Who Are The Potential Witnesses In Drake's Lawsuit Against UMG?
In the amended 'initial disclosure' document viewed by VIBE, more than 60 people or companies are listed by Drake and his legal team as those who may have testimony that support his claims. As noted in the filing, 'disclosures do not include persons whose testimony is likely to be used solely for impeachment, rebuttal, or expert witness testimony.'
The full list named executives from Interscope, Jesse Collins of Roc Nation, Avery Lipman, PresidentRepublic Records, as well as the companies Amazon Music, the NFL, Apple Inc., Instagram, and various media outlets. Drake himself is also named as a potential witness in the landmark litigation.
Also listed is Kojo Menne Asamoah, who is described as having knowledge of the Defendant's use of covert tactics to promote the defamatory material. An additional document filed included a motion to subpoena Asamoah as a 'relevant witness.'
'Based on the information available to Plaintiff today, Plaintiff believes that Mr. Asamoah possesses knowledge relating to UMG's use of covert tactics to promote the Defamatory Material, including because Plaintiff believes that Mr. Asamoah was involved in directing payments and/or financial incentives from UMG to third parties involved in online botting for the purpose of artificially inflating the streaming numbers of the Recording,' detailed the filing.
'Plaintiff believes that Mr. Asamoah engaged in this behavior through and/or in connection with his relationship with Ramon Alvarez-Smikle, the Executive Vice President and Head of Digital Marketing of UMG's Interscope Records. Mr. Alvarez-Smikle is listed as a witness on both Plaintiff's and UMG's initial disclosures.'
In its initial disclosures, UMG has a shorter list of potential witnesses, with Kendrick Lamar named as 'likely to have discoverable information concerning the creation of the Recording, Image and Video, and the distribution and promotion of the Recording and Video.'
Although named in the court documents, no person or company listed is guaranteed to be called to the witness stand if the case makes it to trial.
'UMG is desperate to see this case not move forward because the company can't hide its misconduct in a courtroom the way it does in the boardroom,' shared a statement from representatives for the Certified Lover Boy earlier this month. 'Soon, in addition to facing concerned regulators and investors, the leadership of music's most powerful label will have to answer for the damage it has caused to every artist that has been silenced, exploited, endangered or discarded.'
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Why the World Never Fell Out of Love with the Prince of Darkness
Ozzy Osbourne told Rolling Stone in 2002 he already knew what his epitaph would say. 'I guarantee that if I was to die tonight, tomorrow it would be, 'Ozzy Osbourne, the man who bit the head off a bat, died in his hotel room …'' he said. 'I know that's coming.' He'd made his peace with that fate. 'I've got no complaints. At least I'll be remembered.' But Ozzy got this one wrong. The world is in mourning for him, after the news of his death yesterday at 76. But not as a cartoon metal maniac chomping on bat flesh. We're mourning for Ozzy as one of the most unimpeachably human voices in music, and one of the most cherished legends in pop culture. It was Ozzy's moon. The rest of us just barked at it. For a guy with such a niche background — no rock band had ever set out to scare normies away like Black Sabbath — he became a universal figure as beloved as Ringo. Who else could sing duets with Lita Ford, Busta Rhymes, Elton John, Post Malone, and Miss Piggy without losing any metal cred? No matter how prolific or unprolific he was, even when he was a mess, people cherished Ozzy with an intensely loyal affection that was really unlike anything else. The world never fell out of love with this Prince of Darkness. More from Rolling Stone Ozzy Osbourne Documentary 'No Escape From Now' Still Set for Release This Fall Lita Ford Remembers Ozzy Osbourne: 'In Ozzy's Name, Keep Rocking' Drake Honors Ozzy Osbourne at Birmingham Concert Ozzy blew up into a Seventies teenage antihero because he seemed to speak for the misfits, the rejects, the outcasts. He helped invent metal as we know it with Black Sabbath, but he kept rolling through the years with one of the longest and strangest rock careers. With The Osbournes, he became the world's favorite sitcom dad. By the 2000s, he could show up at Buckingham Palace for Queen Elizabeth's Royal Jubilee, to celebrate her 40th anniversary, and serenade Her Majesty with 'Paranoid.' There was nothing at all controversial about the Prince of Darkness singing for the Defender of the Faith. She greeted him in the reception line with 'I hear you're a bit of a wild man.' 'Prince William said to me later, 'It would have been great if you had done 'Black Sabbath,''' Ozzy told RS. 'If I had done 'Black Sabbath,' the fucking royal box would have turned to stone, and the Archbishop of Canterbury would have had to douse them in holy water.' Ozzy's nine lives had nine lives apiece. He managed the historic feat of getting kicked out of Black Sabbath for doing too many drugs, in 1979. The fact that he kept waking up alive every morning for the next 40-plus years is one of the weirdest things that's ever happened in rock & roll. Nobody would have bet on this guy to survive the Eighties, much less keep getting more famous every year, but his star never stopped rising. He did more farewell tours than Cher, Elton, and the Who combined, following up No More Tours in 1992 with his Retirement Sucks tour, then going out again in 2018 with his awesomely titled No More Tours II. But he hated being offstage, and talked constantly in his final years about his drive to get back out there, despite his Parkinson's diagnosis. He even got to attend his own farewell party, performing his last concert with his old mates in Black Sabbath just a couple of weeks before his death, in his hometown of Birmingham, England. The 'Back to the Beginning' farewell show was a full-on celebration of his life and legacy, an electric funeral, with a host of fellow music legends paying their respects. One of the most poignant and heartfelt tributes came from Dolly Parton, with whom Ozzy has a surprising amount in common. Both became anti-establishment stars in the 1970s, too out there for the mainstream, dismissed as cartoon jokes, yet finally celebrated as true heroes decades ahead of their time. Her video message played on the screen between sets. 