The wild ride of Ozzy Osbourne, from snorting ants to performing in an armchair

Australia Broadcast Center

5 days ago

Black Sabbath reunited for the first time in 20 years in July for what Ozzy Osbourne predicted would be his final concert.
Addressing the 42,000 fans in Birmingham, and the more than 5 million who streamed the show online, Ozzy said, "Let the madness begin!"
Madness would be a fair word to describe the career of the 'Prince of Darkness', a man who pioneered heavy metal music.
Wild stories followed wherever he went, the clergy condemned him, parents sued him, and the Sabbath flock idolised him.
However, from his black throne onstage at Villa Park on July 5, Ozzy presented a different view.
The rock star, who the world knew as wild, enthusiastic, and outlandish, looked frail and delicate. But true to style, he put on a show.
At times, he appeared to tear up, and at one point said, "you've got no idea how I feel".
After a day-long metal festival on July 5 featuring the likes of Anthrax, Metallica, and Guns N' Roses, Ozzy ascended the stage via an elevator platform and was met with adulation.
Estimated to be the highest-grossing charity concert of all time, the event has donated approximately $290 million of profits to three different charities.
Ozzy told the crowd that he had been "laid up for, like, six years" before this gig and that he wanted the crowd to "go crazy".
Staying seated, the rockstar then performed five songs solo on stage, starting with his 1980 hit I Don't Know.
That meant the first lyrics he sang in his final gig were "people look to me and say 'Is the end near, when is the final day?'"
During the set, fans saw Ozzy struggle with both his pitch and timing, which at times was painful but endearing.
He was on the brink of tears as the crowd sang him home during the middle of the set before the legend finished his solo showing with a conquering rendition of Crazy Train.
It wasn't the physical performance of long renown, but it was memorable.
For a man who once said he would "rather see twenty thousand smiling faces than twenty thousand crying people", perhaps tearing up in front of a crowd of emotional heavy metal fans was the most metal thing he could do.
The original members of Black Sabbath then joined him on stage for their first appearance together in 20 years.
Tony Iommi, Terence "Geezer" Butler, Bill Ward, and Ozzy treated the Sabbath faithful to a nostalgic but short set with Paranoid, one of their most famous songs.
The last lyrics he ever sang on stage were, "I tell you to enjoy life, I wish I could, but it's too late."
The song Paranoid is from Black Sabbath's second album of the same name, released in September 1970.
It is consistently ranked among the greatest heavy metal songs of all time — and even the best.
In it, Ozzy sings "people think I'm insane" and "[I] think I'll lose my mind if I don't find something to pacify".
The song is about bassist Geezer Butler and his feelings as a depressed teenager; however, the lyrics lend well to Ozzy Osbourne and his manic life.
Untrained as a singer, Ozzy had to be insane and wild to stand out as a top-level frontman, by his own admission.
"I think there's a wild man in everybody," he said. "All I am is a conductor of mayhem."
The most pressing example of that is when he bit the head off a bat.
At a gig in Des Moines, Iowa, in January 1982, a fan threw a bat on stage, which Ozzy in turn savaged.
He said afterwards that he assumed it was a rubber toy, not the dead animal it turned out to be.
The moment is enshrined in rock lore, but not before Ozzy was rushed to the hospital for rabies medication.
Bats notwithstanding, anything could happen at a Sabbath show.
Those in the front rows were mooned, spat on, screamed at, and more by the singer at his peak.
Black Sabbath fired him in 1979 for his legendary excesses, like showing up late for rehearsals and missing gigs (he reunited with the band in 1997).
However, that just birthed Ozzy, the solo artist — an even crazier concept.
During the Diary of a Madman solo tour in 1981, he had a bit where he would hurl raw meat from a catapult at audience members.
Off stage, Ozzy's outlandish exploits included indecency, arrests, and much alcohol and drug use.
He tried everything and got away with most things.
While on tour with US rock band Motley Crue in 1984, he snorted a trail of ants drawn to an ice block left on the ground next to a pool.
Tommy Lee of Motley Crue said everyone had been trying to "out-rockstar and out-gross" each other, and that Ozzy won.
Two years earlier, in 1982, Ozzy urinated on a memorial for fallen soldiers in Alamo, Texas, while wearing one of his wife Sharon's dresses.
He later apologised and donated thousands of dollars to the group that maintains the site.
That didn't stop him from urinating on a police car in Memphis in 1984 — unintentionally, he claimed.
Sabbath crew member Graham Wright reckoned "Ozzy had a weak bladder".
It wasn't a weak bladder that got him in trouble at the White House in 2002.
In front of a room of 1,800 people, Ozzy reportedly was jumping on a dining table after having too much to drink, prompting then-US president George Bush to say, "This might have been a mistake".
Ozzy battled alcohol and drug addiction throughout his career and, as late as 2013, admitted he was still using.
He eventually stopped, telling Revolver magazine in 2018 about his sobriety, admitting he regretted his earlier antics. Some of them at least.
"I was the rock and roll rebel for a long while. But that's alcohol and drugs," he said.
Ozzy Osbourne died aged 76 on July 22, 2025.