They call Ozzy Osbourne the Prince of Darkness because his life has been a collection of things too twisted to ever be pure. They call him the Godfather of Heavy Metal because he is not just part of the genre, he is its flesh, its scream, its blood. If Heavy Metal were a religion, Ozzy would be its most deranged pope, standing on a black altar, high on pills and biting raw meat. He never denied the titles. He never had to. Because Ozzy is Ozzy. And me, I call him what he never dared to be. Ordinary Man.

To be fucking honest, the first time I heard Ozzy Osbourne sing, I reached out and smashed the CD Walkman off immediately because I couldn’t fucking stand it. What the actual ass was that voice? Sounded like Satan jerking off in a chapel. Pure heresy. Demonic as shit.

I’d been taught that if you ever plan to sing, never let your voice echo through your nose. They call it nasal vocals or some other musical bullshit like that.

And I remember thinking, this screechy bastard actually has fans? Who the fuck listens to this kind of voice? Must be a whole cult of brain-fried idiots worshipping this madman.

Now I realize I’ve been one of those idiots all along.

Maybe the biggest one.

Simple fact is, with the dumb little brain of a cocky brat like me back then, what the fuck did I even know about rock music? Anyway, not long after that, I ended up bowing my damn head and apologizing to Ozzy’s poster more times than I can count. Just to make peace with myself in case I ever cover his songs someday and not feel like a fraud for being such a clueless prick when I was young.

But honestly, it’s true that anyone hearing Ozzy’s voice for the first time would find it jarring. It’s squeaky as hell and doesn’t follow any kind of proper vocal technique.

You gotta cut it some slack though. It’s strange, yeah. The highs are raspy, the lows are off-pitch. But somehow, it hooks you. It feels like that voice echoes in from somewhere else. Somewhere not entirely human.

But this guy, who never had any formal training, just went ahead and built a whole damn legend out of himself. Not just with that voice, but with a life full of talent, packed with bad habits, chaos, and a kind of madness no school could ever teach.

When Ozzy Osbourne was still a young lad growing up in the Aston, Birmingham, United Kingdom, his father once told him, “I’ve got a feeling about you, John Osbourne. You’re either going to do something very special or end up in prison.”

Turns out, Ozzy did both.

Let me tell you a little about this guy’s early life.

“I’m just John Osbourne, a working-class kid from Aston, who quit his job in the factory and went looking for a good time.”

I Am Ozzy – Ozzy Osbourne

He was nicknamed Ozzy since he was a child.

When Ozzy started school in the mid-1950s, he quickly realized he had dyslexia. Back then, people tended to ignore conditions like that, hoping they would just fix themselves over time. But as we now know, nothing about it is that simple. With no support at all, learning became even harder for Ozzy. And it didn’t stop there. Not only was he struggling academically, he was also brutally bullied, starting at age eleven. Two bullies once forced Ozzy to pull down his pants and abused him in a way that he would later only describe as “horrific.” All of this left a deep psychological wound, like it would for any child. At fourteen, Ozzy attempted suicide. Funny thing is, he wanted to die but was scared of actually dying. So he took his mom’s clothesline, tossed it over a beam, slipped his neck through the loop, and jumped. The catch? His other hand was still holding the loose end of the rope, just in case he changed his mind at the last second. Obviously, that kind of half-committed hanging wasn’t gonna kill anyone. What it did do was earn him a solid beating from his old man right after. At fifteen, Ozzy dropped out of school, with rumors saying he once hit a teacher with a metal rod. At seventeen, he tried to enlist in the army out of boredom, but was rejected immediately because he looked like an anti-establishment hippy. He had long messy hair, smelled like he hadn’t bathed in weeks, and wore clothes that made him look like he had just escaped from a madhouse.

I’m sure Ozzy didn’t have much of a problem with this stuff later on, as he even called himself Madman on his solo albums.