'Now, are we supposed to be saying farewell to you?' Dolly said. 'Well, I don't think that's going to happen. How about we just say good luck, God bless you, and we will see you somewhere down the road. Anyway, I love you, always have. And we're gonna miss you up onstage, but you know what? I wouldn't be surprised if you don't show up somewhere else — and I'll be there.' It all came down to his voice. Even when Ozzy wasn't the one writing the lyrics, they were inseparable from his quavering voice, as pure in its earnest simplicity as Brian Wilson. He sang about the morbid sense of doom that Seventies and Eighties kids felt during the era of the superpower nuclear arms race, a topic he revisited far more than any other rock star, in classics like 'War Pigs,' 'Crazy Train,' 'Children of the Grave,' or 'Electric Funeral.' He was one of very few voices anywhere in pop culture who brought this much moral wrath and empathy to the kids living under the mushroom cloud, especially the American teenagers reaching draft age around the time Paranoid and Master of Reality came out. For them, the fiery doom of 'Black Sabbath' was no occult metaphor. Ozzy's Iron Man and Bowie's Major Tom were the twin rock images of alienated youth in the 1970s, pissed off at the nuclear future their elders had built for them, sneering in aloof disdain behind a spaced-out mask. As Ozzy said, they'd seen the future and they'd left it behind. Right from the start, Ozzy sang with an authentic purity, but that purity was more than just part of his voice — it was his voice. Unlike other hard-rock singers at the time, he did not try to get bluesy, and he did not aspire to the muscle of a soul belter. He didn't bother with sexy-stud posturing or macho bluster. He was one of us. His moral force is part of what made him so genuinely scary when he arrived — Alice Cooper, that guy was funny and cool, but Ozzy's power was all in the way he undeniably meant every word he sang. Black Sabbath's music was terrifying to me as a kid, growing up in the suburbs — it was the stuff that the cool, scary older kids listened to when the adults weren't around, when they were smoking and partying, scared kids in the dark. On the bridge near my house, by Milton High School, the words were spray-painted: 'Welcome to Ozzy's Coven.' (Which was how I learned the word coven.) Yet Ozzy's voice sounded so benign and compassionate, downright vulnerable. The first time I ever heard his voice was at my next-door neighbor's house, in his big brother's basement pad, where he kept a piranha and played the first Sabbath album. I remember hearing 'N.I.B.,' with Ozzy singing in the voice of the devil. Yet what made it so scarily piercing was how forlorn and frail he sounded. It blew my mind when he quoted Buddy Holly, singing 'Your love for me has got to be real' — I knew that line from my Fifties-rocker parents listening to 'Not Fade Away.' What did Ozzy mean by making the devil a Buddy Holly-style romantic? It was a world away from the just-call-me-Luuucifaaaah strut of Mick Jagger. Ozzy's devils sounded so scary because they were mostly afraid of themselves. In his solo years, he played up the comedy, in a great hit like 'Flying High Again,' kicking off with a massive Randy Rhoads riff while Ozzy burbles in his most hapless voice, 'Oh noooo! Here we go!' It sums up his immensely lovable warmth right down to the way he sings, 'Am I just a crazy guy?' and then snickers, 'You bet.' But he still had that unimpeachable realness in his voice — for him, it was practically all he had in his voice. John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats really captured his mystique for latter-day fans in his novella Master of Reality, written in the voice of an institutionalized teenage Sabbath fanatic. 'No matter how many songs he sings, Ozzy always always sounds like they just grabbed him off the street and stuck him in front of a microphone, and then they either handed him a piece of paper with some lyrics on it or he already had some written on his hand or something.' In Rolling Stone's year-end issue for 1990, the first page had loads of stars giving their summary of the year, mostly pimping their latest career highlights. But Ozzy kept it short and sweet. 'One of the greatest heroes of all time said it in 1969: 'Give peace a chance.' Let's all try for it in 1991.' A typical Oz statement, full of contradictions (he was only a year past getting arrested for attacking his wife in a drunken stupor) but also that innate Ozzy sincerity. John Lennon had a similar cocktail in his personality, but he was also armored with complex layers of defensive wit and irony that Ozzy simply didn't have in his system. 'Give peace a chance' remained an aspirational ideal for Ozzy, the guy who kept doing the peace sign in public long after it went out of style for rock stars. 'We were the last hippie band,' he told RS in 2002. 