Ozzy was a legend, a larger-than-life heavy metal icon.
I own all his albums, had read all his books and had seen him perform live. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a ticket for ‘Back To The Beginning’ at Villa Park, but I watched the coverage/sets on YouTube and wished I was there.
After he died, I took the day off work to go to Birmingham and watch his funeral procession come down Broad Street. Whilst I was in Brum, I signed the books of condolence and toured the murals and other tributes that had been commissioned in the run up to Ozzy’s final gig.
A few months ago, I read ‘Last Rites’ the latest Ozzy Osbourne autobiography. It came out on the 6th of October, was ordered on the 7th, delivered on the 8th, and finished on the 10th.
I bought the book after watching the BBC documentary ‘Coming Home’ and prior to watching the Paramount+ documentary ‘No Escape from Now’.
I started writing this post in October and stopped because Ozzy was still all over the news and what could I add to the debate and why would anyone be that interested in anything I had to say? What brought me back to the keyboard was recently watching an interview on YouTube (link shared below) between Piers Morgan and Sharon Osbourne. The interview is/was moving and I urge fellow Ozzy fans to watch it.
In the interview, Sharon mentioned that, after Ozzy died, she got messages from Donald Trump and King Charles. When royalty and POTUS reach out to express their condolences, it’s clear that the Oz Man’s impact on the world was beyond doubt.
Sharon’s take down of Roger Waters is well worth enjoying too.
Like the vast majority of other fans, I didn’t appreciate how hard life had become for Ozzy. Having injured himself badly in a silly bedroom accident of his own making, his body was failing him, and a series of significant operations hadn’t enabled him to recover. He was the first to recognise the irony in him taking so many drugs everyday just to stay alive when all expectation throughout his life had been that drug abuse would kill him.
Ozzy and his family knew that doing Back to the Beginning could be the end of him, but he did it anyway. Respect to Ozzy because he lived, and ultimately died, on his own terms.
At the time of his death, I wondered if he had consciously decided his time was up, but there was no intervention, just a kind of poetry in the timing of his journey’s completion.
For the self-proclaimed Prince of Darkness, Ozzy didn’t half shine brightly, and his passing left me feeling a genuine sense of loss. The book, the documentaries, the funeral procession and the interviews all compounded it – the world is less interesting without Ozzy in it.
I own all his albums, had read all his books and had seen him perform live. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a ticket for ‘Back To The Beginning’ at Villa Park, but I watched the coverage/sets on YouTube and wished I was there.
After he died, I took the day off work to go to Birmingham and watch his funeral procession come down Broad Street. Whilst I was in Brum, I signed the books of condolence and toured the murals and other tributes that had been commissioned in the run up to Ozzy’s final gig.
A few months ago, I read ‘Last Rites’ the latest Ozzy Osbourne autobiography. It came out on the 6th of October, was ordered on the 7th, delivered on the 8th, and finished on the 10th.
I bought the book after watching the BBC documentary ‘Coming Home’ and prior to watching the Paramount+ documentary ‘No Escape from Now’.
I started writing this post in October and stopped because Ozzy was still all over the news and what could I add to the debate and why would anyone be that interested in anything I had to say? What brought me back to the keyboard was recently watching an interview on YouTube (link shared below) between Piers Morgan and Sharon Osbourne. The interview is/was moving and I urge fellow Ozzy fans to watch it.
In the interview, Sharon mentioned that, after Ozzy died, she got messages from Donald Trump and King Charles. When royalty and POTUS reach out to express their condolences, it’s clear that the Oz Man’s impact on the world was beyond doubt.
Sharon’s take down of Roger Waters is well worth enjoying too.
Like the vast majority of other fans, I didn’t appreciate how hard life had become for Ozzy. Having injured himself badly in a silly bedroom accident of his own making, his body was failing him, and a series of significant operations hadn’t enabled him to recover. He was the first to recognise the irony in him taking so many drugs everyday just to stay alive when all expectation throughout his life had been that drug abuse would kill him.
Ozzy and his family knew that doing Back to the Beginning could be the end of him, but he did it anyway. Respect to Ozzy because he lived, and ultimately died, on his own terms.
At the time of his death, I wondered if he had consciously decided his time was up, but there was no intervention, just a kind of poetry in the timing of his journey’s completion.
For the self-proclaimed Prince of Darkness, Ozzy didn’t half shine brightly, and his passing left me feeling a genuine sense of loss. The book, the documentaries, the funeral procession and the interviews all compounded it – the world is less interesting without Ozzy in it.
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