One of Ozzy’s earliest jobs was working in a slaughterhouse. I read somewhere that he also worked as a construction laborer, an apprentice plumber, a toolmaker trainee, and even a car horn tuner. The guy was hustling hard. For the first four weeks at the slaughterhouse, he vomited every day from having to gut dead animals. Eventually, he got used to it. Just when it seemed like he was settling into a regular job, Ozzy got fired after eighteen months for hitting a coworker with a metal bar after being teased. That was his first real taste of chaos, and he liked it.

From there, the path of chaos led him to jail. In 1964, after getting fired, Ozzy tried stealing. He broke into a clothing shop near his home a few times. To make it worse, he wore gloves without thumbs, leaving fingerprints everywhere. A week later, the police knocked on his door. Even though the fine was only twenty-five pounds, Ozzy couldn’t afford it. His father refused to pay as a way of teaching him a lesson, so Ozzy ended up serving six weeks in Winson Green Prison.

Growing up in Aston, Ozzy often scraped together money for pints at the local pub, only to get thrown through windows after bar fights. One time he lost part of a tattoo in a fight and had to spend the night in the hospital. Later, he learned how to tattoo while in prison, and the first one he gave himself was two smiley faces on his knees to cheer himself up whenever he sat on the toilet. It is also documented that Ozzy has more than 15 tattoos, the first of which was the word OZZY on the knuckles of his left hand, which he created himself as a teenager using a sewing needle and pencil lead.

Not sure why, but when I was a kid, I seriously thought about tattooing the OZZY OSBOURNE logo on my finger because I thought it looked badass. I still haven’t inked it to this day, but I still think it looks badass.

“I put a card in the window of a music shop in Birmingham.
It said: ‘Ozzy Zig Needs Gig. Has own PA.’ That was it.”

I Am Ozzy – Ozzy Osbourne

With no clear future ahead, Ozzy began to see music as a way out. After getting out of jail, he promoted himself as an experienced lead singer, even though he had never been in a band before. He put up a little ad in a music shop that read, “Ozzy Zig Needs Gig. Has own PA.” That was the first step that eventually led to the creation of Black Sabbath.

But the story of Ozzy and Black Sabbath is for another time. Right now, it’s just Ozzy. And that’s it.

The truth is, Ozzy’s years with Black Sabbath were nothing short of explosive. He rose to global fame, toured the world, got married, and had kids. But behind the spotlight, those were also the years he sank deepest into addiction and endless affairs. Later on, Ozzy admitted that his first marriage was a mistake. “I put that woman through hell. I should have never married her. She didn’t deserve it. She wasn’t a bad person, and she wasn’t a bad wife. But I was a fucking nightmare.”

With the band at that time, everyone in the band had their poisons — booze, cigarettes, weed, pills, or whatever it took to either write immortal songs or simply feel alive. But Ozzy? He reached another level entirely. The man was never sober. Always floating, dazed, drifting somewhere between the clouds and chaos. Still, according to his bandmate Tony Iommi, even though Ozzy had the most wrecked lifestyle of them all, he was usually the last one standing when everyone else was, as Tony put it, “out for the count.”

Ozzy once confessed to Sounds magazine: “I get high, I get fucked up… what the hell’s wrong with getting fucked up? There must be something wrong with the system if so many people have to get fucked up… I never take dope or anything before I go on stage. I’ll smoke a joint or whatever afterwards.”

That’s how he lived. As if staying sober for even a minute was a betrayal of who he truly was.

“The most unbelievable thing about my behaviour is that I was convinced it was entirely f**king normal.”

I Am Ozzy – Ozzy Osbourne

In 1979, due to his self-destructive behavior, Ozzy was fired from Black Sabbath. It was a blow that only pushed him deeper into the abyss. Without a doubt, it was a major shock. What the hell was this madman supposed to do next? Go back to Aston and take up one of those dead-end jobs again? He would rather die than do that. So Ozzy spent the next three months locked inside a hotel room, drowning himself in massive amounts of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, and nonstop bingeing. “All day. Every day.”

The only person Ozzy allowed into his spiraling world at that point was Sharon Arden, daughter of the legendary Black Sabbath manager Don Arden.

