, I drink the place dry. If drugs, I take everything and scrape the carpet for little crumbs." He bit the head off a dead bat during a concert in 1982; he snorted a line of ants while partying with Mötley Crüe; and he was banned from performing in Texas, for urinating on the Alamo Cenotaph while wearing a dress (his wife Sharon had hidden his clothes to stop him going out, so he had borrowed hers). He was serially unfaithful to Sharon: he slept with his children's nannies; on tour in Japan he took a fan to bed in his hotel room, forgetting that Sharon was there already. And in 1989, he was accused of trying to strangle her.

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