You’ve got to be your own biggest fan, even when you are your own worst enemy.
Of all the things I’ve lost I miss my mind the most.
— Ozzy Osbourne
Dearest Prince of Darkness,
Growing up, I had a complicated relationship with you. In fact, a complicated one with Black Sabbath.
I’ve been a metalhead, from the 70s, but you guys weren’t a regular listen on my turntable, cassette recorder, Sony Walkman, or iPod. Musical tastes, especially for heavy metal/hard rock were formed early, and bands like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and later Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains got my vote. But over time, I came to respect what you guys represented, pioneers of the heavy metal genre. The quartet of you — Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward — coming out of the blue collar town of Aston in Birmingham, in the mid 60s, all with amazing backstories, all spawned from relative poverty. You, yourself starting out as a labourer, even working in an abattoir. Your mighty guitarist Tony Iommi, beginning life in a factory, where he lost the tips of two fingers, forcing him to down tune his guitar, to give Sabbath’s music its darker sound, and therefore an edge that defined a genre, influencing hundreds of bands. To give music its Satanic undertone, allowing hell into the narrative can be laid squarely at your feet, including you biting the neck off a real bat that was thrown at you, at a concert. Black Sabbath were Black Sabbath, no outfit came close to you in the lexicon of legacy.
There was a crucial chapter two in your career. The band fired you in 1979. Going solo isn’t easy, starting afresh, sans the comfort zone of familiar bandmates. Finding fresh talent — you chose to nurture, that was your big legacy, the fatherly relationship with potential guitar maestros, the decision to take young prodigious talents under your wing, like Randy Rhoads, Gus G, Zakk Wylde, Jake E Lee, even Nuno Bettencourt sent you a cassette, desperate to be your guitar player.
Your solo career, Blizzard of Ozz, was astonishing. Now, that was music that was an immediate choice on my CD. player and to this day, on Spotify.
Cut to 2025. It took an event, earlier this month, July 5 to be precise, for me to fully understand you, your music and more importantly your far reaching influence on heavy metal — the re-united Black Sabbath announced its final concert in Birmingham, aptly naming it, Back to the Beginning — a ten-hour gig, a festival, with the who’s who agreeing to play. Many of my favourites — Metallica, Mastodon, Guns N Roses, Tool, Slayer, Alice in Chains, Pantera, Tom Morello, Steven Tyler coming together to perform as a final homage to you. And you Ozzy, unable to stand, seated on a specially constructed throne, because of Parkinsons and multiple back surgeries. Your greatness in accepting that Yungblood’s rendition of “Changes” topped yours. You were back home.
The outpouring of grief, from the audience as you worked your way through “War Pigs”, barely able to sing. The fact that this was the biggest live show of all time, you stayed off your pain meds to be lucid, that the show raised $190 million for a children’s hospital and Parkinson’s research. It was heavy metal history, unfolding in front of my eyes, as I devoured every second of the show, on a live stream.
What no one saw coming, was that you’d leave the world three weeks after the concert.
Ozzy, you were bat s**t crazy, excuse the pun, but you were a character like no other — hop onto that crazy train of yours… cause mama you’re going home. Rest well sir.
Yours sincerely,
A fan
Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, filmmaker and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com