Let me start out by saying that this is going to be a long, fucking article. It has taken me this long, off and on, to try and put all of this to words, but here it is: better late than never. I started writing this the day he passed. So, grab a drink, a snack, and put on some fucking Ozzy and Black Sabbath.
I am at an absolute loss for words. Today, July 22, 2025, at 2:28 p.m., I got the news that our Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne, has passed away, succumbing to his battle with Parkinson’s Disease.
I feel like I lost a friend, a big brother, a weird fucking uncle who people’s parents were creeped out by but who loved bigger and louder than just about any blood relative could love. While at a loss for words, my eyes immediately filled with tears. My head got heavy, and my hands could barely hold it up. Tears, man. Tears. No more tears? Fuck that. I have tears for days coming out of my face as I try and write this.
It was just a few weeks ago that the “Back to Beginning” Farewell show took place where Ozzy and his brothers in arms and Black Sabbath bandmates Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward joined together one last time to bring it all home. The show was not just a farewell from Ozzy and Sabbath but a tribute to them, featuring such acts as Rival Sons, Anthrax, Halestorm, Lamb of God, and Tool, to name a few.
All the bands performed open mic-style sets comprised of their respective original material, as well as an Ozzy and/or Sabbath song as a tribute. Later that evening, Ozzy took the stage seated in an ornate throne that rose from beneath the stage, joined by his longtime guitarist Zakk Wylde, drummer Tommy Clufetos, and former bassist/current Alice in Chains bassist Mike Inez.
Ozzy’s five-song set included classics like the longtime show opener “I Don’t Know,” “Crazy Train,” and a gut-wrenching “Mama, I’m Coming Home,” during which he cried through the entire song, as did everyone all over the world watching it. The night closed with Black Sabbath’s four-song set of “War Pigs,” “NIB,” “Iron Man,” and “Paranoid.” A strong wave of nostalgia overtook me, and I found myself recounting how I first discovered Ozzy and Black Sabbath up to today.
Back in 1984, I fell in love with Ozzy Osbourne after hearing the song “Bark at the Moon” at my buddy Jimmy’s house. Jimmy and his older brother are the ones responsible for starting me on my long, long path as a Metalhead. At this point, I was already all about Iron Maiden, Twisted Sister, Ratt, etc., but Ozzy was something that I didn’t really stumble onto right away. Living in Metairie, LA, aside from Jimmy, I didn’t know a single soul who listened to heavy metal, so anything I learned about, I learned from them.
Jimmy’s brother played “Bark at the Moon” and showed me the album cover of the album of the same name. I was fucking borderline horrified in a way that Dio’s albums and Iron Maiden’s albums didn’t. This shit looked real as fuck. Like, it was fucking Ozzy Osbourne on the cover covered in head-to-toe hair dressed as a werewolf, and to say it was breathtaking is an understatement.
Just when I thought I couldn’t get creeped the fuck out anymore, he pulls out his debut solo album, Blizzard of Ozz, showing Ozzy sprawled/crawling across an attic floor holding a cross over his head, and then Diary of a Madman, which had Ozzy literally looking like the chick from The Exorcist in what can only be described as a Satanic laboratory. Oddly enough, though, the music that was behind those covers was something incredibly beautiful.
Ozzy wasn’t the best singer in the world, but the man had such a distinct voice that I fell in love with it right away. I found a new idol. I found someone who would join the ranks of Twisted Sister, Ronnie James Dio, and Iron Maiden and become a saving grace for me as a kid. Ozzy was a savior to me. He was one of my saving graces. This fat, uncool, ugly kid who at one point felt like life was just too hard to fight through suddenly had someone else to look up to.
I heard his songs and his performances, and they uplifted me. They made me feel good and made me feel that life was worth fighting for. I found strength, I found courage, and I found tolerance. Ozzy made me feel like it was okay to just be me. In “I Don’t Know,” Ozzy sang, “Win or lose. It’s up to you.” In “Goodbye to Romance,” he sang, “And the winter’s looking fine and I think the sun will shine again.” In “You Can’t Kill Rock N’ Roll,” Ozzy sang, “How many times can they fill me with lies and I listen again? Twisting the truth and they’re playing around with my head, okay.” In “You’re No Different,” Ozzy sang, “Everything that I say and do in your eyes is always wrong. Tell me where do I belong in a sick society.”