'We were into peace.' After bombing out of Sabbath, he could have symbolized everything complacent, decadent, and dull about old-school rock. Yet he was never a joke. Like Geddy Lee, his opposite in so many other ways, he was cherished as an evolutionary mishap who symbolized his own kind of uncompromised integrity. One of the highlights of seeing my first Replacements show, a dingy all-aged matinee in the summer of 1986, was seeing Paul Westerberg and the boys lock into 'Iron Man,' one of the few songs they came close to finishing. Later that year, the Beastie Boys opened Licensed to Ill with the sampled 'Sweet Leaf' riff of 'Rhymin and Stealin,' dragging Sabbath into the Eighties the same way Run-D.M.C. did for Aerosmith. One of his best Eighties moments: Ozzy's classic egg-frying scene in Decline of Western Civilization Part II. He's the rock star at home, puttering around the kitchen in a leopard-print robe, a Real Housewife of Darkness, looking more like Rue McLanahan in The Golden Girls then any rock star you could name. He fixes breakfast, ineptly frying eggs and bacon while trying to pour himself a glass of orange juice on the counter. He gets about half of it into the actual glass. He also discusses his latest attempt to get sober. Director: 'Do you feel better now?' Ozzy: 'No.' He became even more iconic in the Nineties. Beck gave him a classic shout-out on MTV's 120 Minutes, in his famous February 1994 sit-down with Thurston Moore and Mike D — perhaps the most Nineties moment of television ever aired. Beck wore a thrift-store hockey shirt that proclaimed 'Stop! Tell Me I'm Ozzy Because I Am.' He'd written 'Ozzy' on a piece of masking tape and stuck it over whatever the original word was. He also made his plea in 'Ozzy' on his album Stereopathetic Soulmanure. (Sample lyric: 'Ozzy, Ozzy, Ozzy/What does it mean?/The fire is green.') By now, Ozzy was a fact of life that songwriters couldn't resist evoking as a way to set the table. 'It's reigning triple sec in Tchula/And the radio plays 'Crazy Train,'' David Berman drawled in the 1996 Silver Jews classic 'Black and Brown Blues,' with Ozzy as an unelectable symbol of ur-American burnout ordinariness. The Hold Steady's Craig Finn sang 'Playing records in a rented room/Hotter Than Hell into Bark at the Moon' in 2012, just as his songwriting heir MJ Lenderman sang a dozen years later, 'I've never seen the 'Mona Lisa'/I've never really left my room/I've been up too late playing Guitar Hero/Playing 'Bark at the Moon.'' He went on to help invent reality TV with The Osbournes, the blockbuster MTV hit that turned him into a sitcom dad. It starred a real-life family who could only communicate with a camera crew present, constantly cutting a promo in every interaction, with dialogue full of bleeped profanity. It's fitting since reality TV became the social menace as feared and dreaded as metal used to be. But my favorite Ozzy memory will always be seeing him on the Retirement Sucks tour in 1996, at Meriweather Post Pavilion in Maryland, a love-fest where Ozzy basked in the adoration of the audience, which he craved, but nowhere near as much as the audience did. Nobody really cared that Ozzy needed a teleprompter, which was a shocking innovation at the time; everybody within six miles of the venue knew all the words to 'Iron Man,' down to the security guards, but absolutely nobody was mad that Ozzy was the only one there who didn't. 'Is anyone smoking that sweet leaf?' he asked. 'When I said I quit, I fucking lied!' It was an overwhelming feeling of warmth and joy just to be in the same room with Ozzy, as it always was. And as long as his music lives on — which it will — being in the same room as Ozzy is always the place to be. Best of Rolling Stone Sly and the Family Stone: 20 Essential Songs The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked Solve the daily Crossword
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Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath Singer and Heavy Metal Pioneer, Dead at 76
Ozzy Osbourne, the singular metal legend whose Black Sabbath virtually invented heavy metal and in later years became a reality-TV pioneer, died on Tuesday at the age of 76. Osbourne's family confirmed his death in a statement. '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,' they said. 'He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time.' More from Rolling Stone Lita Ford Remembers Ozzy Osbourne: 'In Ozzy's Name, Keep Rocking' Drake Honors Ozzy Osbourne at Birmingham Concert Ozzy Osbourne's Top Ten Beatles Songs An exact cause of death was not given, though Osbourne has battled an array of health issues over the past several years, including Parkinson's disease and injuries he sustained from a late-night fall in 2019. The singer had an electrifying and unpredictable onstage presence and a dry sense of humor that endeared him to hordes of adoring fans. His excitable energy helped transform the anthems he sang — 'Iron Man,' 'Paranoid,' and 'Crazy Train' — from radio hits into stadium staples. As a member of Black Sabbath, he helped draft the blueprint for heavy metal, but in conversation, he was always humble about his contributions to music. He knew his limitations and was open about his addictions, but he always attempted to better himself. He was an underdog everyone would want to rally behind. As Black Sabbath's doomsayer-in-chief, Osbourne could summon a true sense of terror in his keening cries in a way that heightened the band's muscular dirges. When he bellowed 'What is this that stands before me, figure in black which points at me?' in the song 'Black Sabbath,' it was a performance worthy of a horror flick. He sang 'Iron Man,' about a scorned golem seeking revenge, with believable wrath. And when he screeched, 'Dreams turn to nightmares, heaven turns to hell,' in 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath,' it was with a demonic fury not even Milton could have summoned. He made sense of his bandmates' heavy swagger and brought their supernatural racket back down to earth in a way that has resonated with millions for decades. Although groups had been testing the limits of hard rock for a few years by the time Black Sabbath arrived, the band purified their aggression into a forceful, unrelenting sound that would define a new style of rock. 