Ozzy Osbourne funeral: 'Home of metal' gathers on streets of Birmingham to farewell Prince of Darkness
Thousands of Black Sabbath fans will pay their respects on Wednesday to frontman Ozzy Osbourne as his hearse makes its way through the streets of Birmingham, the English city where he grew up and where the band was formed in 1968.
The hearse carrying Osbourne, who died last Tuesday at age 76, will make its way down the city's major thoroughfare of Broad Street to the Black Sabbath bench, which was unveiled on the Broad Street canal bridge in 2019.
Family members are expected to watch the cortege, which will be accompanied by a live brass band.
Since his death was announced, fans have made pilgrimages to sites around Birmingham, which has over the decades embraced its reputation as the birthplace of heavy metal.
Among his peers, Osbourne was metal's godfather.
'Ozzy was more than a music legend - he was a son of Birmingham,' Lord Mayor Zafar Iqbal said, adding 'we know how much this moment will mean to his fans'.
The main street closed to through traffic on Wednesday morning and will only reopen after the funeral finishes.
Osbourne and his Black Sabbath band mates, Terence Butler, Tony Iommi and Bill Ward, were recently awarded the Freedom of the City in recognition of their services to Birmingham.
The group has been widely credited with defining and popularising the sound of heavy metal.
Osbourne was the band's frontman during its peak period in the 1970s and was widely known as the 'Prince of Darkness'.
His antics, on and off stage, were legendary, and often fuelled by copious amounts of drinks and drugs.
Sabbath's story began in Birmingham in 1968 when the four original members were looking to escape a life of factory work.
Their eponymous debut album in 1970 made the UK top 10 and paved the way for a string of hit albums, including 1971's Master of Reality and Vol. 4 a year later.
They went on to become one of the most influential and successful metal bands ever, selling more than 75 million albums worldwide.
At their final show on July 5, 42,000 fans watched the band perform for the first time in 20 years at Villa Park, home of the city's biggest football club Aston Villa, with Osbourne seated on a black throne.
Osbourne had been in poor health in recent years, especially after he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2019.
Osbourne, who also had a successful solo career, found a new legion of fans in the early 2000s reality show The Osbournes in which he starred alongside his wife Sharon and two youngest children, Kelly and Jack.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
West Australian
12 hours ago
- West Australian
Netflix's Yosemite series Untamed is really at home in Canada
You don't have to go to America to see the sights of Yosemite National Park — and you don't have to take my word for it. The current Netflix hit series Untamed, starring Eric Bana and Sam Neill, makes much of telling its story in Yosemite. The key piece of action, around which the whole series hinges, takes place on the distinctive El Capitan granite mountain face. But it doesn't. Untamed was filmed in Canada, and the El Capitan in the series is actually Mount Seymour, in Mount Seymour Provincial Park in North Vancouver, British Columbia. Part of the North Shore Mountains, it rises to 1449m above the Indian River. Canada is a complete alternative for those considering touring the national parks of the US. THE STORY Untamed, a six-episode series, was released on July 17 and quickly racked up almost 25 million views, rising to No.1 on the Netflix TV charts for English-language shows. Co-written by Mark L Smith and Elle Smith, it's a mystery-thriller following Kyle Turner (played by Eric Bana), who is a special agent for the National Parks Service, based in Yosemite National Park. He sets out to investigate the death of a young woman who falls from El Capitan, getting caught in the ropes of two young climbers on the granite face. His investigation starts to reveal the dark secrets of the national the park, and in his own past. THE LOCATIONS It has been revealed that the log cabin in which special agent Kyle Turner lives isn't in Yosemite, but in Murdo Frazer Park, again, in North Vancouver Canada. Many of the snow scenes were filmed in Whistler Olympic Park. In the series, some of the action is set at 'Grouse Lake in Yosemite National Park', but this is Grace Lake, in British Columbia. It is close to Vancouver — just take Highway 7 to Harrison Mills, turn left into Morris Valley Road and drive 11km and turn into Sts/Ailes Forest Service Road and you'll find Grace Lake Recreation Site, where camping is CAD $25 ($28). The forested trails of North Vancouver's Greenwood Park provide good locations for the series. Greenwood Park and Kealy Woods Park are in the upper Grand Boulevard neighbourhood of Vancouver, with dramatic bluffs, bedrock outcrops. There's a network of trails through both parks, making them very popular. The Green Necklace greenway (a 7.5km scenic loop), extends north into Greenwood Park and also attracts visitors to the area. There's a quarry in Greenwood Park that is popular with locals for bouldering. Kyle Turner's investigation, with forest ranger Naya Vasquez (Lily Santiago) alongside, leads to a squatter camp, which was filmed in Deroche. It is an 'unincorporated community' of growers at the foot of Nicomen Mountain in Fraser Valley, southwestern British Columbia. There are a number of river gorge hiking scenes in Untamed, and some of these were filmed on Cheakamus River, with rapids and big fir and cedar trees. The river is a tributary of the Squamish River, and scenes were also shot at the Balls To The Wall waterfall, which is famous with whitewater kayakers. The Cheakamus River is synonymous with Whistler kayaking. Just search YouTube to see paddlers on the Cheakamus and shooting Balls To The Wall.
