Latest news with #rock star
Irish Times
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Interviewing Ozzy Osbourne: ‘You can't live that way forever. It catches up with you eventually'
Ozzy Osbourne was a rock star for all seasons. The former Black Sabbath frontman, who has died aged 76, helped catalyse the new genre of heavy metal in the 1970s. But if the band raised a mighty din, Ozzy's antics on and off stage were more outrageous still. He will forever be notorious for biting the head off a bat during a concert in Iowa in 1982 (he thought it was a rubber toy and required multiple rabies shots afterwards). [ Ozzy Osbourne 1948-2025: A life in pictures Opens in new window ] But away from the spotlight, he was equally committed to the cliche of the debauched rocker. He confessed to once nearly killing a man by chucking a television out a hotel window; on another drug-fuelled bender, he tried to shoot the 17 cats he kept at his home. He was found under the table, with a shotgun and knife, giggling furiously. By his own admission, he was lucky to survive Black Sabbath's glory years. But just as the band were at the forefront of a new generation of headbanging rockers, so he would push boundaries all over again in the new medium of reality TV as the star of MTV's The Osbournes, which ran in its original incarnation in 2002-2005. READ MORE Starring Ozzy, his second wife and manager Sharon, and their children Jack and Kelly (another daughter Aimee refused to have anything to do with the series) the show portrayed the former enfant terrible as a lovable, if sweary man of a certain age, who spent his days padding around his vast Beverly Hills mansion, looking for the remote control and bickering with Sharon over whose turn it was to make the tea. The Osbournes became a sensation and won Ozzy a new generation of fans for whom Black Sabbath and the dawn of heavy metal were ancient history. However, it will be for his music that he will be chiefly remembered. Formed in Birmingham in 1968, Black Sabbath were founding fathers of heavy metal. Shaped by the industrial heritage of their hometown, tracks such as Paranoid and Iron Man chugged and roared like factory engines pushed to breaking point. Ozzy Osbourne with his wife, Sharon, and children Kelly, Jack and Aimee in 1997. Photograph: Neil Munns/PA Wire Their engine room was guitarist Tommy Iommi, who lost the tips of two fingers in a production line accident at the age of 17 – a mishap that contributed to the sludgy playing style that became a signature of Black Sabbath. But if Iommi was the driving force, Ozzy was the charismatic face and voice of the band, his banshee-like shriek at once charismatic and disconcerting. Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi, Bill Ward and Ozzy Osbourne in 1970. Photograph: Chris Walter/WireImage Their legacy was celebrated earlier this month with a farewell concert in Birmingham's Villa Park, where a frail Ozzy joined his bandmates on stage. 'You've no idea how I feel – thank you from the bottom of my heart,' he said on stage, at the end of an evening where fans including Metallica and Guns N' Roses had paid tribute. His dark charisma was matched by a self-destructive streak as tumultuous as Sabbath's mighty riffs. Tiring of his constant drunkenness and unpredictability, his bandmates fired him in 1979 – though they would reunite in 1997 and play a farewell tour in 2016, going on stage in Dublin the same day Donald Trump was sworn in as president. Osbourne drank and off through the intervening decades – when I interviewed him in 2014, he expressed regret about his hard-living. 'Until about five years ago, I was drunk all day, every day,' he said. 'I never really considered whether it made me a hard person to live with. Can you believe that? [ 'I don't want to die in a hotel room somewhere': Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath on reconciling for their final gig Opens in new window ] 'Then one day, a friend said to me 'does your wife drink?' I say 'yeah, she enjoys the occasional glass of wine'. And he said 'well, how would you feel if she polished off a bottle of vodka before breakfast – how long would you hang around?' And I thought 'not, bloody long'. So it shows how much she loved me that she stayed all that time with me.' Ozzy Osbourne: 'I think back and recognise what a great life I've had.' Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty He also spoke with nostalgia but also a degree of horror about his days with Sabbath. 'We didn't really know what we were doing,' he said. 'It was all made up as we went along. I remember, with our first album, we recorded it on the way to the ferry. [ Bat-biter's memoir sinks its teeth into Ozzy's life Opens in new window ] 'We had a bunch of songs and our manager rang us up and said would we mind calling by the studio before we went off to tour France. So we went in and someone turned on a mic and 'bam', the album came out. We didn't stop to think about things in those days. 'The thing is, you can't live that way forever. It catches up with you eventually. I'm glad I slowed down. I think back and recognise what a great life I've had.'