'On any given day, the heavy-metal genre might as well be subtitled 'Music derivative of Black Sabbath,'' Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich said inducting Black Sabbath into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. Osbourne's voice and performances were crucial ingredients to the group's modus operandi. Queen guitarist Brian May once described Osbourne as 'a willowy singer wailing in a way that made the kids' parents despair' — and that is exactly what the kids wanted in the music. As a solo artist, Osbourne zeroed in on the more gothic aspects of Sabbath's approach and tweaked the tempos so fans could graduate from head nodding to headbanging. But his art still reveled in darkness — mutually assured destruction ('Crazy Train'), Hammer Horror vignettes ('Bark at the Moon'), false prophets ('Miracle Man'). The big difference was that, as bandleader, Osbourne discovered a new side of himself — an entertainer whose sharp wit and lust for partying was just as outsized as his music — and let it overcome him. Aided by his wife and manager, Sharon, and a succession of six-string virtuosi — Randy Rhoads, Jake E. Lee, Zakk Wylde — he reinvented himself as a performer who could both preside over a séance and a kegger with equal panache. His legend grew. Between his solo music and recordings with Black Sabbath, Osbourne was the most ubiquitous artist on Rolling Stone's ranking of the Greatest Metal Albums of All Time; Sabbath's Paranoid claimed the list's top spot. He won four Grammys, including a Lifetime Achievement nod with Black Sabbath, and nearly all of his albums have been certified gold or platinum. By the late Nineties, Osbourne was metal's ringmaster, lending his name to the touring Ozzfest and headlining the annual touring festival either as a solo artist or with Sabbath. When it seemed like popular culture wanted to spurn heavy artists, he had created a haven for them to reach their audience directly at a one-stop event. He was once a misfit and, in turn, provided a gathering spot for misfits to find fit in. But he eventually charmed the mainstream simply by being himself, a loving dad who couldn't figure out his TV's remote (like many dads across the country) on The Osbournes. The show even won an Emmy. Where he was once a jaw-dropping rock savage with an appetite for small, winged animals in the drunken Eighties, he was now America's sweetheart. He was a rock & roll survivor who lived long enough to make it through to the other side. 'My life has just been unbelievable,' Osbourne once told Rolling Stone. 'You couldn't write my story; you couldn't invent me.' The Roots of Sabbath John Michael Osbourne, the fourth of six siblings in a working-class family, was born in Birmingham, England on Dec. 3, 1948. His father, John Thomas 'Jack' Osbourne, was a toolmaker who labored nights at an electronics factory. When Jack would come home in the morning, Ozzy's mother, Lillian, would leave for her factory job for a company that worked in the motor and aerospace industries. Domestic violence was a common scene in the Osbourne household, and its effects weighed on Ozzy later in life. By Ozzy's estimate, the Osbournes lived right on the poverty line. The family did not attend church, though Ozzy recalled in his autobiography, I Am Ozzy, that he went to Sunday school ''coz there was fuck-all else to do, and they gave you free tea and biscuits,' yet religion was present in his later art, as he wore a cross and sang lyrics that warned of hell — possibly the kind of perdition he had climbed out of in his youth. Craters left by bombs in World War II were frequent play sites for Ozzy when he was young. Suffering from dyslexia and attention-deficit disorder, Osbourne struggled in school. He was an easy target on the playground and later recalled getting clobbered by future Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi. 'I always felt crappy and intimidated by everyone,' Osbourne reflected in Esquire. 'So my whole thing was to act crazy and make people laugh so they wouldn't jump on me.' Depression overtook him several times as a schoolkid, and he first attempted suicide at age 14, 'just to see what it would feel like.' But it was also that year that the heavens opened up for Osbourne the second he first heard the Beatles' 'She Loves You.' 'It was a divine experience,' he told Esquire. 'The planets changed.' But other than a new infatuation and a new calling in the back of his mind, not much else in his world shifted for the better. He dropped out of school at 15 and entered the workforce — attempting construction, learning toolmaking, tuning car horns, slaughtering cattle — but nothing stuck. He turned to crime by age 17 and spent two months in prison for burglary. After Osbourne did his time, his father took pity and purchased a microphone, amplifier, and speakers, costing a princely £250, for him. The aspirant singer advertised his wares at a local music shop with a dubious ad — 'OZZY ZIG NEEDS GIG – Experienced front man owns own PA system' — and attracted the interest of a young guitarist named Terence 'Geezer' Butler, who played in an acid-rock band called Rare Breed. After that group disintegrated, the pair linked up with the guitarist and drummer of another band, Mythology — Iommi and Bill Ward — in late 1968 and formed a sextet called the Polka Tulk Blues Band and, after jettisoning two members, rechristened themselves Earth. At one rehearsal, Butler told his bandmates about a nightmare he had had in which he felt a sinister presence next to him. The tale inspired Osbourne to sing 'What is this that stands before me?' over the quiet part of a new song they were working on with crushing power chords. He summoned the words in a way that made Butler's dread cling to the air and dubbed the song 'Black Sabbath,' taking the title from a 1963 horror film. The song's heavy new direction inspired more originals, written to scare audiences similar to fright flicks, and ditched the Earth moniker in favor of a new name: Black Sabbath. The quartet had found its new sound, but Osbourne had trouble fitting in. 