It was Sharon who had the vision to pull Ozzy out of the wreckage and launch him into a solo career after Sabbath. Just in time, before he ballooned into a deep-fried, fast-food-scarfing mess. She took over as his new manager and eventually became his wife.

Ozzy Osbourne’s career was yanked back from the edge thanks to a blazing solo run throughout the 1980s. But before you start clapping for his redemption arc, slow down. Ozzy didn’t exactly grow up. The madness stayed, the boredom came just as fast, and the only real difference was now he had Sharon by his side. A woman who could turn chaos into a comeback better than any marketing textbook ever written. In the same year, Ozzy met Randy Rhoads, a genius guitarist, and this combination with a few other members was taken care of by Sharon Arden‘s team.

Sharon arranged a formal meeting with the executives at CBS Records. The purpose was to introduce Ozzy as a solo artist and to help him present a more positive image after leaving Sabbath. But more specifically, it was probably an attempt to find a new direction, given that his debut solo album Blizzard of Ozz had just been released and early sales seemed a bit sluggish.

Sharon’s plan sounded poetic enough. Ozzy would show up looking sharp and then release a few white doves into the air as a gesture of peace. A fresh start. A clean slate. But she forgot one crucial thing. Ozzy Osbourne was never meant to be a symbol of peace, especially not when he had been drinking since morning and quite possibly doing other things before stepping into that boardroom.

The nightmare began with a dove. Instead of letting the birds fly free, Ozzy pulled one from the pocket of his coat. Right in front of CBS’s stunned executives, he bit the bird’s head clean off. Blood splattered. The head dropped to the floor. Ozzy spat it out and sat there, blood dripping from his mouth like he had just walked off the set of a horror movie.

Security rushed in to remove him. But before they could get him out of the building, Ozzy reached for a second dove and bit its head off too. Blood again. No explanation. No apology. Just chaos.

And in his memoir, Ozzy added this:

“I did it just to shock them. I thought it was a joke.
Then I saw their faces — and I realized, maybe I went too far.”

I Am Ozzy – Ozzy Osbourne

How the hell did CBS not cancel the contract after that horror show of a meeting? The answer is simple. Sharon Arden. She flipped the script like a master strategist. In no time, she turned that blood-soaked boardroom moment into a win for Ozzy. Instead of damage control, she leaned into the madness. She fed the tabloids exactly what they wanted. Stories that were repulsive, outrageous, and impossible to ignore. Ozzy was no longer just a singer. He was a walking headline. And it worked. Blizzard of Ozz sold like crazy. Ozzy did not just bounce back after being kicked out of Sabbath. He built a whole new identity. One fueled by chaos, wrapped in scandal, and absolutely magnetic in its madness.

Ozzy began developing a twisted little ritual during his live shows. He would throw raw meat and animal organs straight into the crowd. But the audience did not just sit there. They fought back, hurling everything from sheep testicles and dead rats to snakes and even live frogs right back at him. There were even rumors that Ozzy once had a rig built into the center of the stage. It supposedly sprayed water down below and gave crew members a hidden path to crawl up and clean the blood, guts, and carcasses that turned the stage into a slippery, living slaughterhouse.

But it didn’t take long before Ozzy became a victim of himself.

During the tour promoting his second album Diary of a Madman, Ozzy bit the head off a bat that he believed was made of rubber while performing at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, Iowa. According to a 2004 Rolling Stone article, the bat was alive at the time; However, 17-year-old Mark Neal, who threw it onto the stage, said it was brought to the show dead. According to Ozzy in the booklet to the 2002 edition of Diary of a Madman, the bat was not only alive but managed to bite him, resulting in Ozzy being vaccinated against rabies. Ozzy later said: “I got rabies shots for biting the head off a bat but that’s okay. The bat had to get Ozzy shots.”

On 20 January 2019, Ozzy commemorated the 37th anniversary of the bat incident by offering an “Ozzy Plush Bat” toy “with detachable head” for sale on his personal web-store. The site claimed the first batch of toys sold out within hours.

