Rest in peace, Ozzy Osbourne

Our prince of darkness, Ozzy Osbourne, passed away yesterday.

I’m sure we all had a feeling this day was gonna come eventually — Ozzy’s health struggles have been well documented for some time — but even I didn’t expect it to be so soon.

So, what can I say about Ozzy that hasn’t been said already? Probably not much. Obviously, he was one of the forefathers of heavy metal as a part of Black Sabbath and he made plenty of awesome music as a solo artist, but weirdly enough, I think my earliest memory of Ozzy Osbourne was catching brief glimpses of The Osbournes on TV when I was way too young to be watching it. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I did eventually get into rock and metal in my teens, which was when I got into Black Sabbath (although it doesn’t hurt to have the song “Iron Man” at the end of Iron Man).

Sadly, I never got to see Ozzy or Black Sabbath live, but I did stream their Back to the Beginning farewell concert. I’m sure there was some skepticism. It’s not uncommon for bands and artists to do farewell tours, only to be out on the road again a few years later. Just ask KISS or Motley Crue. Hell, Ozzy even declared that he would be no longer be touring back in 1992 after the ironically-named No More Tours Tour, but it felt different this time around. There was genuinely a feeling of finality to this event, especially with the benefit of hindsight. This definitely felt like Ozzy’s big swan song and against all the odds, he rose to the occasion. His solo performance was surprisingly poignant and moving, especially when he sang “Mama, I’m Coming Home”, and it was wonderful to see the OG Black Sabbath lineup reunite to close out the night. It was Ozzy’s show, but the rest of the band were brilliant. Tony, Geezer and Bill all played their hearts out. It’s not too often where a band as iconic as Black Sabbath is able to go out on their own terms like this.

The rest of the gig was fucking amazing too. Kudos to Tom Morello for curating this presentation and assembling such an awesome lineup of bands and musicians. Mastodon knocked it out of their park with their cover of “Supernaut”, Lamb of God’s rendition of “Children of the Grave” is a ferocious little barnburner and I was especially blown away by Yungblud’s cover of “Changes”. It was incredible, although if I was to be slight nitpicky, I wish there was some representation for the Dio-era of Sabbath. I understand why there wasn’t. It’s a tribute to the original era of Black Sabbath and it’s called Back to the Beginning, so it makes sense to focus on paying tribute to Ozzy and the classic era of the band.

Either way, it was still a terrific swansong for some of the most iconic and influential figures in all of rock music. Ozzy will be missed, but he will never be forgotten.