'He was insecure,' Jim Simpson, the band's early manager, told Rolling Stone of Osbourne's formative years, 'and he needed an arm around his shoulders and to be comfortable — 'It'll be all right, don't worry' — because he was worried around his performances. He was very sensitive, very curious. But he gave everything onstage. He left nothing behind.' Osbourne and his bandmates found their mojo through heavy gigging, playing up to seven times a day for months on end in Switzerland and Germany. When working on originals, Osbourne would often improvise a melody and, if no words came to him, Butler would compose the lyrics. 'The amazing thing about Oz was he could take Geezer's lyrics and spit them out 'Ozzy,'' Ward once said. Osbourne began taking drugs regularly around this time, smoking hash and taking acid. Within a few years, cocaine would split the band wide open, but at the time, the slow-churning riffs of 'War Pigs,' 'The Wizard,' and 'Behind the Wall of Sleep' established the group's stoner-metal aesthetic. The band recorded its self-titled debut at the end of 1969 in a two-day sprint on a shoestring budget of £600. Due to the tight turnaround, the musicians simply played their pub set, complete with extended guitar solos. Despite the rush, Osbourne commanded chilling performances on 'Black Sabbath,' 'N.I.B.,' and 'Warning,' among other tracks, and the band's raw, lumbering riffs cast the mold for heavy metal. Despite a lack of radio play, the LP shot to Number Eight on the U.K. chart. Black Sabbath reconvened at the same studio months later to cut their second LP, which they hoped to call War Pigs, and recorded another set of instant classics: 'Iron Man,' 'Fairies Wear Boots,' 'Paranoid.' The immediacy of the last track, coupled with devilish lyrics like 'Make a joke and I will sigh, and you will laugh, and I will cry,' made it the album's standout, and the group's record label retitled the album Paranoid. The album shot to Number One in England, and 'Paranoid,' a Number Four hit single, earned the band a slot on Top of the Pops. The band's U.S. record label delayed the releases of Black Sabbath and Paranoid, but both became commercial hits, and the RIAA has certified Paranoid four-times platinum. Fans loved them, but critics at the time hated them. Lester Bangs described Black Sabbath in Rolling Stone as 'just like Cream! But worse,' and Nick Tosches didn't bother even listening to Paranoid for his Rolling Stone review. But Black Sabbath pressed forward undeterred. Osbourne tested his vocal limits on the band's third album, 1971's Master of Reality, screeching on 'Lord of This World,' crooning on 'Solitude,' and howling on the ode to marijuana, 'Sweet Leaf,' and nuclear warning 'Children of the Grave.' Around this time, Osbourne married a woman he'd fallen for at first sight, Thelma Riley, when he saw her working the cloakroom of a pub. The couple survived a turbulent decade for Ozzy, who later looked back on the relationship with regret after it fell apart. 'I was a raving drug addict and an alcoholic and about as much good as an ashtray on a motorbike,' he told Esquire. 'My father was abusive to my mum, and I would slap my first wife around because I thought that's what men have to do.' The couple had two children, Jessica and Louis, and Ozzy adopted Thelma's son from a previous relationship, Elliot. Osbourne later claimed to have a strained relationship with the children from his first marriage. Black Sabbath decamped to Los Angeles to record 1972's Vol. 4 and nursed fierce cocaine addictions while there. Osbourne crystalized his love for the drug with a passionate performance on the album's 'Snowblind,' but still managed to summon a more tender side on the plaintive 'Changes.' He returned to banshee screaming on the title cut for 1973's Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Osbourne also stretched his wings beyond simply singing, keying the musical line to the album's jaunty prog rocker 'Who Are You?' on a synthesizer. No longer were Black Sabbath playing plodding, primitive heavy rockers; there was a new sophistication in the band's music and Osbourne's performances. After parting ways acrimoniously with then-manager Patrick Meehan, the group found new vitriol on 1975's Sabotage, with Osbourne screeching about the betrayal on 'The Writ' and existential pain on 'Symptom of the Universe.' It was an artistic rebirth, but soon everything began to unravel. Going Solo Osbourne quit Black Sabbath in 1978, after touring in support of the previous year's lackluster Technical Ecstasy. His drug abuse and drinking had gotten out of control to the point that he checked himself into an asylum. He had also started considering life after Sabbath, as he'd already begun wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words 'Blizzard of Oz,' an epithet he once described as his 'coke name' that he'd hoped to call a solo band. More pressing was the fact that Osbourne's father had just died of cancer, and he needed time to process the loss. The band ultimately coaxed Osbourne back for another album, 1979's Never Say Die!, but dismissed him that year over his substance abuse. 