While there is a lot more to the lyrics of these songs, it’s just a great example of how things can positively be taken out of context and mean something totally different to someone. Those lyrics resonated with me. They spoke to me. They made me feel comforted. They made me feel seen. They made me feel understood. Ozzy, himself, made me feel the way Twisted Sister and Dio made me feel: that it is okay to be weird and be your own person. In a nutshell, I found that it was cooler to be uncool.
I saw my first live Ozzy Osbourne concert on May 6, 1986, in New Orleans at the UNO Lakefront Arena. An up-and-coming band named Metallica was the opening act that night. I couldn’t fucking believe it. I was seeing Ozzy fucking Osbourne, and I couldn’t believe it. The show opened with Ozzy descending from the ceiling in the lap of a giant fucking bat that looked like him. It was so over-the-top ridiculous, but I cheered so loud that I about lost my voice before the opening song “Bark at the Moon” could get started.
I would go on to see Ozzy live another six times (and once with Black Sabbath), with the last being on 1998’s Ozzfest tour, but it was in Atlanta on August 18, 1992, where I feel I saw the last truly great live Ozzy show. Actually, it was perfect. There were so much emotion, so much love, and so much appreciation for the fans. That show in Atlanta was a beautiful fucking day. Ugly Kid Joe opened the show with a face-melting, fun-filled 30-minute set, Faster Pussycat played a killer set as well, and Ozzy and the boys were on fire. FIRE. F-I-R-E, FIRE! I mean, this was supposed to be it. The last hurrah. The intro tape played, which already had the sold-out shed foaming at the mouth. The opening riff for “Paranoid” kicked in, and as soon as the kabuki curtain dropped, people started hopping rows of seats. We were already in the fifth row or so, and suddenly it was sink or swim, so we swam our way to the first and second rows, and the madness began.
That night, Ozzy came over to us, and my brother tossed him his baseball cap. Ozzy put it on, blew a kiss at him, and mouthed, “I love you,” and then doused us all with a huge bucket of water. We sang at the tops of our lungs, we lost our shit, probably damaged some vertebrae from headbanging so hard, and during Zakk Wylde’s guitar solo, I reached my hand up to him, and he gave me five so hard my hand turned purple, and I was sure I would never get the feeling back in it.
The show closed out with “Mama, I’m Coming Home” and “Crazy Train,” which everyone just fucking went apeshit over. If this had been a general admission crowd, I have no doubts that this would’ve been a fucking mosh pit unlike I would have ever seen at that point. Ozzy went out with a bang. That man left EVERYTHING on that stage that night, and as the house lights came on after the final bow, I felt like I had witnessed history. It was everything I had hoped for. I mean, I was bummed he was retiring, but even at 18, I knew the value of going out on top, and this is what he did.
That didn’t last long, and to my surprise, no more than four years later, I would be sitting in the Omni in Atlanta on May 18, 1996, to see Ozzy on his “Retirement Sucks” tour. The poor guy wasn’t even gone long enough to enjoy it. I almost opted to not go to this show, but again, as a fan, this was Ozzy, and he was back, baby. This time he had a new band with him. He had Mike Bordin from Faith No More on drums, Robert Trujillo of Suicidal Tendencies/Infectious Grooves on bass, and in place of Zakk Wylde, former Lizzy Borden guitarist Joe Holmes.
The tour was in support of his latest album, Ozzmosis, which honestly, I wish I had never heard it. I was so disappointed and let down by all but maybe 2 or 3 songs, but I figured it would still be worth it to see the show. It was a fun fucking show, and Joe Holmes absolutely crushed it. Gone was the loud pinch harmonic squealing of Zakk Wylde, and in its place was a more clean, precise, Randy Rhoads style of playing, and I really loved hearing it. Holmes’ solo section was a medley of “Over the Mountain / Symptom of the Universe / Diary of a Madman / Believer,” which was absolutely mind blowing. The crowd was so excited that Ozzy was back, and the energy level was matching if not superseding that of the farewell tour. This was a crowd who wasn’t taking it for granted that the Prince of Darkness was back on the clock.
