Ozzy Osbourne, the hellraising frontman of Black Sabbath and reality TV star, died Tuesday, his family shared.
He was 76.
“It is with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning,” Osbourne’s family said in a statement to CNN. “He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time.”
No details surrounding cause of death were immediately available.
The news comes just weeks after Osbourne performed with Black Sabbath in his hometown of Birmingham, England, where he reunited with bandmates, including bassist Geezer Butler, drummer Bill Ward and guitarist Tony Iommi. The show was a concert event called Back to the Beginning and marked Black Sabbath’s first performance in two decades. It was billed as Osbourne’s “final bow,” according to Black Sabbath’s official website.
Famed for his outrageous antics on stage, including once biting the head off a bat and throwing raw meat onto concertgoers – along with repeated bouts of alcohol and substance abuse – Osbourne was respected by the rock establishment and reviled by the religious right, who believed him to be a devil-worshipper.
He had a second career in later life, playing himself in the popular reality TV show “The Osbournes,” a fly-on-the-wall family formula later maximized by the Kardashians.
Beginnings
John “Ozzy” Osbourne was born on December 3, 1948 in the central English city of Birmingham, the son of a toolmaker and a factory worker.
He left school at age 15 and after a series of jobs, including construction-site laborer and slaughterhouse worker, he tried burglary. That career ended badly, with a six-week prison sentence after his father refused to pay a fine, according to Osbourne’s 2009 autobiography, “I Am Ozzy.”
Osbourne was musically inspired by The Beatles, crediting the Fab Four’s 1963 smash “She Loves You” for his becoming a musician.
In 1967, Butler, Black Sabbath’s bassist and principal lyricist, formed a group – then called Rare Breed – and asked Osbourne to join, along with guitarist Iommi and drummer Ward.
After a couple of name changes, the band finally settled on Black Sabbath, because, as Butler told Rolling Stone magazine in 2016, “if people paid money to feel scared at the movies, then the same must be true of concerts.”
The band’s self-titled first album was recorded in just two days in 1969, Rolling Stone reported.
“Once we’d finished, we spent a couple of hours double-tracking some of the guitar and vocals, and that was that. Done,” Osbourne wrote in his autobiography. “We were in the pub in time for last orders. It can’t have taken any longer than 12 hours in total. That’s how albums should be made, in my opinion.”
The ‘Godfather of Heavy Metal’
Black Sabbath’s loud, gloomy music, the satanic aura conjured by the use of the tritone, the irregular interval in music associated with the Devil since the Middle Ages, was immediately popular.
The group’s second album, “Paranoid,” released in 1970, shot to number one in the UK album chart. Black Sabbath didn’t repeat that feat again until the release of their album “13” in 2013.
Often referred to as the Godfather of Heavy Metal, Osbourne preferred his other “title,” The Prince of Darkness, which he used on his Twitter account.
“I have never, ever, ever been able to attach myself to the word ‘heavy metal’ – it has no musical connotations,” Osbourne told CNN in a 2013 interview. “If it was heavy rock I could get that but the 70s was kind of like a bluesy thing, the 80s was kind of bubblegum-frosted hair, multi-colored clothes, and the 90s was kind of grungy.”
Osbourne was fired from Black Sabbath in 1979, after the group had already made eight albums together, over his alcohol and drug use. He went on to have a successful solo career, releasing 11 more albums before getting back together with the group in 1997.
The bat-biting incident occurred at Osbourne’s show at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, Iowa on January 20, 1982 on his “Diary of a Madman” tour.
He later claimed he thought the bat was made of rubber.
It was a stunt that followed him. “Every time I do an interview they ask me ‘What do bats taste like, Ozzy?’ Like my mother-in-law’s cooking,” he told NBC’s Today Show in 1987.
Osbourne’s substance abuse – the reason for his divorce from his first wife, Thelma Mayfair – followed him.
Also problematic was his relationship with his father-in-law and former manager Don Arden, who had managed some of the biggest acts of the 1960s and 1970s, including Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard.
Osbourne had known Arden’s daughter, Sharon, since she was a teenager.
They began a relationship in 1979, when she was 28, much to Arden’s displeasure.