'Firing me for being fucked up was hypocritical bullshit,' Osbourne wrote in I Am Ozzy. 'We were all fucked up. If you're stoned and I'm stoned, and you're telling me that I'm fired because I'm stoned, how can that fucking be? Because I'm slightly more stoned than you are?' Osbourne was 30 years old, jilted, and dejected. He resolved to spend what money he had left on a hotel room and booze so he could drink himself into oblivion. Then Sharon Arden, the daughter of Sabbath's manager at the time, Don Arden, took pity on him and encouraged him to go solo. Within a year, he linked up with the flashy ex-Quiet Riot guitarist Randy Rhoads, Rainbow bassist Bob Daisley, and Uriah Heep drummer Lee Kerslake, and the band recorded Osbourne's solo debut, 1980's Blizzard of Ozz. The music was faster-paced and harder-hitting than Black Sabbath's, festooned with Rhoads' neo-classical filigrees, and it fit in perfectly with the new generation of hard-rock bands inspired by Van Halen. Osbourne, too, sounded revitalized, singing passionately about the horrors of the Cold War on 'Crazy Train,' occult mysticism on 'Mr. Crowley,' and the personal carnage of alcoholism on 'Suicide Solution.' He would tell his bandmates how excited he felt to be starting over and proving himself again to skeptical audiences. The hard work paid off, too. The album was a Top 10 hit in the U.K., and made it up to Number 21 in the U.S. The RIAA has since certified it five-times platinum. Despite feeling rejuvenated, Osbourne continued to abuse alcohol and drugs to the point that his wild-man antics nearly overshadowed his art. In 1981, the year he separated from his wife Thelma, he shocked an L.A. conference room full of Columbia Records execs when he pulled a dove out of his pocket and bit its head off. A year later, while touring in support of his stellar second solo record, Diary of a Madman, he similarly decapitated a dead bat that a fan had thrown onstage, thinking it was a toy. (Doctors treated him with rabies shots.) A month later, San Antonio police arrested Osbourne ostensibly for urinating on the Alamo; Sharon had hidden his clothes from him so he wouldn't go out drunk, and he put on one of her dresses and went out anyway, unaware of where he was relieving himself. Spurred on by media sensationalism, the tour continued until March 19, 1982, when Rhoads died in a freak airplane accident. Osbourne was in shock. 'If it wasn't for Sharon, I'd still be in that fucking field,' he remembered in Rolling Stone years later. 'It was a bad scene, man. She said, 'We are not stopping now.'' The tour resumed the next month. Osbourne recorded a double LP of Sabbath songs that year, dubbed Speak of the Devil, to compete with his former band's Live Evil release, which featured Osbourne's replacement, Ronnie James Dio. It sold better than Sabbath's. In 1987, Osbourne released a stunning live album that featured Rhoads, Tribute, which he co-billed to the guitarist. In the midst of turmoil, Osbourne married Sharon in 1982 and their first daughter, Aimee, was born the following year. Kelly arrived in 1984 and Jack the next year. Sharon continued to manage Osbourne's career until his death. Osbourne released his third solo LP, Bark at the Moon, in 1983, featuring another young, showy guitarist, Jake E. Lee, and a harder-edged sound. Other than a one-off Black Sabbath reunion for Live Aid in 1985, Osbourne stayed the course throughout the rest of the Eighties, putting out one hit album after another, eventually recruiting another hotshot guitarist, Zakk Wylde, in 1987. Osbourne's four-times platinum 1991 album, No More Tears, was his biggest hit since Blizzard of Ozz, thanks to strong singles like 'Mama, I'm Coming Home,' 'Road to Nowhere,' and the Grammy-winning 'I Don't Want to Change the World' — all set list staples until his death. Still, controversy stalked Osbourne. In 1985, the parents of a teen who died by suicide sued Osbourne and his record label, alleging the song 'Suicide Solution' had convinced him to kill himself. The case was thrown out of court. Before the decade was up, the parents of two other teens attempted to file similar suits, but Osbourne prevailed legally. 'If I was going to put some backward message in a record, I'd put in something like, 'This is the Devil! Buy six more copies of this record,'' Osbourne joked in Spin in 1986, before adding, ''Six hundred and sixty-six more!'' The headlines made him a demon to evangelicals. He later appeared in the movie Trick or Treat, portraying a preacher ironically as a dig at the religious leaders who had railed against him. In 1989, shortly after reuniting with Butler for the Moscow Music Peace Festival, he awoke in a jail cell and was subsequently charged with the attempted murder of his wife. In a blackout state, Osbourne had lunged at Sharon and tried to strangle her. 'We've made a decision, and you've got to die,' he told her. She escaped his grip, and after he spent time in jail, she eventually dropped the charges. When a reporter asked her how close he came to killing her years later, Sharon said, 'Pretty damn close.' Osbourne got his drinking under control for a few years, and Sharon spent the Nineties raising his profile. After a well-publicized retirement tour (dubbed No More Tours) — triggered after Osbourne developed a tremor doctors incorrectly diagnosed as multiple sclerosis — he waited four years before venturing back on the road for his Retirement Sucks Tour. By then, he'd found medication that helped his condition, determined to be Parkinson's disease. After the alternative-rock fest Lollapalooza rejected Osbourne as a performer, Sharon assembled the first Ozzfest lineup in 1996, with Slayer, Danzig, and Neurosis, among others, supporting Ozzy. Black Sabbath reunited for Ozzfest '97, and a