The iconic Black Sabbath leader dies less than three weeks after his last farewell concert.
Miami, United States. – Ozzy Osbourne, one of the most influential and controversial figures in rock history, died on Tuesday at 76 years of age, as confirmed by his family in A statement cited by The Guardian. “With more sadness that words can express, we must inform that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne died this morning. He was with his family and surrounded by love,” he reads in the official note. The cause of death has not been specified.
The artist’s death, born as John Michael Osbourne in Aston, Birmingham, ends a trajectory marked by musical innovation, scandal, addictions and an unexpected longevity that led him to the stage to television stardom with reality The Osbournes.
His death occurs less than three weeks after his retirement concert, Back to the beginningheld on July 5 in Birmingham. That night, accompanied by his former companions of Black Sabbathhe declared before the public: “I have been prostrated for six years, and they have no idea how I feel … thanks from the bottom of my heart.”
The rise of the “Prince of Tinieblas”
Ozzy Osbourne grew up in a labor environment in Birmingham, son of factory workers, marked by poverty and trauma. At 11 he was a victim of sexual abuse by two children. He was subsequently imprisoned for theft, an experience he described with his characteristic sarcasm: “It didn’t work for that. Completely useless,” he acknowledged in 2014.
This social context would shape the aesthetics and sound of Black Sabbath, a band that founded with Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward. “We wanted to express what we felt about the world at that time,” Butler explained in 2017. “We didn’t want to write cheerful pop songs. We gave him that industrial feeling.”
Black Sabbath revolutionized British music with its homonymous debut in 1970 and fundamental works such as Paranoid and Master of reality. Iron Man and War Pigs They became hymns of the metal, while the dark and heavy sound of the band established the bases of subgenres such as the doom metal.
After being expelled from Black Sabbath in 1979 for his growing dependence on drugs and alcohol, Osbourne undertook a solo career that began with Blizzard of Ozzalbum that reached five platinum albums in the United States. Throughout his solo career he released 11 studio albums, including Ordinary man (2020), in which he collaborated with artists such as Post Malone, Travis Scott and Elton John.
Among the most notorious episodes of his public life is the 1982 concert in Des Moines, Iowa, where Osbourne bit the head of a dead bat he believed was an accessory. He was hospitalized to receive anti -tank treatment.
In the 80s and 90s, he obtained several successes in British lists, such as Bark at The Moon (1983) and Perry Mason (1995), and reached number 1 in 2003 with Changes, A duet with his daughter Kelly.
Ozzy had two children, Jessica and Louis, with his first wife Thelma. In 1982 he married Sharon, who assumed the management of his career and accompanied him for decades, even after a violent episode in 1989, when he was arrested for trying to strangle her while he was drunk.
With Sharon he had three children: Aimee, Kelly and Jack. In 2002, the whole family participated in reality The Osbourneswhich portrayed its chaotic domestic life with irreverent humor. The program was a resounding success and won the Emmy Award in 2002 as the best Telerreality program.
Ozzy’s life was also marked by health problems. In 2003 he suffered an accident at his home in Buckinghamshire that fractured his neck, clavicle and ribs. Sharon said he stopped breathing for a minute and a half: “I had no pulse.” In 2005 he was diagnosed with Parkin’s syndrome, which causes body tremors.
Although he had been sober for years, in 2013 he admitted to having fallen to the consumption of drugs and alcohol for a year and a half.
In 2019 he undertook the tour No tours 2which had to suspend in 2020 due to health problems. “Since October, everything I play becomes shit,” he wrote in a statement. In 2020 he announced that Parkinson suffered, and in 2022 he was operated on the column after a fall in 2019.
In an interview granted in May 2025 to The Guardianhe talked openly about his depression: “You wake up the next day and discover that something else has gone badly. You begin to think that this will never end.”
Black Sabbath offered his last concert in February 2017 in Birmingham. The album 13 (2013), with the return of Osbourne, reached number one in the United Kingdom and the United States. The influence of the band – and of Osbourne as a central figure – remains fundamental for heavy metal.
Ozzy and Sharon built an empire that included the Ozzfest festival, initiated by Sharon in 1996, and traveled by the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan. In 2018, the couple was included in the list of the richest musicians in the United Kingdom elaborated by The Sunday Times.
With his death one of the great icons of British rock leaves, an artist who knew how to transgress all possible borders of music, television and popular culture. As he himself once defined: “I’m not a damn rock star. I’m Ozzy Fucking Osbourne ”.