“People think I’m insane because I am.”

Ozzy is short and to the point.

Just between us, I don’t find Ozzy’s antics disturbing at all. In fact, I think they’re fucking brilliant. And I’m not alone. Millions feel the same way. A madman pulling insane stunts will always be more fascinating than anyone living a polished, picture-perfect life. That’s just how the world works. The crazier you are, the more the world eats it up.

During that very same tour, Randy Rhoads had decided to leave the band. He could no longer stand Ozzy’s self-destructive lifestyle. He planned to pursue a career in classical guitar after the tour. But that never happened. On that fateful day, March 19, 1982, Randy was killed in a plane crash. Ozzy called it the worst day of his life. Randy Rhoads was only twenty-five years old at the time. His death sent shockwaves through the entire music world.

Even after losing his close friend and bandmate, Ozzy kept the tour going. He did it for rock and roll, for Randy (and for makeup artist Rachel). He declared, “I’m going to continue because Randy would’ve liked me to continue. So would Rachel. And I’m not going to stop because you can’t kill rock ‘n’ roll.”

But in fact, it was Sharon who picked up a completely devastated Ozzy after Randy Rhoads‘ death and continued his career. Because to Ozzy, Randy Rhoads was irreplaceable.

“I never thought I’d be a legend, I was just trying not to get fired from the band.”

Ozzy was probably sober when he said this.

As mentioned earlier, even with Sharon by his side trying to keep him in check, Ozzy was still a wild and uncontrollable beast. I once heard someone say that Sharon actually used to enjoy drinking just as much as Ozzy. But she was the one who gave it up first, probably because every time they got drunk, the two of them would end up in full-on fistfights. It might sound like an invasion of privacy, but there were even stories about Ozzy running backstage during guitar solos just to brawl with Sharon, then running back out to finish the song like nothing had happened.

I do not know if those stories are all true, but I am pretty sure Sharon is just as insane as Ozzy. People say birds of a feather flock together, and in this case, it could not be more accurate. Maybe the crazier Ozzy got, the more Sharon was drawn to him. Or maybe she just wanted to be the one who could tame the wild horse.

Still, Sharon was someone with a strong sense of responsibility. According to some rumors, one of her early tactics to stop Ozzy from drinking was to hide all his clothes and only give them back when he had to perform. That is probably how people in San Antonio, Texas ended up witnessing the horror of a drunk Ozzy wandering around in a tight green dress borrowed from his wife. He was so hammered that he ended up peeing on the Alamo Cenotaph, a monument built to honor those who died in the Battle of the Alamo.

Peeing on the Alamo Cenotaph was basically like pissing on the entire state of Texas. A police officer arrested Ozzy, and he was banned from entering the city of San Antonio for a full decade.

But apparently, Sharon was not too haunted by Ozzy’s endless chaos. Not only did she stick around, she married the bastard.

Anyway, it would be strange if a madman ever thought or acted normally.

“Without Sharon, I’d be dead or in jail. Probably both.”

Ozzy knows how much Sharon means to him.

But the most infamous incident peaked in August 1989, when Sharon claimed that Ozzy tried to strangle her after returning home from the Moscow Peace Festival, while intoxicated with alcohol and other drugs. At the time, Ozzy told her, “We’ve decided… you have to die,” then tried to choke her. Luckily, there were other people in the room who intervened before anything worse happened. Sharon later said that if she had a gun that night, she would have shot him in self-defense. The court ordered them to separate, and Ozzy was required to undergo six months of rehab.

Their marriage was not just wrecked by drugs. Sharon told People magazine that she knew of at least several women Ozzy had cheated on her with, ranging from teenage groupies to household staff. Once, Ozzy accidentally sent Sharon a text message meant for one of his mistresses. In another incident, Sharon reportedly gave Ozzy an overdose of sleeping pills just to force him to tell the truth. She was afraid that if she didn’t, he would never confess.

Not many people know that Ozzy wrote this song for Sharon, not his mother.

