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.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Born in Birmingham in 1948, John Osbourne grew up in Aston. His parents both worked in nearby factories, but with six children, money was tight. At school, he struggled with dyslexia. He was once sent home for not being clean enough – a humiliation he never forgot – and he was sexually abused by two classmates. He left at 15.

In 1970, their first album reached the Top 10. Osbourne suddenly had more money than he'd ever imagined. As a rock star, he could, he recalled, "get drunk morning, noon and night, and nobody would care". Then he found cocaine. He admitted to having been a terrible husband to his first wife, Thelma Riley. Sabbath fired him in 1979. It was Sharon – whose father Don Arden had been their manager – who steered his solo career.

Last month, he returned to Birmingham to take part in a farewell concert – "Back to the Beginning". He'd told Rolling Stone in 2023 that as his health declined, "I just want to be well enough to do one show where I can say, 'Hi guys, thanks so much for my life...' If I drop down dead at the end of it, I'll die a happy man."