Ozzy Osbourne Dies at 76

It was only a couple weeks ago that Ozzy performed a final concert in his hometown of Birmingham, England. Today, his family announced that he had died, age 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. He was with his family and surrounded by love.

We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time.

Sharon, Jack, Kelly, Aimee and… pic.twitter.com/WLJhOrMsDF

— Ozzy Osbourne (@OzzyOsbourne) July 22, 2025

Ozzy really started with very little and became world famous despite never being a favorite of rock critics or DJs.

Born John Michael Osbourne in Birmingham on Dec. 3, 1948, he was the fourth of six children of John Thomas Osbourne, a toolmaker who worked the night shift at a power plant, and Lillian (Levy) Osbourne, who worked the day shift at an auto-parts factory. The Osbournes were crammed into a small working-class home; when Ozzy was young, it had no indoor plumbing.

An indifferent student with undiagnosed dyslexia and attention deficit disorder, Ozzy dropped out of school at age 15 and had a series of short-lived jobs, including 18 months at a local slaughterhouse. After he was fired from that job (for fighting), he had a brief career as a burglar; when he was arrested, his father declined to pay the fine, and Ozzy spent three months in prison, which led him to abandon his criminal ambitions.

His father did, however, buy a P.A. system so Ozzy could pursue his dream of being a rock singer. That system, plus a flyer reading “Ozzy Zig Needs Gig,” got him into a band in 1968 with three young Birmingham musicians: the bassist Geezer Butler, the drummer Bill Ward and the guitarist Tony Iommi.

Black Sabbath, as I said was not well loved by critics. Here’s one review Rolling Stone published of Sabbath’s first album.

Over across the tracks in the industrial side of Cream country lie unskilled laborers like Black Sabbath, which was hyped as a rockin’ ritual celebration of the Satanic mass or some such claptrap, something like England’s answer to Coven. Well, they’re not that bad, but that’s about all the credit you can give them. The whole album is a shuck — despite the murky songtitles and some inane lyrics that sound like Vanilla Fudge paying doggerel tribute to Aleister Crowley, the album has nothing to do with spiritualism, the occult, or anything much except stiff recitations of Cream clichés that sound like the musicians learned them out of a book, grinding on and on with dogged persistence. Vocals are sparse, most of the album being filled with plodding bass lines over which the lead guitar dribbles wooden Claptonisms from the master’s tiredest Cream days. They even have discordant jams with bass and guitar reeling like velocitized speedfreaks all over each other’s musical perimeters yet never quite finding synch — just like Cream! But worse.

Rolling Stone has always sucked. But despite the negativity, Black Sabbath is generally credited with helping to create heavy metal music. Everyone knows this song:

Sabbath fired Ozzy in 1979 after his drunkenness and drug abuse caused him to miss a show.

Black Sabbath fired Mr. Osbourne in 1979, shortly after he fell asleep in the wrong hotel room in Nashville and woke up — reportedly 24 hours later — to discover that he had missed a concert. The band continued with a series of other vocalists, most notably Ronnie James Dio.

Ozzy quickly recruited one of the best guitarists then playing in LA, Randy Rhoads, and put out two albums that made him an even bigger star. The first album, Blizzard of Ozz, contained the song he’s still most associated with.

After Randy Rhoads died in a plane crash, Ozzy picked up a new guitar hero and continued on. This song was written by Jake E. Lee but when the album came out only Ozzy got credit.

Having been screwed out of money and credit for his work, Jake E. Lee eventually moved on and was soon replaced by Zack Wylde. He continued to have some hits with the new version of the band.

The other half of Ozzy’s fame came when his show The Osbournes, featuring his own family, became a surprise cable hit in 2002. Despite all the horror movie theatricality of his music, Ozzy was really a family guy, albeit one who cursed a lot.

A few years ago Ozzy was diagnosed with a form of Parkinson’s disease.

In early 2019, Osbourne had to cancel a string of concerts following a bout of pneumonia and a severe fall at his Los Angeles home.

But his health issues didn’t stop there. In the ensuing years, the rocker endured multiple surgeries – including one that he said went wrong and virtually left him “crippled.” He revealed his Parkinson’s disease diagnosis in January 2020.

Nonetheless, Osbourne performed intermittently during that period, including at the closing ceremony of the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.

In a 2023 interview with Rolling Stone, Osbourne said he would “die a happy man” if he could perform one more show to express his gratitude to his fans from the stage.

“If I can’t continue doing shows on a regular basis, I just want to be well enough to do one show where I can say, ‘Hi guys, thanks so much for my life.’ That’s what I’m working towards, and if I drop down dead at the end of it, I’ll die a happy man,” he said at the time.

He did get the chance to do that final show in in Birmingham earlier this month. He was seated on a throne during the show but the crowd didn’t care.

.@ozzyosbourne performs “Mama, I’m Coming Home” for the last time in Birmingham, England at Black Sabbath’s farewell show.

Read our show review: https://t.co/E30wZpXOCK pic.twitter.com/EQusnP0LXI

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) July 7, 2025

RIP.