December 3, 1948 - July 22, 2025
In 1982 in Des Moines, Ozzy had a series of rabies shots after
biting the head off a bat that an audience member threw on stage. Osbourne thought it was a fake plastic bat.
He was banned from San Antonio in 1982 and arrested for defiling a national monument for urinating on the Alamo. The ban was lifted in 1991 after Ozzy gave $10,000 to the caretakers of the Alamo.
When he was 17, he tried to join the army. They wouldn't take him.
Ozzy hated Christmas. He thought it was silly to spend all your money at the end of the year.
Pat Boone used to live next door, but moved out. Ozzy thought he was a great neighbor.
Ozzy was born as John Michael Osbourne in Aston, Birmingham, England. He was the fourth of six children born to Jack and Lillian Osbourne.
When he was young, Ozzy wanted to be a plumber. He was a plumber's apprentice when he was 15.
His wife, Sharon, was also his manager. She is the daughter of Don Arden, who managed Ozzy in Black Sabbath. When Ozzy went solo, Sharon bought out his contract from her dad.
He went sober in 1991. The drugs he did up to that point would have killed most men - there was a particularly bad spell in 1979 after being ousted from Black Sabbath when Ozzy said he likely would have died had manager Sharon Arden not signed him as a solo artist.
He threw meat at the audience on his 1981-1982 Diary Of A Madman tour. This led to the bat incident when fans started throwing stuff back.
Ozzy made cameos in a few movies, playing a fundamentalist preacher in the 1987 movie Trick Or Treat, a band manager in The Jerky Boys Movie, and himself in Adam Sandler's Little Nicky. For that movie, he was in the ball that Nicky's mother (Reese Witherspoon) gave him from God for when he was in trouble. Ozzy came out and bit the head off of Nicky's brother, who was trying to become the new Devil, thus saving the day. He also had a cameo in Austin Powers: Goldmember.
He had at least 15 tattoos, including the letters O,Z,Z,Y on the knuckles of his left hand. He made those himself with a needle and a piece of graphite while he was in jail for burglary as a youth.
Ozzy had no formal music training and wrote very few of the Black Sabbath songs. His showmanship and distinctive voice made him famous.
Former Quiet Riot guitarist Randy Rhoads joined Ozzy when he went solo in 1980. Rhoads died two years later in Florida when he went up in a small plane and the pilot started buzzing Ozzy's tour bus. On the third pass, the wing hit the bus and the plane crashed into a nearby house, killing Rhoads, the pilot, and the tour hairdresser. Rhoads was 25.
In 2002, MTV created a show based on his home life called
The Osbournes, which became a huge hit on the network. Sharon Osbourne invited them to do it after they did a segment on their house for
MTV Cribs.
Before his show on MTV, a website created an internet sitcom based on his life. Titled Ozzy And Harriet, it was a spoof of the compulsively wholesome 1950s TV series.
In late 2003, Sharon admitted that in the early 1980s, she cheated on Ozzy with his guitarist, Randy Rhoads, although she had sex with him only once. She said she did it when she and Ozzy weren't communicating, and that Ozzy knew, but hated discussing it, and that they both cried whenever talking about Randy. Around the same time, Ozzy admitted that he was molested at age 11 by two boys who used to wait for him to come home from school: "They felt me and touched me and... it was terrible. I was afraid to tell my father or mother."
He credits Sharon with saving his life and keeping him on track - he's often professed his devotion for her and their children. "She pushed me when I needed it," Ozzy said. "She yelled at me when I needed it. At the time I didn't think I wanted to be yelled at, but in the long run, you got to get off your butt and you got to get to what you're here to do."
According to the Mötley Crüe biography
The Dirt, when they were an opening act on Ozzy's Bark At The Moon Tour in 1984, they saw him grab a straw and snort up a line of ants like they were a fancy drug.
He collected Victorian art.
Ozzy
worked at a slaughterhouse for three years as a youth, where he "was figuring out all these different ways to kill these animals."
