
Ozzy Osbourne a ‘dear friend and a huge trailblazer' says Elton John as friends, fans share memories and condolences
death of Black Sabbath frontman and Rock & Roll Hall of Famer
Ozzy Osbourne.
The legendary English heavy metal singer, also known as 'the Prince of Darkness,' was 76.
'It is with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning,' Sharon Osbourne wrote in a statement signed by his immediate family.
Tributes immediately began pouring in for the star: 'We go way back and it was a real honor to watch him get inducted into the
@rockhall
last year,' said his fellow hall of famer Flavor Flav.
Man,,, real heart broken over the passing of OZZY OSBOURNE,,, we go way back and it was a real honor to watch him get inducted into the
@rockhall
last year. Sending my love and prayers to Sharon and his kids and whole family. RIP 🤍
pic.twitter.com/YVKpAz6FKg
'He was hysterically funny, he was kind, he was a friend. Nobody controlled a crowd like him. I love you Ozzy. Forever,' Danny Deraney, Osbourne's former publicist, wrote in a post.
The news I never wanted to hear.
Growing up a die hard Sabbath and Ozzy fan, you would be lying if I would one day work with one of my idols for 6 years.
He was hysterically funny, he was kind, he was a friend. Nobody controlled a crowd like him. I love you Ozzy. Forever.
pic.twitter.com/8UTmi46fsA
Heavy metal band Metallica also posted a photo with Osbourne on X, with a broken heart in the caption.
💔
pic.twitter.com/ojOksUPkKi
Singer-songwriter Elton John called Osbourne 'a dear friend and a huge trailblazer who secured his place in the pantheon of rock gods' in a
tribute on social media
.
Osbourne was one of the funniest people the British legend has ever met, he said, adding he sends his love and condolences to Osbourne's family.
A post shared by Elton John (@eltonjohn)
Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones reflected fondly on Osbourne's last live performance in Birmingham, England on July 6 in a
post on social media
, addding he was 'so very sad' to learn of the trailblazer's death.
Actor Danny Trejo shared a photo with Osbourne, sending heartfelt remarks to his wife and kids.
🖤 Rest in Power, Ozzy 🖤
Today we lost one of the wildest souls to ever walk this Earth. Ozzy wasn't just The Prince of Darkness, he was pure light to those of us lucky enough to meet him. A heart bigger than any stage he ever rocked. My heart goes out to Sharon and the Kids.…
pic.twitter.com/rjAIz2DkHP

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Gizmodo
an hour ago
- Gizmodo
The Spice Girls and Wu-Tang Clan Almost Had Their Own Anime
Now, here's a sentence no one expected to read in the year 2025: Once upon a time, we might have gotten to see the Spice Girls and the Wu-Tang Clan in anime form. In a recent interview with AnimEigo, Lawrence Guinness, a senior VP at Manga Entertainment, distributor of anime such as Perfect Blue and Street Fighter Alpha (and subsidiary of Island Records), revealed the company considered co-producing its own works. Two projects he mentioned would have starred the aforementioned bands, and the Spice Girls idea got far enough along that he had some production stills to show. Had it happened, it'd have been a film called Girl Power: The Anime, courtesy of Production I.G, the studio behind Ghost in the Shell. According to Guinness, Manga had 'very advanced talks' with the British pop group's management at the time this was pitched and would've hopefully appealed to fans of then-popular anime like Studio Ghibli. Even now, Guinness is confident teenage girls 'might've gone to the cinema to see this. In fact, I think you would've stood in a line for a long time to get in to see this. This was the vision. Look, if that's not girl power in action, I don't know what is.' As for the never-realized Wu-Tang project, a series that would have been called The Imperial Warrior, he claimed near everything was in place for the project, except some of the hip-hop group's members didn't sign off on it. His pitch to Island Records founder Chris Blackwell saw Wu-Tang 'challenging the forces of evil through their music and martial arts skills.' The soundtrack and designs for the characters (he mentioned RZA and Ghostface Killah specifically) were 'great,' said Guinness, and it would've been 'revolutionary. That was the project I was proudest of that never happened.' Over the decades, Japanese creators have been open about their love of western music, and artists like the late Prince and Aaliyah have inspired characters in Michiko & Hatchin and My Hero Academia. Making musicians or other celebrities into fictionalized versions of themselves for film and TV is another tale as old as time, and Guinness wanted these two projects to take off to both put Manga on the map and successfully 'synthesize anime with the best of western culture.' When it comes to Wu-Tang Clan, he's sort of gotten his wish, thanks to RZA's involvement in Afro Samurai and developer Brass Lion Entertainment's upcoming action game Wu-Tang: Rise of the Deceiver. As for the Spice Girls, it's a shame they never got their animated due—there are worse ways for a band to be memorialized than an anime movie with some original songs and cheesy action that still holds up years after the fact. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.