Ozzy may have been addicted, and drunk more times than anyone could count, but the madman had his moments of clarity.

In a 1982 interview with Night Flight, he revealed a surprisingly self-aware side of himself: “I think there’s a wild man in everybody. All I am is a conductor of mayhem. I like to see people get off in a good way. I like to give myself to people as Ozzy.” He also made a clear distinction between his real self and the public persona he embodied: “John Osbourne is talking to you now. But if you want me to be Ozzy… To be Ozzy is kind of heavy. People expect you to bite the heads off things every time, every day they see you.”

Even back in his days with Black Sabbath and later in his solo career, Ozzy was frequently accused of being anti-Christian or even a Satanist. His dark lyrics, shocking imagery, and outrageous stage antics only added fuel to the fire.

However, The New York Times reported in 1992 that he was actually a practicing member of the Church of England and prayed before every show. Ozzy also claimed to identify as a Christian in a 1986 interview, in which he said: “I’m a Christian. I was christened as a Christian. I used to go to Sunday school. I never took much interest in it because I didn’t.” And in a later 1992 interview, he said: “I believe in God. I don’t go to church, but I don’t think you have to go to church to believe in God.”

In 2011, Ozzy wrote in Dr. Ozzy, his advice column for The Times, that he is not Jewish but he was circumcised. A response that was bizarre, blunt, and unmistakably Ozzy.

Even when talking about his blood-soaked performances, Ozzy had his own twisted logic. “I don’t think I did anything wrong. You’ve got some washed-up lunatic like me running around a stage trying to hype people up and give ’em a couple hours of fun, what’s wrong with that? You think I’m crazy? Am I crazier than some kid running around the streets with a gun, which happens all the damn time in America? Or would you rather just come see me make a fool of myself for two hours and leave with a damn good laugh?”

And then came the lawsuits, sparked by extreme acts allegedly inspired by Ozzy‘s lyrics. On New Year’s Eve in 1983, a Canadian teenager named James Jollimore murdered a woman and her two sons in Halifax, Nova Scotia, after listening to Bark at the Moon. A friend of Jollimore stated: “Jimmy said that every time he listened to the song, he felt strange inside… He said when he heard it on New Year’s Eve, he went out and stabbed someone.”

In 1984, a teenager named John McCollum from California took his own life while listening to Ozzy‘s song Suicide Solution. The track addresses the dangers of alcohol abuse, but the tragic incident led to accusations that Ozzy promoted suicide through his music. His parents filed a lawsuit against Ozzy and CBS Records, claiming that the lyrics “Where to hide, suicide is the only way out. Don’t you know what it’s really about?” pushed their son toward suicide. Their attorney even argued that Ozzy should face criminal charges for influencing a young person to take their own life. However, the court ruled in Ozzy’s favor, finding no direct connection between the song and the act.

But here’s the truth, Suicide Solution was written about Bon Scott, the late frontman of AC/DC, who had died from alcohol poisoning. The word “solution” in the title does not mean “answer” or “escape” but rather refers to a liquid. Just listen to the lyrics: “Wine is fine but whisky’s quicker, suicide is slow with liquor.” It’s clearly a warning about drinking yourself to death, not a call to self-destruction.

Stepping into the 1990s, Ozzy began to change. He had children with Sharon. This marked the beginning of a more sober path that may have saved his life. He realized he needed to change if he wanted to live long enough to see his kids graduate and get married. In both music and life, he started searching for balance. “I may be a madman, but I’m a madman who loves his family.” Ozzy talks about loving family like this.

Though he would still fall back into substance use out of old habit from time to time, it was clear that our madman Ozzy had made real progress toward sobriety.

“You learn more from your mistakes than your successes.
…
Music is my therapy. It’s been the one constant in my life.“

A more mature Ozzy in life.

As time went on, his solo albums became stronger. They brought deeper stories and more grounded perspectives. It also helped that recording technology at the time allowed for more refined production and better sound, giving his work a new level of polish and power. Ozzy‘s landmark album No More Tears (1991) was released during this period.

