Ozzy Osbourne, founder of Black Sabbath and rock's 'prince of darkness,' dies at 76

The original lead singer of British heavy metal band Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, died this Tuesday (22/7) at the age of 76, his family announced.

In a statement, Ozzy's family said: "It is with more sadness than mere words can express that we have to inform you that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne passed away this morning. He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask that everyone respect our family's privacy at this time."

Osbourne was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2019. He played Black Sabbath's farewell show in his hometown of Birmingham just two weeks ago.

In addition to their original Black Sabbath bandmates, the event brought together other bands they've influenced over the years: Metallica, Slayer, and members of Guns N' Roses and Rage Against the Machine. The show has been described as the greatest heavy metal lineup of all time.⁠

Black Sabbath left an indelible mark on music by creating the sound that became known as heavy metal — and, what's more, Ozzy practically invented the image of the wild rock star.

By drinking, snorting cocaine, and screwing around the world in a semi-conscious daze in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, he secured his place in the rock 'n' roll hall of infamy by biting the heads off a few poor, unsuspecting creatures along the way.

Then, in the 2000s, he and his family were catapulted to a new form of fame when they unwittingly became reality TV pioneers, as cameras captured their foul-mouthed (but affectionate) dysfunctional home life.

Black Sabbath's final show was held at a football pitch in Birmingham, just steps from Ozzy's childhood townhouse in the suburb of Aston. On game days, young Ozzy and his friends would charge fans coins to "look after" their cars.

He joked that his first job in the music industry was tuning car horns at a local factory, before moving on to work at a slaughterhouse, which allowed him to pull pranks in pubs by putting cow's eyes in people's glasses.

But he wanted to escape the monotony of his day job, and placed an ad in a record store looking for members to form a band.

This eventually led to the creation of Black Sabbath, with his school friend and guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist and lyricist Geezer Butler, and drummer Bill Ward.

Other groups had already created a sound similar to heavy metal, but Black Sabbath really set the template with their combination of pulsating rhythms, deep rock riffs, and fantasy and horror imagery.

"They started from absolutely nothing and became global superstars," says fan Joe Porter, 47, from Birmingham.

"If you watch their early shows, you'll see they had basic [equipment] — a sound system, a small drum kit, a bass guitar, and that was it. The sound they could produce with those four instruments was like there were 20 people on stage."

Their appeal spans generations, judging by the audiences at the Ozzy Osbourne: Working Class Hero exhibition, on display at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery until September 28.

"They started the year my mother was born, 1968," says 21-year-old Byron Howard-Maarij.

Another fan, Riley Beresford, 25, from Nottingham, inherited a copy of Black Sabbath's 1970 single Paranoid as a family heirloom from his grandmother.

"She bought a seven-inch Paranoid record and passed it on to my mom, and now she passed it on to me. It's been running through the family," he says.

Some of Ozzy's antics have become legendary.

The most notorious was biting the head off a real bat while on stage in Iowa in 1982. He would throw raw meat into the audience during the tour, which led to fans throwing it back at the stage. He claims he thought the bat was fake before taking a bite.

But he didn't try to use the same excuse for the two doves whose heads he'd bitten off during a record company meeting the previous year.

His other exploits included being arrested for urinating on the Texas war monument, the Alamo, while wearing one of Sharon's dresses; being expelled from the Dachau concentration camp for being drunk and causing a disturbance during a visit during a tour of Germany; pulling a gun on the drummer of Black Sabbath during a bad acid trip ; blacking out and waking up in the median of a 12-lane highway; and massacring the inhabitants of his chicken coop with a gun, a sword, and gasoline while wearing a bathrobe and a pair of galoshes.

All of this contributed to Ozzy's legend—but in reality, much of his behavior wasn't very attractive or glamorous. Alcohol and drugs gave him a personality similar to that of the character from the book "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ."

In 1989, he woke up in jail and was told he had been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder for strangling his wife, Sharon. He couldn't remember anything about it. She withdrew the charges.

In 2003, reportedly already off the alcoholic drink, he broke his neck after falling off an ATV. In 2019, he suffered a spinal injury in a fall and was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease that same year.

When he was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist last year, he had to sit on a large black throne—appropriately adorned with skulls and a giant bat. The same throne was used at Black Sabbath's final show in Birmingham.

His body has survived more abuse than virtually anyone else on the planet—but age and medical reality have caught up with him.

Sharon said the July 5 show would definitely be Ozzy's last.

"Do you know when I'll retire?" he asked in a 2020 documentary. "When I hear someone nailing a lid on my coffin. And then I'll do an encore."