live recording of 'Iron Man' from their Reunion record earned them a Grammy. Over the years, Osbourne's tours had introduced metal fans to Metallica, Mötley Crüe, Korn, and several other heavy hitters, so when Ozzfest became an international, annual touring event, it became the most desired touring gig for heavy bands. Toward the late Nineties, the festival rode a crest of popularity with the burgeoning nu-metal scene, whose bands treated Osbourne like a deity. An Unlikely Reality Star Then came The Osbournes, and Ozzy officially became the foul-mouthed Prince of Bleeping Darkness. The reality-TV show presented Ozzy, Sharon, Kelly, and Jack as a lovingly dysfunctional family (Aimee opted out of the show), and it became a ratings blockbuster. Suddenly, the softer side of Ozzy Osbourne — depicted as a cursing, befuddled dad — made him the darling of Midwestern moms. 'I'm not a musician,' he once said. 'I'm a ham.' But his hamminess made him a superstar, and the show became the paradigm for later programs like Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Suddenly, Osbourne had a table at the 2002 White House Correspondents' Dinner ('Ozzy, Mom loves your stuff,' President George W. Bush joked) and performing at the Queen's Golden Jubilee. Osbourne also received a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame in 2002. Osbourne faced more controversy in 2002 when he allowed his contemporary band members, bassist Robert Trujillo and drummer Mike Bordin, to replace the rhythm tracks on Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman as a workaround for a dispute over royalties with the original musicians; he restored the originals in 2011. And in 2004, he narrowly survived a quad-bike wreck that sent him into the ICU with several broken bones. But within a year, he had come out with a new box set, Prince of Darkness, and was back on the road. Osbourne spent his later life touring and recording solo and with Black Sabbath. The latter band released 13 in 2013, its first LP with Ozzy behind the mic since Never Say Die! It went to Number One album on both sides of the Atlantic. Shortly after the album was a hit, Osbourne cleaned up his act for good and told reporters he maintained sobriety until his death. The group embarked on a farewell tour that ended in 2017, after which Osbourne announced his own final world tour (No More Tours 2), but he didn't get far into it before it started to fall apart. A staph infection forced him to cancel several dates, with a late-night tumble sending him into a hospital for surgery that forced him to be bedridden for months. That year, he released a solo album, Ordinary Man, that found him playing alongside an impressive guest list — Elton John, Post Malone, Slash — but a combination of his injuries and the coronavirus pandemic kept him off the road. 2022's equally star-studded Patient Number 9, produced by Andrew Watt, would end up being Osbourne's final album. On July 5, 2025, Osbourne gave his final performances both as a solo artist and with the original members of Black Sabbath at Villa Park in his hometown of Birmingham. For weeks prior to the 'Back to the Beginning' benefit concert, the city celebrated its most famous sons' homecoming and the lauded sold-out concert drew fans from around the world to witness the heavy-metal royalty take their final bow. Their 'opening acts' — an all-star crew that included Metallica, Guns N' Roses, Slayer, Pantera, Alice in Chains, and more — paid tribute with Sabbath covers. Osbourne performed 'I Don't Know,' 'Mr. Crowley,' 'Suicide Solution,' 'Mama, I'm Coming Home,' and 'Crazy Train.' Following his solo set, he was joined by Iommi, Butler, and Ward to perform 'War Pigs,' 'N.I.B.,' 'Iron Man,' and 'Paranoid.' Outside of music, Osbourne had cameos in several films and TV shows including The Jerky Boys (1995), Private Parts (1997), South Park (1998), Little Nicky (2000), Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), Ghostbusters (2016), and The Conners (2020), among several others. In 2009, Fox attempted an Osbournes reboot, dubbed Osbournes Reloaded, but it failed to catch on. Osbourne later co-starred in a reality show with his son, Ozzy & Jack's World Detour, in which the two road-tripped around the United States, and The Osbournes Want to Believe, in which he, Sharon, and Jack weighed in on found-footage paranormal videos. In 2010, he released I Am Ozzy and followed the book up the next year with Trust Me, I'm Dr. Ozzy, a compendium of his Rolling Stone advice column. (Last Rites, his latest memoir, is set for release in October.) He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2006 as a member of Black Sabbath and received a Lifetime Achievement Award with the band from the Grammys in 2019. He was nominated for eight other Grammys, both as a solo artist and with Black Sabbath, and won three of them. But awards never meant as much to him as applause. Up until his death, before the farewell concert, Osbourne's goal was to ascend a stage one last time and thrill his fans. When retirement came up in a 2020 Rolling Stone interview, Osbourne huffed. 'Retire from what?' he said. 'It's not a job. How can you retire from a rock band? It's like saying, 'Don't plug in your amp.' I don't know anything else. I'll retire when they put the fucking nail in the lid.' Best of Rolling Stone Sly and the Family Stone: 20 Essential Songs The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked Solve the daily Crossword
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Lita Ford Remembers Ozzy Osbourne: ‘In Ozzy's Name, Keep Rocking'