By 2002, Ozzy and his family entered a new era: The Osbournes, a reality TV show, aired on MTV and pulled back the curtain on the behind-the-scenes life of a rock legend. The show ran for four seasons, giving fans a glimpse of a different side of him – as a father and a husband.

But his health continued to decline. Throughout his life, Ozzy had consumed a staggering amount of drugs, combined with relentless drinking. The fact that he lived as long as he did has baffled scientists. Research revealed that Ozzy carried a genetic mutation that made him more susceptible to addiction but also somehow allowed him to survive extreme substance abuse.

But the human body is not divine. It has its limits.

Ozzy experienced tremors for some years and linked them to his continuous drug misuse. In 2003, he found out it was a genetic form of Parkinson’s disease. Ozzy had to take daily medication for the rest of his life to combat the involuntary shudders associated with the condition. He publicly revealed the Parkinson’s diagnosis in January 2020, saying, “I’m not dying from Parkinson’s. I’ve been working with it most of my life.” Ozzy also showed symptoms of mild hearing loss, as depicted in the television show The Osbournes, where he often asked his family to repeat what they say. In a CNN interview, Sharon said, “It’s not a death sentence, but it does affect certain nerves in your body. You have a good day, then a good day, and then a really bad day.” After years of hiatus due to health issues and a long battle against his own demons, Ozzy released Ordinary Man (2020), an album featuring collaborations with several rock legends.

Other accidents and injuries over the years gradually broke his body down. Coupled with cognitive decline, fans slowly began counting down the days until Ozzy would leave the stage for good.

And then Ozzy, the lunatic who should’ve dropped dead long ago, faded away in peace. In a moment where he barely remembered himself, wrapped in the arms of his loved ones, he left this world quietly and fulfilled. That was July 22, 2025.

“I’m a lunatic by nature, and lunatics don’t need training, they just are.”

I Am Ozzy – Ozzy Osbourne

A mad bastard like him never had a place up in heaven. But he didn’t need one. We all know damn well where Ozzy’s going.

As if he knew the end was near, Ozzy chose to close out his long, chaotic, bittersweet journey — part madness, part clarity, all legendary — with a final show titled Back to the Beginning, held in his hometown of Aston, Birmingham, on July 5, 2025. It was there, surrounded by fans, old bandmates from Black Sabbath, and the many souls who’d passed through his life, that Ozzy said goodbye.

He could no longer stand, so he appeared seated on a black throne adorned with bat head and crystal skulls, and shouted with what voice he had left, “Let the madness begin!” And then, as the music faded, Ozzy ended it all with one final message to the world: “You’ve no idea how I feel, thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

That night, the lights no longer burned with the brilliance of a golden era. His voice was hoarse, hesitant, and no longer soared into the sky like it once did. But it was still Ozzy. Not the Ozzy of his wild youth, biting bat heads, pissing into American history, or rolling through animal remains on stage. This was the final Ozzy, old, trembling, but stepping into the light with a steady heart, as if singing himself into the afterlife.

He drifted in the crowd like a ghost who could still sing. Each lyric was a handful of ash cast into the wind. Every glance from the audience was a silent prayer. And on that stage, beneath the cry of No More Tears, in echoes that rang out like a requiem for a soul refusing to sleep, Ozzy sang as if he were at his own funeral, living to send himself off, singing to etch his name into eternity.

No one wept because death was near. They wept because there would never be another like him.

One concert. One funeral. One immortality.

Rest in chaos, Ozzy.

Not “rest in peace”. Because peace was never your way. You are madness. You are legend. You are the origin of heavy metal.

And this world will never see another Ozzy.

“If you want to know who you really are, look at who you are when no one’s watching.” Well then Ozzy, no one’s watching now. Do whatever the hell you want. The world is only watching just enough to see you fade into eternity.

“I’m not a God, I’m just Ozzy. I scream, I bleed, I mess up — just like you.”

Ozzy Osbourne, a man like many others, but no one like him.