Once again, it wouldn’t be an Ozzy show without pure chaos. My buddy and I were in like the 50th row or so, and we both agreed that once the opening riff for “Crazy Train” started, just like in ’92, we were going to make our way down the aisle and see how far we could make it. As the riff kicked in, we scooted out into the aisle and started briskly walking to the front. As we got closer to the stage, a security guard was looking at us like he was horrified. I turned around and saw a horde of people who had the same idea running up on us.
We booked ass to the barricade. Just as we hit the barricade, the mass of people slammed into us, and we held on for our lives. It hurt like hell, but goddamn was it worth it. Ozzy was having a fucking heyday, and me and my buddy were yelling up to Joe Holmes that he was amazing. When the song was over, he came over and gave us each guitar picks, and he tussled my hair. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad deal, having Ozzy returning from retirement.
After that, I lost interest. I wasn’t digging his musical output, and the longer he went on, the more I wished he would’ve stayed retired like he said he was doing on his “No More Tours” Retirement tour in 1992. When it was announced that Black Sabbath would be reforming for an Ozzfest tour, I was beside myself. On May 29, 1999, in Atlanta, GA, I claimed a space on the lawn at Lakewood Amphitheater, and I prepared myself for the night I’d waited for what seemed like a lifetime for. Tonight, I was going to see Black Fucking Sabbath!
There was literally nobody on this bill that I had any interest in seeing, so I tried to be late as I could. Luckily, I showed up right when Rob Zombie’s set started, and I used that opportunity to hit the head, buy myself an overpriced beer and pretzel, and find a comfy place to rest my ass.
Following a medley of Sabbath songs that played along to classic images of Black Sabbath, the sound of air sirens was almost deafening, and then they slammed into “War Pigs.” There they were. Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Bill Ward, and Geezer Butler. Just ripping shit to shreds and sounding amazing. As corny as it sounds, I even got choked up a bit because I was seeing Black Sabbath. The original lineup. I knew this was something special, so I took it all in, and I hoped for a full-on Sabbath tour.
Black Sabbath looked and played unbelievably amazing. Sabbath played about an hour and forty minutes, and the set was banger after banger. I remember thinking that it sounded safe to me. Like they wanted to just nail the songs that everyone knew. I was really hoping to hear “Behind the Wall of Sleep,” but alas, it didn’t happen. Having seen Ozzy one last time and Black Sabbath just once, I felt like I could die a happy man, and I still feel that way to this day.
Ozzy had been sick for a long time. In 2019, he had a serious fall; he had multiple surgeries, a staph infection, and a respiratory infection. In 2003, he had a quad bike accident. To top it all off, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 2003 but didn’t publicly disclose it until 2020. The poor dude had been through hell and back and then hell again. The years of hard living had finally started to catch up with him and give him a fight that unfortunately he wasn’t able to win.
And here we are, full circle, back to the beginning of the end. I’ve had a lot of time to process Ozzy’s passing, and I am still feeling a mix of emotions. I am saddened by his passing, yet at the same time, I am furious at Ozzy. In my mind, I have conversations with him. How the fuck could you let Sharon be your puppet master, constantly keeping you in the public eye? You’re a grown fucking man, and you were blinded by the love you had for her. I’m not the only one who feels this way, but at the end of it all, you’re gone.
While I still stand by the fact that Ozzy was way past his prime as a musician/performer, there was something beautifully sad, and sadly beautiful, about Ozzy getting to tell the world goodbye. For one day/night, Ozzy Osbourne not only told us all goodbye, but we all got to thank him for what was probably one of the greatest rock-n-roll send-offs of my lifetime. We laughed, we cried, and reminded ourselves, and we got that closure that we don’t get to have with many people.
I don’t believe in heaven, and I don’t believe in hell. I don’t have much to say about the afterlife myself, but there is a special place in the cosmos for people like Ozzy Osbourne. He had heart, he had soul, and he just wanted to be the best version of himself that he was never able to be. Through all his shortcomings, both personal and creatively, we were all there for it. For many of us, he opened the door, and all these years later, we got to hold the door open for him as he made his exit.
Every night you told us that you loved us all. Well, I can only hope that he knew just how much he was loved by his fans. After the “Back to the Beginning” show, I’m guessing that if he didn’t know it before, he knew it after that night.
Ladies and gentlemen, Ozzy Osbourne has left the building. Good night, Ozzy. WE all love YOU.
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