A royal send-off for Ozzy Osbourne

Boston Globe

30-07-2025

On Wednesday, Ozzy Osbourne, one of the founders of pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath, received just such a tribute in Birmingham, England — his hometown — ahead of a private family funeral.
It was the third time this month that fans had descended on the city for an Ozzfest of sorts. On July 5, they flocked here for Osbourne's final concert at a soccer stadium just a few minutes from the singer's childhood home. Last week, the black-clad, tattooed throngs returned after the singer died at age 76. On Wednesday, they were back for his funeral procession.
Advertisement
Just after 1 p.m., a car carrying Osbourne's coffin and a purple floral arrangement spelling out 'Ozzy,' with a purple floral cross on its roof, traveled along Broad Street, one of Birmingham's main thoroughfares. It was followed by other vehicles carrying Osbourne's closest family members, including his wife, Sharon, and Jack and Kelly Osbourne, two of the couple's three children.
Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
Enter Email
Sign Up
The route led them to the Black Sabbath Bench, a tourist attraction that has become a place of pilgrimage since Osbourne's death.
When the group arrived at the landmark, the family members got out to look at tributes to their lost patriarch as the massed fans, who stood several rows deep, shouted tributes including 'Ozzy forever.'
A tearful Sharon Osbourne waved to the crowd and embraced the city's lord mayor, Zafar Iqbal. The family lingered a few minutes more. Then the emotional group drove off as the brass band played.
Advertisement
In the hours before the ceremony, fans had gathered opposite the bench, listened to Osbourne's music, and raucously chanted his name. Many had carried homemade tributes to the singer or toy bats. Almost all of them were wearing black.
Some had rushed across borders to make it in time. Niclas Sundsborn, 53, a maintenance worker from Sweden, said that after learning about the procession Tuesday, he and a metal-loving friend had each spent about $1,300 on plane tickets to fly to Britain. Sundsborn said that his own family 'probably think I'm mad' for spending that much but that Osbourne was 'an icon.'
In Britain, mourners typically take to the streets in large numbers only for the death of queens or kings. After John Lennon died in 1980, some 20,000 fans gathered in Liverpool for a vigil, but few other artists have provoked such devotion. There was no procession for David Bowie's death in 2016.
Holly Tessler, a lecturer in the University of Liverpool's music department, described the mass public mourning for Osbourne as 'unprecedented' for a musician in Britain.
It's also rare for Birmingham. Carl Chinn, a historian who has written several books on the city's history, said that the last time large-scale crowds had gathered there to collectively mourn was in 1914, when people hoped to glimpse the coffin of Joseph Chamberlain, a prominent statesman and former lord mayor.
Chamberlain was the first lawmaker to 'steadfastly and proudly' advocate for Birmingham on a national scale, Chinn said, adding that Osbourne and his Black Sabbath bandmates had effectively done the same globally with their music.
Advertisement
That partly explains why Birmingham has taken his death so hard, Chinn said. Osbourne, who grew up in one of the city's working-class districts and worked in a slaughterhouse before he cofounded Black Sabbath in 1968, was one of the city's own.
'This has been an outpouring of Birmingham patriotism,' Chinn said.
Some in the crowd Wednesday said they were still processing the reality that Osbourne was gone. Goose Giroud, 37, a pilot who was at the front of the barriers, said that she had met Osbourne just two weeks ago at a Comic Con in Birmingham. At the event, she recalled, the singer had pulled her close and signed her arm — a mark that she had made into a tattoo.
After the procession, Giroud said, 'We all know he didn't want us to be moping today, so we're trying not to, but we're devastated.'
Seeing the Osbournes so upset was hard, Giroud added, but she said the Ozzy fandom had their back. 'Now we need to all go and get a drink in his memory,' she said. 'And not just one.'
This article originally appeared in