Yahoo
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ozzy Osbourne's most shocking moments
Ozzy Osbourne was famed as a provocative and powerful performer on stage and a wild hedonist off it. The Black Sabbath singer and successful solo artist was known for his controversial live shows. Drug and alcohol use often fuelled manic behaviour in front of his adoring audiences, and also his most crazed moments in between shows. These are some of the most memorable and infamous moments from the hell-raising life of the late heavy metal pioneer. The Alamo In 1982, Osbourne was wearing one of his wife's dresses for a photoshoot close to The Alamo in Texas, the site of a heroic sacrifice by the Texan troops against the invading Mexicans. ADVERTISEMENT The rock star drunkenly relieved himself on a cenotaph commemorating the dead, later donating thousands to the group which maintains The Alamo. Cats In the midst of an alcohol and drug haze, Osbourne said that he set about slaughtering 17 cats with a shotgun. The rocker said he was found by his wife under a piano, armed with a knife in one hand and a shotgun in the other. Ants Osbourne toured with Motley Crue in the 1980s, and it was during this time that he is rumoured to have shocked his fellow rockers after 'spotting' a line of ants. Bassist Nikki Sixx claimed that Osbourne took a straw and, as if snorting cocaine, hoovered the line of ants up his nose. Bats In 1982, Osbourne was on stage at a gig in Des Moines, Iowa, during a US tour. ADVERTISEMENT A fan threw a bat on stage, and in the frenzy of performance Osbourne – believing it to be rubber – bit its head off. There remains debate as to whether the bat was alive or dead when it was thrown on stage. Doves Osbourne had history with the decapitation of winged creatures, beginning with an incident which stunned CBS Records executives. Celebrating a new album in 1981, the Black Country-born rock star was intending to release two doves in a symbolic act at the record label. Instead, he grabbed a dove and bit its head off, before being thrown out of the building.
BBC News
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Ozzy Osbourne obituary: Wild life of rock's 'prince of darkness'
Ozzy Osbourne, who has died at the age of 76, helped forge the sound that became known as heavy metal - and on top of that, the frontman practically invented the image of the wild rock band Black Sabbath made an indelible mark on music by forging the sound that became known as heavy metal - hailed as a major influence by a range of artists who followed his wailing vocal style and "prince of darkness" reputation, Ozzy and the band became global stars - before he was fired due mainly to his increasing dependency on drugs and he carved out a successful solo career before reuniting with the band, as well as becoming the unlikely star of a hit TV reality show which showcased his erratic domestic Sabbath's Ozzy Osbourne dies aged 76 - follow updates He was born John Michael Osbourne in the Aston area of Birmingham, on 3 December 1948. His father Jack was a toolmaker, while his mother Lillian worked at the Lucas factory, which made car picked up the nickname Ozzy at primary school and it from gifting him his moniker, school was a dismal experience for young Osbourne. He suffered from dyslexia and what would now be termed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).He left at 15 and wandered into a series of dead-end jobs, including some time spent working in a slaughterhouse, which allowed him to play practical jokes in pubs by putting cows' eyeballs in peoples' even turned his hand to crime but found he had little luck there either. A TV fell on him while he was burgling a house and he later spent six weeks in Birmingham's Winston Green prison after robbing a clothes shop. Reunited What saved him was music: the sound of the Beatles singing She Loves You out of a crackly transistor radio transformed his life."It was such an incredible explosion of happiness and hope," he later told writer Bryan Appleyard. "I used to dream - wouldn't it be great if Paul McCartney married my sister."He persuaded his dad to buy him a microphone and an amplifier and, together with a friend Terry 'Geezer' Butler, formed a band called Rare Breed - which lasted for just two performances. The pair became part of a Blues outfit named Polka Tulk Blues, later renamed Earth, along with guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill band, intent on making what they called "scary music", rehearsed in a room opposite the local cinema - where a screening of the 1963 horror film, Black Sabbath, gave birth to the band's name and first hit."I didn't invent that sort of music," Ozzy later recalled. "When I look back at that song, Black Sabbath, I think, how did I even begin to think of a melody like that?" Masterpiece The song, written by Osbourne and Butler, opened their 1970 debut album which, despite a mauling from music critics, reached number eight in the UK charts and number 23 in the success followed with a string of best-selling albums including Paranoid, Master of Reality and Volume 4, all of which sold more than a million the time the band released Sabbath Bloody Sabbath in 1973, even the critics were beginning to heap praise on them. One writer described it as a "masterpiece" and went on to say he thought the band had discovered a newfound sense of finesse and 1975 album Sabotage also received critical praise, but by this time the band were beginning to unravel and Black Sabbath were destined to lose their was already starting to succumb to the drink and drugs that would come to dominate his life. His unreliability became legendary and was beginning to irk fellow members of Black life was also under strain, with his addictions, affairs and frequent touring jeopardising his relationship with wife Thelma and their two children. The pair would later split. Unfair Osbourne had always covered up his insecurities by acting as the band's clown, but by now his antics were seriously hindering Sabbath's relationship with Iommi had never been smooth and Ozzy began to resent what he saw as the guitarist's domination of the 1978 he spent three months working on a solo project called Blizzard of Ozz, but returned to Sabbath to record the album Never Say a lacklustre tour, Osbourne was fired