'Can you believe I'm in Ozzy's hometown tonight?' It's a quarter to ten, and Lita Ford, 66, is backstage at K.K. Downing's club in Birmingham, zipped into leather, the air thick with anticipation and sweat. Ford is about to deliver what will be the most wrenching live performance of 'Close My Eyes Forever' — her aching 1989 power ballad with Ozzy Osbourne that became Osbourne's first and only Top 10 hit. 'It's going to be really emotional,' she says. 'I didn't tear up until I turned around and looked at the beautiful stage set we have in Ozzy's honor, and everything sort of kicked in. I keep thinking — how did we end up here? How did Ozzy end up passing away? And here we are in Birmingham — Birmingham! — where it all began.' More from Rolling Stone Ozzy Osbourne Documentary 'No Escape From Now' Still Set for Release This Fall Drake Honors Ozzy Osbourne at Birmingham Concert Ozzy Osbourne's Top Ten Beatles Songs That kind of eerie alignment is how the song came into the world in the first place. It was 1987. Ford was 29, figuring out her post-Runaways identity; Osbourne was 39, adrift in addiction. But one wine-soaked night at Record One Studios in Los Angeles, the two rockers went into a cramped room with a keyboard and an amp, and by morning, had written something bruised, delicate, and timeless. Ford spoke to Rolling Stone about that night, what Black Sabbath meant to her, and the Easter dinner that ended with Osbourne holding a carving knife as everyone realized, a bit too late, that this was not a great idea. Tonight feels like a night to remember where we came from, where Ozzy came from, where we all came from, and the music that lives through our souls. I know the audience is going to get pretty choked up when they hear 'Close My Eyes.' Ozzy has been such a huge part of my life in so many ways, starting from when I was just a little girl. I grew up listening to Black Sabbath. I used to walk through the house and play their riffs on guitar. My first concert ever was Black Sabbath in 1972 — I was just a teenager. My parents didn't always like everybody, but they always tolerated Black Sabbath and supported me. My mother would always ask me, 'Oh, Lita, play some Black Sabbath!' So I'd go off and play 'War Pigs' or something, and she loved it. She was a big fan, and both my parents loved Ozzy and Sharon. One time they came over for Easter dinner. Picture this: a small middle-class neighborhood, and they pull up in a limousine. Of course, Ozzy gets out with Sharon, and the neighbors were losing their minds. Sharon comes in and sits down in the middle of my bed — I still lived at home, had been there since before The Runaways days in 1975. She was tiny, had lost a bunch of weight, and she sat cross-legged and looked at me. 'Do you like my belt?' she asked. I said, 'Yeah, it's awesome.' She smiled and said, 'I haven't worn this belt since I was 14.' She felt so good and was so happy. Meanwhile, Ozzy sat in the corner of the living room and chugged a bottle of wine. We gave him a glass, but he put it down, grabbed the bottle, and started to sink slowly into the sofa. After he finished the wine, my father asked if he wanted to carve the Easter lamb — my mother had roasted a leg of lamb. 'Yeah, I'll cut it,' he said. My father handed him the knife, and he got up and started cutting. Somehow it slipped off the table, went off the plate, and ended up underneath the table. My father stood there and laughed his ass off at Ozzy. He thought Ozzy was so entertaining and amusing — and he was. Then Ozzy looks up at my mom and says, 'I don't eat meat.' Ozzy was, by the way, always the best-dressed guy. He always had the best clothes, jewelry, and shoes. Sharon was a big part of that, but he just looked amazing all the time. Sometimes there's money — a lot of money — and looking amazing, and sometimes there's just getting yourself together without so much money. You've got to find those magic things and own them and wear them and be who you are. The night we wrote 'Close My Eyes Forever' came not too long after that. Sharon had come over to the studio to see me with a housewarming gift: a life-size duplicate of Koko, this massive gorilla. After she left, Ozzy stayed at the studio. There was a little room off to the corner of the control room with a keyboard and guitar, so we went in there and started playing. Ozzy started singing, I started playing the guitar parts, and it all came together overnight. By the time we came out of that little room, the sun was up. We were a little high, I have to admit. Sometimes that's what you've got to do — you just have to lose yourself to be creative. I mean, I pick my poison every once in a while when I need an attitude adjustment. Mine is whiskey. I love my whiskey. Artists as creative as Ozzy, who grew up in Black Sabbath, need something to take the edge off. Ozzy enjoyed drinking and doing drugs — he enjoyed it. He also became more creative when he drank and did drugs, though he might pass out afterwards. During the creative process, sometimes you just have to have a little bit of poison to write something like that. These songs are poisonous songs, and I think that's what everybody loves about them. That's why people can relate. That morning, we came out with this great song. I drove home with Koko strapped to the front seat of my Jeep. Ozzy went the opposite direction over Laurel Canyon — we put him in a taxi because I couldn't drive all the way over there and back. When he got home, Sharon was upset with us. She called and gave me a mouthful, and I'm sure Ozzy got one too. She was not happy. But hey, we got a Top 10 hit single out of it, so I'm going to be happy about that. 'Close My Eyes Forever' is something a lot of people play at funerals. A lot of people have love for that song because it's beautiful. In Ozzy's name, keep rocking. Great rock stars never truly die. Best of Rolling Stone Sly and the Family Stone: 20 Essential Songs The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked Solve the daily Crossword