Indianapolis Star
2 hours ago
- Indianapolis Star
Ozzy didn't corrupt America's youth. He exposed the hypocrisy of their elders.
Ozzy Osbourne is dead, and some Christians may believe that the devil ushered him straight to the gates of hell. Few pop culture icons were as important, or as controversial, as Osbourne. The British-born rocker became the avatar of American culture wars more than a half-century ago by attempting to showcase the hypocrisy of modern religion. Osbourne launched his career in the late 1960s. Sensitive to cultural currents, he recognized what was happening not just in music, but also in religion and politics. He used it to build on the image of rock as subversive and countercultural. From the start, Osbourne understood how to bring attention to his art. Calling his band Black Sabbath sent a clear message. He aimed to subvert, not honor, Christianity. He integrated crosses, demonic imagery and symbols of the devil such as bats into his performances to highlight what he saw as the absurdity of organized religion. Osbourne sang lyrics in his first album about a 'figure in black' that directed him, and in another song, he took on the persona of Satan himself: 'My name is Lucifer, please take my hand.' In Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" album, released at the height of the Vietnam War, he sang 'War Pigs,' a song in which Satan laughed and spread his wings as political and military elites led the Western world to the doorstep of the apocalypse. Opinion: How faith becomes a weapon: 'If I can't understand it, it's not Christian' Such allusions to the demonic continued in album after album. Osbourne's career developed parallel to a new understanding of Satan. In the post-World War II era, the devil assumed a more prominent role in American life. Anton LaVey's founding of the Church of Satan in 1966 celebrated Satan as a symbol of rebellion, individualism and secular liberation. In other words, Satan was the opposite of everything anxious Cold War parents wanted to instill in their kids. Artists drew on this revamped Satan in their work. Films like "The Exorcist" (1973) and "The Omen" (1976) brought Satan − and fears of Satan's ability to inhabit human bodies − into the imaginations of millions of people. Osbourne made those themes central to his music. In the 1980s, while Osbourne was still releasing albums, fears of satanic ritual abuse swept across the United States. Christian conservatives fretted that Dungeons & Dragons, Ouija boards and horror films were gateways to demonic influence. High-profile cases like the McMartin preschool trial and the publication of memoirs about escaping satanic ritual abuse fueled widespread panic. Law enforcement agencies conducted seminars on occult crime, therapists uncovered repressed memories of ritual abuse and talk shows amplified claims of underground satanic cults. The panic revealed deep anxieties about child safety, cultural change and the perceived decline of Christian values in American society. Perhaps, parents and religious leaders wondered, was Osbourne driving kids into satanism? Perhaps his music was brainwashing the nation's youth? Conservative Christians − including evangelicals, Catholics and Latter-day Saints − believe in a cosmic battle between angels and demons that directly influences human affairs. They believe that unseen spiritual battles determine real-world outcomes, particularly in culture, politics and morality. Opinion: Kan-Kan Cinema is elevating Indy's cinema culture Many of them also believed they had to protect children from music like Osbourne's. This framework encouraged social conservatives to interpret issues like abortion, LGBTQ+ rights and the de-Christianizing of culture as evidence of demonic influence, necessitating counteraction through prayer, activism and political engagement. Osbourne and the genre of hard rock that he helped to promote contributed to their fears. In their minds, Osbourne was encouraging youth to rebel. And he was. Osbourne's fans understood what the rock star was doing. They loved it. The more angry Osbourne could make their parents, and the more he could rile up moral crusaders, the better. And he agreed. Playing with the devil became a hallmark of his long career. Briggs: Born into Jim Crow, she lived to witness DEI debates From witch hunts in Salem to conspiracy theories