Wild as the wind, singer Ozzy Osbourne, whose charisma shone through the dark image he created for himself and his band Black Sabbath, has died at age 76. First as the frontman of the era-defining British band and then as a solo artiste, he created the image for heavy metal lifestyle: Drinks, drugs and the occult. From being chased by American evangelicals for supposedly promoting Satanism to biting off the head of a live rat during the Des Moines Veterans Memorial Auditorium concert in 1982. (“I thought it was a rubber bat,” he later said in trademark style.)

For him, the devil was in the details, be it his white gold knuckle-duster ring jammed on his tattooed fingers or his all-black wardrobe, making him look like a man who crawls out of the crypt every morning. The Prince of Darkness became the gaga reality TV star of the 2000s, yet he remained the much-loved mascot of excess.

Even when overindulgence took a toll on his health in later years, he never turned his back on the image of being rock’s most notorious monsters. In 2020, he revealed he had Parkinson’s disease after suffering a fall. Unafraid, funny and ridiculous, Osbourne was a musical genius.

On July 5, he at least got to have his “final encore”. Metal fans descended on Birmingham’s Villa Park — a stone’s throw from the singer’s childhood home — to see the original Black Sabbath lineup reunite for the first time in 20 years. It was billed as the “greatest heavy metal show ever”. It was here that the 76-year-old had once put out an advert for bandmates in a record shop and ultimately formed Black Sabbath.

“Sabbath gave us the blueprint, Sabbath gave us the recipe. They gave us the cookbook, man,” Slipknot’s Corey Taylor said in BBC Radio WM’s Forging Metal documentary.

The ‘Big Bang’ moment

Black Sabbath’s 1970 self-titled debut LP is often considered the ‘Big Bang’ moment for heavy metal. It dropped in on the “hippie party” at the height of the Vietnam War, featuring a spooky figure against a stark landscape. Rock ’n’ roll shifted gears and became loud and angry.

The anger on the album was shaped by what Osbourne had been feeling for years. Born December 3, 1948, the son of John Thomas Osbourne, a toolmaker at a power plant, and Lillian, who worked at an auto-parts factory, he had a middle-class upbringing in Birmingham with no indoor plumbing.

He dropped out of school at age 15 to pursue odd jobs, including a stint at a slaughterhouse and a brief “career” as a burglar until he was arrested.

It was a turning point. His father, who refused to pay the fine and made his son spend three months in prison, had bought him a PA (public announcement) system so he could pursue his dream of being a rock singer. It led him to meet three young Birmingham musicians: the bassist Geezer Butler, the drummer Bill Ward and the guitarist Tony Iommi.

‘The Beatles of heavy metal’

For a short time, they became a blues band called Earth, but then came Black Sabbath, a group that thought people paid to be scared at horror movies. The name was inspired by a Boris Karloff film with that title. Their music was doom and gloom.

What followed were hit after hit — Paranoid, Iron Man, War Pigs and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.

“Black Sabbath are the Beatles of heavy metal. Anybody who’s serious about metal will tell you it all comes down to Sabbath,” Dave Navarro of the band Jane’s Addiction wrote in 2010. “There’s a direct line you can draw back from today’s metal, through Eighties bands like Iron Maiden, back to Sabbath.”

In fact, the Beatles were Osbourne’s favourite. “The Beatles were my thing, they were everything to me,” the singer told The Guardian. “When I met Paul McCartney, it was like seeing God.”

Black Sabbath, 1970_ Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi, Bill Ward, Ozzy Osbourne.

Osbourne had several fights — to the point of being fired in 1979 for his legendary excesses — with Black Sabbath, but he returned time and again. It helped fuel his solo career, emerging with albums like Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman, delivering hits such as Crazy Train, Goodbye to Romance, Flying High Again and You Can’t Kill Rock and Roll.

Possessed by music

What kept him going in the public eye were his outlandish exploits like snorting a line of ants off a sidewalk. In 1990, the then-cardinal John J. O’Connor of New York claimed that Osbourne’s songs led to demonic possession and even suicide. At his shows, members in the audience could even be spit on by the singer. But, at the end of a gig, people went home with Osbourne’s “God bless” ringing in their ears.

In later years, he won over youth with his annual tour Ozzfest, which has hosted bands like Slipknot, Tool, Megadeth, Rob Zombie, System of a Down, Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park.

When he met Queen Elizabeth II during her Golden Jubilee weekend, the man next to him was singer Cliff Richard. “She took one look at the two of us, said ‘Oh, so this is what they call variety, is it?’ then cracked up laughing. I honestly thought that Sharon (his wife) had slipped some acid into my cornflakes that morning,” he wrote in I Am Ozzy.

The world rediscovered his madness when the TV series The Osbournes began in 2002, showing the home life of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne and their teenage children Jack and Kelly (their daughter, Aimee, chose to stay away).

Osbourne was twice inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — once with Sabbath in 2006 and again in 2024 as a solo artist.

The world will remember him through the lyrics of his 2020 duet with Elton John, Ordinary Man: I’ve been a bad guy/ Been higher than the blue sky/ And the truth is I don’t wanna die an ordinary man.

Ozzy’s notorious moments

1981: His one-time publicist Mick Wall recounted this story in the Black Sabbath biography, Symptom of the Universe: Osbourne was supposed to attend Epic Records’ annual sales convention to build momentum for his debut solo album, Blizzard of Ozz. At the end, he was supposed to release a few doves. The problem was that the singer had a bottle of brandy on the way to the convention. Osbourne told Wall: “I just remember this PR woman going on and on at me. In the end, I said, ‘Do you like animals?’ Then I pulled out one of these doves and bit its f***ing head off. Just to shut her up. Then I did it again with the next dove, spitting the head out on the table.”

1982: Taking the crown in the list of notorious Osbourne moments was his Des Moines Veterans Memorial Auditorium concert in 1982. He bit off the head of a dead bat that he thought was a stage prop. He later went to the hospital to receive a precautionary rabies inoculation.

1984: Tommy Lee, the Motley Crue drummer, was privy to the incident. Osbourne and Motley Crue bassist Sixx held an impromptu gross-out contest backstage at a show. Ozzy took a straw and snorted a crawling line of ants.

2002: He appeared at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. When then-President George W. Bush mentioned Osbourne’s name, he stood on the table and blew kisses to the cheering crowd. He then bowed to Bush.

2007: The incident had happened earlier, but the singer recounted the moments in an interview with The Scotsman in 2007. He had around 17 cats at his home, and he took it upon himself to shoot them all.