There, he started drinking ox and pig blood. He said it was very easy: "You kinda stick a knife in there and hold out your cup." He then "got into the habit and started drinking it rather frequently."
There is an Ozzy T-shirt which spoofs the "Got Milk?" commercials with the line "Got Blood?"
Zakk Wylde found out Ozzy was auditioning guitarists when he heard about it on Howard Stern's radio show. Zakk got the job and became Ozzy's longtime axeman.
When Black Sabbath were inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame, Ozzy mooned the crowd because he felt they weren't showing enough enthusiasm. His bandmate Tony Iommi was nonplussed, saying, "I've seen Ozzy's arse more times than I've seen my own!"
Ozzy's wife and manager Sharon organized Ozzfest in 1996 when Lollapalooza refused to book Ozzy.
Zakk Wylde did three stints as Ozzy's guitarist, first from 1987-1992, then 2001-2009, when Ozzy got concerned that his songs were beginning to sound a bit like Zakk's Black Label Society. Wylde returned in 2017 and was his go-to guitarist until Ozzy's death in 2025.
Ozzy's single "Let Me Hear You Scream" appeared on the April 14, 2010 episode of CSI: NY.
In 2003 he released a
duet version of the 1972 Black Sabbath song "Changes" with his daughter Kelly, 19 at the time. It didn't get much attention in America but was a #1 hit in the UK.
He met the other members of Black Sabbath when he posted an advertisement in a music store that simply said "Ozzy Zig Needs Gig- has own PA."
Ozzy's first solo album, 1980's
Blizzard of Ozz, includes the classic song "
Crazy Train," proving that he had appeal outside of Black Sabbath.
In May 2005 Ozzy was diagnosed with Parkin Syndrome, a genetic condition that produces tremors and other Parkinson's-like symptoms. He fought through it, but by early 2025 could no longer walk and had to perform while seated. He died on July 22, 2025, just 17 days after his farewell concert with Black Sabbath.
Now for another rumor, which sounds fake, but isn't: Ozzy really did
get his genes sequenced to find out how he could still be alive after all those drugs. Geneticist Nathaniel Pearson found genes in Ozzy's DNA that might allow him to metabolize substances differently than other people. That's right: Ozzy had a sort-of mutant superpower.
Ozzy says it took him 19 tries to pass his driving test, in part because he often showed up high at appointments. He was 60 in 2009 when he finally passed.
Ozzy celebrated by buying a Ferrari, which his wife Sharon knew wasn't a great idea. Indeed, the next year, he got in a fender bender and decided it was best to let other people drive him around.
Ozzy Osbourne was going to play Kylie Minogue's fairy in Baz Luhrmann's movie extravaganza Moulin Rouge! (yes, really!) However, his part was reduced to a single angry scream.
Ozzy was dyslexic and had attention-deficit disorder - he said he couldn't sit still for more than five minutes. Rock star was a good profession for him, as an office job or factory work would have been unbearable.
His father was a straight-laced, responsible factory worker who worked the night shift. He saved enough money to buy Ozzy a PA system and microphone, which got him gigs because he was the only singer around with that equipment.
Ozzy made the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2006 with Black Sabbath and in 2024 as a solo artist. At his 2024 induction, he singled out two people he wouldn't have made it there without: Randy Rhoads and his wife Sharon.
Ozzy sang on stage for the last time at a spectacular send-off for him and his Black Sabbath bandmates on July 5, 2025. Billed as the "Back To The Beginning" concert, it reunited the four original members of Black Sabbath - Ozzy, Tony Iommi, Bill Ward and Geezer Butler - at Villa Park in their hometown of Birmingham, England. Some of the biggest names in rock, including Metallica, Anthrax and Slayer (three of the "Big Four" of metal) played mostly Sabbath songs in the lead-up to Ozzy's solo set, which led into Black Sabbath's farewell performance. By this time, Ozzy was in pretty rough shape - he was 76 and suffering from Parkinson's disease - so he had to perform from a chair. He couldn't belt out songs like he used to, but the crowd was happy to assist, and they knew every word. Ozzy died less than three weeks later.
