Ozzy Osbourne took on many forms during his time here on Earth. First, he was the Prince of Darkness, the dark-eyed frontman of legendary heavy metal band Black Sabbath. Then, he was a wild solo icon, lurching across stages with a mic in one hand and chaos in the other. He was a terror to conservative-leaning parents; he snorted ants and bit the head off doves and bats. And more importantly, he was the honest to God embodiment of rock ‘n’ roll.
But beyond the stage, Osbourne became something more complex. He was crowned a god of reality TV with his MTV family series The Osbournes, which catapulted him, his second wife-slash-manager Sharon, and their children, Jack and Kelly, to stardom. He dabbled in memoir writing and made surprise movie appearances where he poked fun at his own legacy. This second chapter of Osbourne’s life was in such sharp contrast to his first that Rolling Stone once ran the headline, “The Prince of Darkness Would Like a Little Peace.”
Now that the Prince has passed at 76, we look back on the moments when Osbourne proved he was far more than the heavy metal legend many had placed on a pedestal. He was, most of all, a man who could shock and delight.
‘The Osbournes’ (2002-2005)
“Bubbles! Oh, come on, Sharon!” Osbourne screamed at his wife during an episode of MTV’s The Osbournes when she announced that his concerts would now feature a special stage effect: bubbles. “I’m fucking Ozzy Osbourne, the Prince of Fucking Darkness. Evil! Evil! What’s fucking evil about a butt load of fucking bubbles?”
Released in the early aughts and at the precipice of reality TV’s explosion, The Osbournes set the stage for our global obsession with celebrity families, messy confessionals, and delicious, unscripted drama. The Osbourne family became, as The New York Times once put it, “a harmlessly outrageous variation on Everyfamily, as full of warmth as they are of weirdness.”
But did Osbourne buy into his reality TV success? “I regret doing the fucking show,” Osbourne confessed in an interview with NME in 2013. “I didn’t want to be on fucking television. I didn’t become a fucking rock ‘n’ roll singer to read the fucking weather forecast, know what I mean?”
Ozzfest
After Osbourne was rejected from the 1995 Lollapalooza lineup, Sharon and his son Jack took matters into their own hands and launched Ozzfest. What started as a bold, two-day heavy metal festival quickly grew into a major force in rock ‘n’ roll, headlined by Osbourne and featured a rotating lineup of metal and hard rock acts, including Marilyn Manson, Slipknot, and Linkin Park. The festival made its way from the United States all the way to Europe and Japan, but saw its last edition in 2018 after Osbourne began suffering from medical issues.
“I’m not going to get up there and do a half-hearted Ozzy looking for sympathy,” Osbourne said in an interview with Rolling Stone UK. “I’m not going up there in a fucking wheelchair.”
All His Memoirs
Osbourne’s 2010 autobiography I Am Ozzy, co-written with journalist Chris Ayres, became a surprise bestseller. Told in his unmistakable, foul-mouthed, sharp-witted voice, the book traced Osbournes’ journey from childhood to his start in Black Sabbath, near-death experiences, and road to rock star status.
The following year, the Prince and Ayres released a follow-up titled Trust Me, I’m Dr. Ozzy: Advice from Rock’s Ultimate Survivor. Although still as humorous as the first, this sequel detailed Osbournes’ 40 years of drug and alcohol abuse, as well as his decision to recover.
His final memoir, Last Rites, is scheduled for release on October 7. This posthumous autobiography will cover Black Sabbath’s final concert, his rapidly deteriorating health, and, as Osbourne put it, his “descent into hell.”
All His Movie Cameos
Not one to shy away from the spotlight, Osbourne made several memorable movie cameos that often played off his rock ‘n’ roll legacy. In the 2000 Adam Sandler comedy Little Nicky, Osbourne made a surprise cameo to help Sandler defeat one of the bat-shaped demons from hell by, naturally, biting off its head. It was a callback to an incident in 1982 when, during a solo performance in Des Moines, Iowa, a fan threw a bat on stage, to which Osbourne responded by biting its head off, thinking it was a rubber toy.
He also appeared as a fire-and-brimstone tele-evangelist in the 1986 rock horror musical Trick or Treat, himself in his MTV era in the 2002 comedy Austin Powers in Goldmember, and a talking deer in the 2011 animated feature Gnomeo & Juliet.