Perth Now
a day ago
- Perth Now
Drake reveals where his son was conceived
Drake loves Amsterdam because his son was conceived there. The God's Plan hitmaker - who has seven-year-old Adonis with artist Sophie Brussaux - performed in the Dutch city on Wednesday (30.07.25) and told the audience the city will always hold a "very special place" in his heart for very personal reasons. In a video shared to X by a fan, Drake could be heard saying: 'I was saying backstage, I was saying that this is the place. A very special place in my heart. Because this is where my son was conceived. "So this is a big show for me, you know? I hold Amsterdam very dear to my heart. "There would be no Adonis if there wasn't an Amsterdam, so shoutout to y'all.' In November, Drake shared a sweet note on Instagram which his son had given him, in which the youngster thanked his dad for "giving [him] such a good life". The brief letter, which was handwritten in blue and red ink read: 'Thank you for giving me such a good life and a good family. 'I love you dad. 'Adonis to Dad.' Adonis - who speaks French and English - splits his time living in France with his mom, as well as in Los Angeles and Toronto with his dad. Drake revealed in June 2018 that he had a son and he previously admitted it was "freeing" to open up about his little boy. He said: "I posted those pictures. It was great for me. It was great to just share that with the world and I just felt like ... It wasn't even anything I talked to anybody about or anything I planned. I just woke up one morning and I was like, you know what? This is just something that I want to do. I want to be able to go places with my son and share memories with my son. I don't want to feel like just because of a life choice I made to be a 'celebrity' that I got to make everybody live under this blanket. So, I just wanted to free myself of that." The 38-year-old rapper put on a 'SpongeBob SquarePants'-themed birthday party to mark Adonis turning seven earlier this year and shared the photos to Instagram. The father-and-son duo posed in front of a Bikini Bottom backdrop, with Adonis in a bright yellow t-shirt, and the Grammy Award-winner rocking an orange 'Fox Racing' long-sleeved shirt. The picture carousel also highlighted Adonis playing soccer with his friends, as well as jumping in a bouncy castle.
Sydney Morning Herald
a day ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
The colour that is tearing families apart
Imagine the confusion in the Twigg household. The trigger was the Wordle back in June. Sheryl and her daughter Keira pitched their daily battle, seeking to reveal the mystery words in fewer moves, though the real contest lay in how to say the eventual answer. As Sheryl explains, 'I say TAUPE so that it rhymes with Thorpe, while my daughter insists the colour rhymes with rope. Both of us were adamant. In fact, we'd only realised we reached the same answer after looking at each other's phones.' So who's right? Thorpe or rope? Suddenly, I was magistrate in Twigg v English, compelling me to consult the original French. Brownish-grey on the spectrum, taupe derives from mole whose fur displays the in-between shade. Alas, French has an in-between way of saying the word, going closer to rope in rhyme yet longer in duration, the vowel somehow shorter. Acting as mole on behalf of the Twiggs, I ran a radio survey across Victoria. Pick a rhyme: rope or warp. Hundreds replied. Ninety-five per cent stood in the warp camp, despite Collins (UK) and Merriam-Webster (US) favouring the rope echo. The Macquarie has a bob each way, promoting warp over rope, leaving us lost in the brownish-grey murk of indecision. English has a subset of such foggy words, as the data (darter versus dater) suggests. Does schedule start with a sh- or sk-sound? Is mack or mash implicated in machination? Most lexicons tell their user either (or either). Pick one already! You say tomato, I say tomato, so let's stop arguing about tomatoes. Does schedule start with a sh- or sk-sound? Is mack or mash implicated in machination? I've spoken before about Gen-Z, which zedders themselves call zee, while the un-zee crowd prefers zed. In short, chaos. American English provides many of these shibboleths, those words setting two tribes apart. When Bobby Troup – who doesn't rhyme with taupe – wrote the Route 66 song, his stanza backed root as a homophone, despite the modern American, and younger Australian, deeming route to match rout in sound. Loading Abandoning French moles and US highways, let's meet the cute but confusing Leadbeater's possum. Apostrophe kerfuffle aside, Victoria's faunal emblem is one phonetic mess. I've sifted a dozen videos where zoologists (that's zoo-ologist, or zo-ologist) will suggest the eponymous taxidermist – John Leadbeater – rhymes with bed-heater, while others assume red-setter is a closer fit.