by the other members of Sabbath on the basis of his substance abuse, being replaced by Ronnie James Dio. Osbourne later claimed that his dismissal was unfair, claiming: "We were all as bad as each other."The problem was that Ozzy was not as good at handling the effects of the myriad substances in which the whole band resurrected his Blizzard of Ozz with the help of Sharon Arden, the daughter of Black Sabbath's manager Don Arden. The couple would later marry and go on to have three children - Aimee, Kelly and also attempted to help him control his intake of drink and drugs. There were periods when he appeared to have kicked his addictions - but he often fell off the wagon. Bark at the Moon "If it wasn't for Sharon," he later told Appleyard, "I'd be long dead."Controversy was never far away. The most notorious incident was biting the head off a live bat while on stage in Iowa in 1982. He had been catapulting raw meat into the audience on tour, which prompted fans to throw things on stage in return. He claims he thought the bat was fake before he took a did not attempt to use the same excuse about the two doves whose heads he bit off during a record label meeting the previous other exploits included being arrested for urinating on Texas war monument the Alamo while wearing one of Sharon's dresses; getting thrown out of the Dachau concentration camp for being drunk and disorderly while on a visit during a German tour; pulling a gun on Black Sabbath's drummer while on a bad acid trip; blacking out and waking up in the central reservation of a 12-lane freeway; and massacring the inhabitants of his chicken coop with a gun, sword and petrol while wearing a dressing gown and pair of all added to Ozzy's legend, but in reality most of his behaviour was not very appealing or glamorous. He was a wreck, and the drink and drugs gave him a Jekyll and Hyde 1989, he woke up in jail to be told he had been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder for strangling Sharon. He could not remember anything about it. She dropped the charges. Meanwhile, his first solo album went platinum and the follow-ups, Diary of a Madman and Bark at the Moon, were also toured extensively throughout the 1980s and 90s, as well as achieving huge commercial success with Ozzfest - a series of tours, mainly in the US, that featured bands across all genres of headlined most of the festivals and there were even appearances by his former Black Sabbath In 2002, he and his family were catapulted to a new form of fame when they unwittingly pioneered reality TV as cameras captured the foul-mouthed (but affectionate) dysfunction of their home life. Row It was a huge success, even though the US broadcasts were heavily censored to remove Osbourne's frequent profanities - something that was not deemed necessary when the show aired in the the same time, Osbourne continued to record - but was forced to take a break in 2003 when he fell off a quad bike and sustained serious was while he was recovering in hospital that he topped the UK singles charts for the first time, with a recording of the Black Sabbath song Changes, on which he sang a duet with his daughter Kelly. Black Sabbath reunited in 2005, and again in subsequent years without drummer Bill Ward, and in 2013 went back to the top of the UK album charts - 43 years after their last number one, resulting tour saw a newly-energised Ozzy: word and note perfect, fronting a band that had lost none of its old 2018, he claimed to have ditched the alcohol and the drugs and would be reining in his touring lifestyle."I have grandchildren now and I'm 70 years old and I don't want to be found dead in a hotel room somewhere," he told a journalist while promoting Ozzfest that he had other health issues to contend with. At first, he thought the shaking in his hands was a result of his lifetime of excess. But in 2007 he was diagonosed with a condition called Parkinsonian syndrome, then in 2019 with Parkinson's suffered spinal damage in a late-night fall the same year, which aggravated the injury he sustained in the quad-bike crash. Repeated surgeries had limited he was determined to bow out of the public eye with a customary bang. He, Sharon and his old Black Sabbath bandmates lined up a farewell concert at Villa Park football stadium, which took place just over two weeks array of fellow rock legends - including Metallica, Guns N' Roses and Aerosmith's Steven Tyler - lined up to perform and pay homage to him and Sabbath's himself performed seated because of his mobility problems, but managed to recapture his old magic - belting out his hits while clapping, waving his arms and pulling wild-eyed looks, just like old times."I'm proud of what I've achieved with my life," he once told an interviewer. "You couldn't have written my life story if you'd been the best writer in the world".
Yahoo
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Blair happy to keep guitar from Bono – but not one from Mexico's president
Prime minister Tony Blair was delighted to keep a guitar presented to him by the rock star Bono – but when it came to a similar gift from the president of Mexico, not so much. Official files released to the National Archives show Mr Blair was keen to take advantage of rules on ministerial gifts to buy the instrument given to him by the U2 singer and Live Aid campaigner once he left office. He did, however, question whether he would have to pay 'the full purchase price'. No 10 officials suggested the prime minister, who fronted a rock band called Ugly Rumours in his student days, might want to take the same approach when it came to a white Fender Stratocaster, valued at £2,500, from the Canadian singer Bryan Adams. However, Mr Blair was much less enthusiastic about an acoustic Vargas guitar presented to him by President Vicente Fox during an official visit to Mexico in 2001, noting: 'I don't actually use it.' The files also show that Mr Blair rejected advice that he should not keep a Pro Braided tennis racket given to him by the manufacturer, Slazenger. Officials feared that it was part of a 'marketing ploy' by the company and suggested it should be donated to a children's charity as 'you cannot be seen to endorse any product'. Mr Blair, however, instructed them just to thank the company, adding: 'It is very churlish to refuse to use it.'
