Ozzy Osbourne dies at 76

Prince of Darkness’ played farewell concert earlier this month

Ozzy Osbourne, the legendary frontman of heavy metal group Black Sabbath, died on Tuesday at the age of 76, his family announced in a statement, as per AFP.

“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,” read the family’s statement. “He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time.”

The British singer leaves behind his wife Sharon, six children, a host of grandchildren and a permanent legacy in the annals of rock’n’roll.

Heavy metal maestro

Osbourne will go down in rock history as the “godfather of heavy metal” who fulfilled his hard-living dreams as the frontman of Black Sabbath.

After decades of debauchery and more than 100 million albums sold, his death came a little more than two weeks after Black Sabbath played a farewell concert to 40,000 fans at Villa Park, in his native Birmingham. Rock royalty lined up to pay tribute to him including Metallica, Guns N’ Roses and members of Aerosmith and the Rolling Stones at the stadium that is the home to his beloved Aston Villa football team.

Ozzy, as he was routinely referred to, attracted legions of new fans in the 2000s after appearing as the hard-of-hearing, slightly crazy but doting grandfather in MTV’s hit reality show The Osbournes, a far cry from the excesses that defined his 1970s heyday.

Until his renaissance, he was best known in the mainstream for biting the head of a live bat during a concert and for urinating in the wine glass of a record-label chief – as well as on the Alamo monument in Texas.

But for hard-rock fans he will forever be remembered as the “Prince of Darkness” leading Black Sabbath, the band that helped launch heavy metal, a blend of rock and blues drenched in distortion and dark lyrics.

‘Girls ran out screaming’

The band enjoyed immediate success on the release of its eponymous debut album in 1970.

Hundreds of thousands around the world continued to flock to hear rock hymns such as Paranoid, War Pigs and Iron Man at the band’s riotous live shows for almost 50 years, until the band brought down the curtain a first time with a gig in Birmingham in 2017.

Ozzy, like many of his contemporaries, suffered from gaps in his memory due to drink and drugs on the road, but few can claim to have such monumental black holes.

He said that he had forgotten attempting to strangle his wife Sharon the year their eldest daughter was born, adding that he had very few recollections from the 1990s as a whole.

In 2010, scientists even analysed his genome to try to understand how he had survived so much self-inflicted punishment.