On July 5, 2025, Ozzy Osbourne sat on a black throne on a stage at Villa Park in his home city of Birmingham and sang with the original members of Black Sabbath for the last time. The concert, Back to the Beginning, was billed as his farewell. Seventeen days later, on July 22, Osbourne died. He was 76. He had revealed in 2020 that he had Parkinson’s disease. His family said he died surrounded by love.
Black Sabbath
John Michael Osbourne was born in Aston, Birmingham, on December 3, 1948, left school at 15 and worked in a slaughterhouse and served a short prison sentence for burglary before music. In 1968 he formed the band that became Black Sabbath with the guitarist Tony Iommi, the bassist Geezer Butler and the drummer Bill Ward. Their first albums, including Paranoid in 1970, with “Iron Man” and “War Pigs”, were slow, heavy and dark, and they are generally credited with inventing heavy metal.
Solo career
Sabbath fired Osbourne in 1979 because of his drinking and drug use. With his manager and future wife, Sharon Arden, he launched a solo career, and Blizzard of Ozz in 1980, with “Crazy Train”, sold millions. His guitarist, Randy Rhoads, died in a plane crash in 1982. The same year Osbourne bit the head off a bat thrown on stage in Des Moines, believing it was a toy, a story that followed him forever. He and Sharon founded the Ozzfest touring festival in 1996.
The Osbournes
From 2002 MTV’s The Osbournes showed the Prince of Darkness at home, shuffling around his Beverly Hills house, swearing at the dogs and struggling with the television remote, and made him a new kind of star. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Black Sabbath in 2006 and as a solo artist in 2024. He was survived by Sharon and his children.
Osbourne said goodbye to his audience in the city where he was born and died less than three weeks later, a farewell that turned out to be exactly that.