(Credits: Paramount Plus)
Sat 6 September 2025 3:00, UK
The loss of Ozzy Osbourne was heartbreaking for the metal community.
Losing one of the architects of the entire genre, arguably the most famous heavy metal musician of all time, is always going to be a hammer blow, no matter the circumstances. Especially when considering the circumstances in question, it was as much of a surprise as it could have been. The man had just played a massive gig at Villa Park, literally the week before. While he didn’t exactly look well when it happened, those are rarely the actions of a dying man.
However, tucked away in the corner of everyone’s grief was some semblance of comfort. After all, Ozzy got to live a real life. He got to grow old, be a family man, and see the fruits of his labours inspire generations of musicians the world over. He got to survive for a lot longer than, let’s be real here, anyone would have expected because one cursory glance at the behaviour of Ozzy Osbourne in his prime shows a man who played dice with his life hundreds of times and got extremely lucky.
The fact that his intake of drink and drugs was worrying even to other heavy metal bands was only one part of it after all. Putting aside just how mental it is to be too drunk for Black Sabbath, there was also the fact that the bat-biting story might have given him rabies. There’s the quad bike crash in 2003. There’s the on-stage attack from a knife-wielding Satanist in 1971. These have all passed into rock ‘n’ roll myth and legend, which is fair enough. They’re good stories, all of them.
However, as with everything to do with Ozzy Osbourne, the dark side is never far away. The man may have escaped death enough times that a deal with the be-cloaked skeleton himself probably isn’t too far-fetched. Ozzy was a smart man, though. He knew how lucky he was because he knew of many people in his line of work who weren’t. Survivor’s guilt is a punishingly real thing, and if anyone had anything resembling Ozzy’s amount of it, maybe they’d drink a lot too.
(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)Who did Ozzy Osbourne lose?
The obvious example here is the mercurial, frighteningly talented guitarist Randy Rhoads. Plucked from Quiet Riot when Ozzy was putting together his solo band, Rhoads was a generational metal guitarist in the Eddie Van Halen mould. A literal prodigy in the sense that he was barely 20 when he was lighting up Los Angeles with his dazzling guitar playing. He was about 22 when he joined Ozzy’s band. Within three years, he would be dead.
It’s always worth bearing in mind that these are the kind of stakes that surround rock ‘n’ roll bad behaviour, no matter who the stories are about or how entertaining they undeniably are. Osbourne was well aware of this, too, and said as much to the one band that could match him for hellraising before they had their own brush with lethal consequences.
In an interview that Avenged Sevenfold frontman M Shadows conducted with Ozzy for Metal Hammer, Shadows asked which bands in particular he’d enjoyed touring with. Osbourne responded, “The most dangerous one I ever did personally was my solo tour with Mötley Crüe in the ’80s. Fucking hell, it was nuts. We were like pirates. I said to my tour manager, ‘Fucking hell, one of us is gonna die on this tour.’ And sure enough, shortly after, Vince Neil killed someone in a car.”
It’s the grisly, uncomfortable truth behind all these absurd rock ‘n’ roll anecdotes. They could go so badly wrong, and while most of the time people live through them, it only takes a slight turn of events to make sure people don’t. With all that in mind, yes, it’s very sad we lost Ozzy Osbourne when we did. However, it’s also something of a miracle we had him for as long as we did.
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