driving QAnon, Americans have used Satan to facilitate a politics of fear. They have used him to justify persecution, fuel moral panics, shape political and cultural battles, and assess global crises and war. But there has always been another side to Satan, the one Osbourne captured. His devil wasn't the horned villain of Christian nightmares but a trickster, a rebel, a symbol of freedom from sanctimony. In Osbourne's hands, Satan gave a theatrical middle finger to hypocrisy and lifted up a mirror to a society obsessed with sin, and he laughed. His life reminds us that sometimes, dancing with the devil is really just refusing to march in lockstep with the saints.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Kelly Osbourne Slams Rumors Dad Ozzy Osbourne Is ‘Dying' Amid Parkinson's Battle: ‘How Dare You'
Kelly Osbourne is setting the record straight about dad Ozzy Osbourne's health amid his battle with Parkinson's disease. The 40-year-old shared a screenshot of a direct message she received via her Instagram Story on Monday, July 14. In the message, a social media user claimed Kelly doesn't "understand how Parkinson's disease works" because she has publicly denied that her father is "dying." "This is the s*** I wake up to," Kelly wrote alongside the screenshot. "Wtf is wrong with people?" In a subsequent Story, Kelly showed how she replied. "Believe me I fully understand how this works," she wrote in her message. "Your message is incredibly rude. So firstly I want to tell you to go f*** yourself! He is not in stage 5!!! That is not the way his kind of Parkinson's works." Ozzy Osbourne Through the Years: Black Sabbath, Solo Career, Addiction, Married Life, Reality TV and More Calling out the "nasty" comments, Kelly told the user to "stop perpetuating the bulls***" being spread about her family online. "I don't really respond [to] messages such as this but you really pissed me off," she continued. "How dare you!" Kelly's response came shortly after she slammed an AI-generated video of Ozzy, 76, saying he was "going to die." "It has a voice like my dad's David Attenborough or something. And it starts out saying, 'I don't need a doctor to tell me that I'm going to die. I know I'm going to die," she said in an Instagram Story uploaded on Friday, July 11, per E! News. "What the f*** is wrong with you people? Why would you spend your time making a video like this?" Kelly insisted that her father "is not dying," adding, "Yes, he has Parkinson's, and yes, his mobility is completely different than it used to be, but he's not dying. What is wrong with you?" The former Fashion Police star also shut down speculation that Ozzy and her mother, Sharon Osbourne, have a "suicide pact," a subject that was raised in Sharon's 2007 memoir, Survivor, and on a 2023 episode of "The Osbournes Podcast" with Jack Osbourne. "That was bulls*** my mom said to get attention one time," Kelly said on Friday. News broke in 2020 that Ozzy was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Earlier this month, he played his final performance with Black Sabbath — the band's first time on stage together in 20 years. "You wake up the next morning and find that something else has gone wrong. You begin to think this is never going to end," Ozzy told The Guardian in an interview published in May, several months after revealing that the illness has affected his ability to walk. Sharon Osbourne Through the Years: Ozzy Osbourne Marriage, Talk Show Career and More Ozzy shared insights into how he was preparing for the concert, telling The Guardian, "I do weights [and] bike riding, I've got a guy living at my house who's working with me. It's tough. I've been laid up for such a long time. I've been lying on my back doing nothing and the first thing to go is your strength. It's like starting all over again." Kelly attended the performance in Birmingham, England, on July 5 — where her partner, Sid Wilson, proposed backstage. In an emotional Instagram Story video, she thanked fans for supporting her family. "Thank you to everyone who came to the show last night, thank you to everybody who was involved in the show last night. You have no idea what it did for my dad," she said at the time. "It was one of the most magical experiences of my entire life, and if I keep talking, I'm probably going to end up crying again. So, that's all I'll say for now. Thank you."