{"id":779190,"date":"2026-07-04T05:49:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T05:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/779190\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T05:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T05:49:09","slug":"the-beautiful-death-of-ozzy-osbourne-sympathy-for-the-metal-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/779190\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beautiful Death of Ozzy Osbourne: Sympathy for the metal \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Beautiful Death of Ozzy Osbourne: How Metal Teaches Us to Live <\/p>\n

Author: Keith Kahn-Harris <\/p>\n

ISBN-13: 978-0008819804 <\/p>\n

Publisher: HarperNorth<\/p>\n

Guideline Price: \u00a316.99<\/p>\n

Nothing became Ozzy Osbourne<\/a>\u2019s life like his leaving of it. On July 5th at Villa Park in Birmingham, just a few hundred metres from where he grew up, he sat on an ornamental throne \u2013 he was too ill to stand \u2013 and made his last Black Sabbath performance. <\/p>\n

It was part of Back to the Beginning, the metal equivalent of Live Aid, which generated \u20ac150 million from live tickets and streams, the profits of which went to local charities. <\/p>\n

Seventeen days later he died of a heart attack at the age of 76. Given his multiple health issues, both self-inflicted from many years of drink and drug abuse, and natural from Parkinson\u2019s disease and various other maladies that affect the ageing human body, it is a wonder that he lived so long. <\/p>\n

The Beautiful Death of Ozzy Osbourne is an attempt by metal scholar and journalist Keith Kahn-Harris to make sense of his subject matter\u2019s life and death. <\/p>\n

He argues, successfully in my view, that metal is a genre of music that deserves to be taken seriously, not least because, unlike other forms of music, it does not shy away from the fundamental reality that we will all die some day. <\/p>\n

Kahn-Harris posits that you don\u2019t need to like metal \u2013 most people don\u2019t \u2013 to recognise that it \u201cembodies much-needed values: loyalty, resilience, community and a sense of history\u201d. <\/p>\n

The author does not shy away from Osbourne\u2019s many transgressions \u2013 his various addictions and his violent behaviour towards his wives, most notably his attempts during a psychotic episode to strangle Sharon Osbourne in 1989, an incident that was forgiven by her but not forgotten. <\/p>\n

As Kahn-Harris points out, metal is an \u201cunusually non-judgmental place\u201d. <\/p>\n

The book ventures into a wider discussion of contemporary metal culture, focusing on the line-up of Back to the Beginning which Kahn-Harris notes was overwhelmingly white, male, ageing and Anglo-American. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Obituary: Ozzy Osbourne, leader of Black Sabbath and one of inventors of heavy metalOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

It is a reflection on the tastes of those who put the show together, but not reflective of the fact that metal has become a truly international genre. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always been a big fan of Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne\u2019s solo work, but never of the singer himself. I always thought of him as a bit of a self-obsessed man-child, but this sympathetic and empathetic book has given me pause for thought. <\/p>\n

Kahn-Harris has done his subject matter a great service. It\u2019s not just a book about Osbourne, but a book about legacy and mortality. Ozzy Osbourne was a flawed person, but aren\u2019t we all? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Beautiful Death of Ozzy Osbourne: How Metal Teaches Us to Live Author: Keith Kahn-Harris ISBN-13: 978-0008819804 Publisher:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":779191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[344,5533,49,48,75,341,345],"class_list":["post-779190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-black-sabbath","tag-book-reviews","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-ozzy-osbourne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/779191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}