Legendary heavy metal singer, front man and larger-than-life persona Ozzy Osbourne (1948-2025) passed away yesterday at the age of 76. News of his passing came mere weeks after his final concert, the massive Back To The Beginning event in Birmingham, England, where Ozzy was joined by the original line-up of his seminal band Black Sabbath as well as an impressive who’s who list of metal acts and performers.

Ozzy suffered from Parkinson’s disease, which had developed to the later stages. This had severely limited his mobility. He also suffered from emphysema. In interviews around his farewell event, a lucid and down-to-earth Ozzy spoke candidly of the pains he was in, mentioning that he’d stopped the painkillers in order to be able to perform that one last time. He acknowledged his time was short, and that he needed to bid a proper farewell, on stage, instead of quitely fizzling out.

And it was a very frail Ozzy that performed at Back To The Beginning, as can be witnessed from clips of the event. Sitting in a chair and obviously straining to perform, it is clear Ozzy gave it his all to one more time be in front of his fans and give them what they wanted. And, of course, get what he needed from them. There is no derision in these words, only pure admiration: it must have taken enormous fortitude to pull that off, considering the advanced stage of his condition, and both the symptoms and the pain it caused him.

Going out with your boots on, indeed.

Ozzy’s life and career should need no introduction. Y’all know the story – and if you don’t, go read up on it elsewhere. From early small-time acts through a couple of hoops to Black Sabbath and there to his wildly successful solo career, Ozzy Osbourne was there when heavy metal was born, and helmed the proverbial crazy train through more than five decades. The sheer amount of classic songs, influential albums, notorious stories and controversies make him a very embodiment of heavy metal.

In an affectionate tribute after news of Ozzy’s passing broke, Alice Cooper wrote that Ozzy Osbourne was not only the Prince Of Darkness – a title bestowed upon him long ago – but also the court jester. This seems more than appropriate. Not only are both aspects of the devil, a figure intrinsically and somewhat ludicrously associated with Ozzy throughout most of his career, but there was always a mischievous side to Ozzy. From mooning on stage to the many antics one can read about in biographies, it is clear Ozzy relished in the role of trickster and jester.

And, on a deeper level, he helped make this duality one of the core elements of metal. It’s loud, it’s rebellious, it’s confrontational, a perpetual challenger: the devil as opposition, as a conscious reversal of norms. Ozzy singing in the first person of Lucifer in love with a woman on N.I.B. or controversially of suicide by substance on Suicide Solution. But it’s also deeply humorous, always with a glimmer in the eye: Ozzy singing of skinheads as Fairies With Boots – or the name of aforementioned N.I.B., which is not short for “nativity in black” as is often presumed, but a reference to Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward’s beard style.

In these ways, and so many others, Ozzy was everything that heavy metal is and is supposed to be. And as a leading figure within metal music for decades, he was not a mere symbol, but an actual incarnation of it, a leader who blazed the path.

Ozzy Osbourne was heavy metal.

My personal introduction to Ozzy’s music came in 1995 via two releases: his solo album Ozzmosis, and the Black Sabbath compilation Between Heaven And Hell 1970-1983. Entirely incidentally, I bought both on tape at about the same time. Imagine the wonder of a preteen me upon discovering that this Ozzy Osbourne guy also used to sing in Black Sabbath! Both tapes were instrumental in gearing my taste in music towards all things heavy and hard, and particularly the Black Sabbath tape guided me towards the dark and mysterious.

I remember clearly how a friend tried to dissuade me from listening to Ozzy. According to him, both the song and the video of No More Tears was just sick. It had, of course, the exactly opposite effect on me. I knew I had to dig deeper. Incidentally, Ozzy’s two 90’s albums, No More Tears and Ozzmosis, are my favourites among his solo albums to this day. Where many older artists tried to adapt their style to 90’s trends, Ozzy remained true to himself and his sound.

But more than Ozzy the solo artist, it was always Black Sabbath for me. Between Heaven And Hell ignited the spark, and for years all of my money – which there never was a lot of – went to amassing the entire Black Sabbath discography on CD. The Ozzy albums are of course cornerstones, even though I’ve always loved all eras of Sabbath. But there’s no denying the primordial, unique power of the first five Black Sabbath albums. It’s not heavy metal fully formed, but a weird and entirely unique mutation of heavy blues rock. These albums are what made Black Sabbath iconic.

Ozzy’s vocals are no insignificant part of the potency of these early albums. He was never the most technically skilled or proficient singer; in that department, someone like Ronnie James Dio would triumph any day. Ozzy’s forté was the raw energy, the emotion he put into his singing. Just listen to the vocals on Black Sabbath’s titular track – no amount of technical prowess or finely-honed vocal mastery can match Ozzy’s raw, bloodied, heartfelt delivery. As can be attested in versions of the song with other vocalists.

In this way, Ozzy elucidated one of the cornerstones of my own artistic path: it’s not about flawless delivery or technically intrinsic mastery as much as it is about the passion, the emotion. Of how much of yourself you can imbue in your art.

In a way, Ozzy’s longevity is a wonder. Here was a man who spent decades blitzed on various substances, whose career was coloured by weird and wild incidents of all kinds, and who had close brushes with death on more than one occasion. And yet his recording career lasted an impressive 52 years, and he took the stage for one last time 58 years after joining his first band (Rare Breed together with future Black Sabbath bass player Geezer Butler). By all rights, here was a man who burned his candle from both ends and also the middle. And yet he outlasted many of his colleagues.

And now he is gone.

I’m not ashamed to admit I broke into tears when I first read the news. I have tears in my eyes as I write this. Ozzy Osbourne was a larger than life persona, one of those early idols who seemed far less distant to a preteen kid than they really were. And he seemed eternal: when I got into heavy music, Ozzy was already there. He’d done it all, and he was still releasing great albums. Throughout these past 30 years, he has always been there, although in recent years it’s been obvious he was gearing down, out of necessity. But still, it was a world where Ozzy Osbourne existed.

Ozzy leaves behind him not only a vast legacy of iconic music, which may not be always acknowledged as such, but is every bit as influential as The Beatles, Elvis Presley and Jimi Hendrix. His legacy to the world are generations and generations of people listening to and making weird, hard, heavy and obscure music. People who heard that bell toll, that thunder cracking, and who wondered: “What is this that stands before me?”

This is a legacy that will endure, and endure in ways and places we don’t even realize.