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highplainsdem

(57,575 posts)
Tue Jul 22, 2025, 03:51 PM Jul 22

Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath Singer and Heavy Metal Pioneer, Dead at 76 (Rolling Stone). RIP, Ozzy

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/ozzy-osbourne-black-sabbath-dead-obituary-1227265/

-snip-

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 sports-stadium staples. As a member of Black Sabbath, he helped draft the blueprints 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, when inducting Black Sabbath into the Rock and 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.

-snip-

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 the other side.

-snip-


Much more at the link.

The last paragraph quoted above is followed by a reminder that in 2018 - https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/ozzy-osbourne-talks-final-tour-black-sabbath-randy-rhoads-733475/ - he'd told Rolling Stone, "My life has just been unbelievable. You couldn’t write my story; you couldn’t invent me."
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Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath Singer and Heavy Metal Pioneer, Dead at 76 (Rolling Stone). RIP, Ozzy (Original Post) highplainsdem Jul 22 OP
Rest in music SheltieLover Jul 22 #1
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