Prince of Darkness; 3 December 1948 - 22 July 2025

When news broke of Ozzy Osbourne’s passing last week, the headlines all sounded the same: Black Sabbath frontman, bat-biter, godfather of metal. But for those following his life beyond the caricature, these fell short. Ozzy wasn’t iconic for one moment; he mattered because no one in the history of popular music fell as far, as often, and still found a way back.

Ozzy grew up in working-class Birmingham. Dyslexic, poor, and often ridiculed, he wasn’t expected to go far: At 15, he served six weeks in prison for burglary. He tattooed “O-Z-Z-Y” on his knuckles using sewing needles and pencil lead. These weren’t rockstar stunts. This was a teenager with no roadmap trying to find a way.

When Black Sabbath (originally called Earth) formed in 1968, it not only birthed Metal, but also gave language to a certain dread. Heavy riffs, slow pacing, and Ozzy’s strained, unvarnished vocals singing about war, madness, and death. The title track “Black Sabbath” terrified early audiences. “They thought we were Satan’s friends or something,” Ozzy said in a 2016 interview. “That’s when the whole Prince of Darkness stuff started.”

After being kicked out of Sabbath in 1979, Ozzy pursued a solo career. Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman brought occult and mental anguish into the mainstream, without softening the edges.

The chaos that defined his early life also unraveled in public. He snorted ants, set hotel rooms on fire, drank to the point of oblivion, wandered graveyards mid-session, and fired a shotgun through studio windows! He also performed at a White House dinner during George W. Bush’s presidency. The Osbournes on MTV became a time capsule of pre-social media celebrity life. And while doing this, he also provided a platform to younger acts like Slipknot, SOAD, and Korn with OzzFest.

His final years weren’t easy. Diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2019, and later battling emphysema. His last public appearance came just weeks before his death at a Sabbath farewell in Birmingham. He stayed off medication just to be lucid enough for the stage. The show raised nearly $190M for Parkinson’s research and children’s hospitals.

May the Prince of Darkness rest easy.