Goodbye to Ozzy Osbourne

Ozzy Osbourne had a long and financially successful career, but there was a dark side to him and his wife Sharon that will permanently tarnish his legacy.

A couple of weeks ago, Black Sabbath and Ozzy did their final concert. It was the end of their careers, and many people were moved by the knowledge that the band would never play together live again. At the time, I felt that I ought to write an article about it, but something made me hold back and wait. I cannot explain it, but I felt that it was simply not the time to write about Ozzy.

Fast forward two weeks, and the news arrived earlier today that he was dead.

My own history with Ozzy

I remember seeing Ozzy way back in 1983, when Mötley Crüe opened for him. It was a great concert, and my 14-year-old self was thrilled to see Ozzy in person. I remember staring at him on the stage, almost as if I could not believe that he was actually standing there, singing for us. In those days, Ozzy was my favorite, and I even had a t-shirt that said, “To hell with the rest, Ozzy’s the best!" Ha, ha. You know how teenage boys tend to identify with the musicians they admire, and I was no different in that regard.

Over the years, I loved a lot of Ozzy’s music, though I lost touch with him a bit as I got older. By the time I was in my twenties, I didn’t pay too much attention to what he was doing. It was the typical arc of the rock fan; you age past your teen years, and then other things take up your time and the focus of your mind.

But I still enjoyed Ozzy’s music when I heard it on the radio (we didn’t have streaming back then or YouTube, etc.).

My favorite Ozzy albums and songs

My favorite Ozzy albums are the two with Randy Rhoads on guitar. The Blizzard of Oz and Diary of a Madman are, for me, the quintessential Ozzy albums. He released a lot of good music later too, but nothing else ever touched the heights he achieved on his first two albums.

Here are my favorite Ozzy songs:

The dark side of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne

There is an old saying that you should not speak ill of the dead. However, that does not apply to me because I am undead and can thus say whatever I want. Ozzy Osbourne had a very long and financially successful career, but some of it came at the expense of people who worked for him. He and Sharon exploited some of the musicians he played with, and here are a couple of examples from an earlier article I wrote about them:

Remember that the Osbournes were sued back in 2012 for screwing over musicians by trying to weasel out of paying them royalties for their work on Ozzy’s first two albums:

Millionaire rock star Ozzy Osbourne has been accused of removing musicians from two of his albums to avoid paying them royalties.

The former singer with Black Sabbath has rereleased his first two solo albums to cash in on his resurgent popularity generated by the MTV documentary series about his family The Osbournes.

But Osbourne, who is reputed to be worth more than £30 million, has used sophisticated studio techniques to remove the contributions from his two band mates, replacing them with unknown session musicians. Bass player Bob Daisley and drummer Lee Kerslake helped write and perform on Blizzard of Oz and the Diary of a Madman in the Eighties.

They have launched a legal action, claiming damages for lost royalties stretching back 20 years.

Daisley told the Daily Express: "They sound awful. They are nothing like the originals. It is an insult to us but more importantly to the fans. It is not just the rereleases. We have been missing credits from albums for years. It is an example of staggering greed not to pay us what we are owed."

Do you think what they did to those two musicians was bad? Then get a load of what they did to the young and naive Jake E. Lee during the recording of the Bark at the Moon album:

“Here’s the truth. This is really gonna get me in more hot water, but whatever, I’m in hot water and I don’t see a way out …

I was told from the get-go, ‘[If] you write part of the songs, you’ll get writing credit, you’ll get publishing. That’s part of your deal.’

So we recorded the album. I’m recording the album at Ridge Farm … in the middle of Scotland. Ridge Farm is actually a farm; the recording studio is in the barn. So I’m by myself. I don’t have management, I don’t have a lawyer, I don’t have anything.

But they promise me, ‘You’ll get what’s coming.’ And I keep asking because I’m getting really close to finishing all my stuff on the record, and finally, once I lay down the final track of my guitar playing, they said, ‘Ah! We have the contract for you.’ And in it, it says, specifically, ‘Ozzy Osbourne wrote all the songs. You had nothing to do with any of the writing, you have no claim to publishing, and you cannot say so publicly.’

And I looked at it. I’m looking at Sharon, and I said, ‘This is not what you told me before.’ And she says, ‘No, it isn’t.’

‘Why do you think I’m gonna sign it?’

‘Because if you don’t, we’ll give you a plane ticket, you go back home and you stand in line and you sue us. In the meantime, we have all your tracks, we’ll get another guitar player, he’ll redo your tracks, and you’ll have nothing.’

This is who the Osbournes really are, dear frens. It’s an ugly picture of greedy, selfish people who will stop at nothing to grab more cash for themselves while screwing over the very people who wrote and performed the music on Ozzy’s albums. Ozzy and his family were already rich, but it wasn’t enough for them; they had to have more and more.

Marie Antoinette had nothing on the greed of the Osbournes.

So the legacy of Ozzy (and Sharon) is a mixed bag indeed. Their net worth now is reputed to be around $251 million, so they did quite well for themselves, but it came at the expense of some of the people who worked with Ozzy. In that sense, Ozzy’s legacy will always be permanently tarnished, and he and Sharon will ultimately be remembered as greedy sleazebags who refused to pay some of the people who worked for him their rightful song royalties.

Right now, of course, you will hear few people saying anything like this. Since Ozzy died today, most people are singing his praises. But just wait until Sharon dies, and the musicians who were screwed over by the greedy duo come forward, free of the fear of a libel lawsuit by the Osbournes. All the dirt is going to come out that has heretofore been hidden in the background.

The final chapter in the history of Ozzy’s life has not yet been written, and when it is complete, people will never view him or Sharon the same way again. But that’s what you get when you screw people over who helped create the music that generated the massive wealth of the Osbourne family.

The use of Christian themes and iconography

Throughout his career, Ozzy used Christian themes and iconography to sell his music and merchandise. Everything from holding a cross on the Blizzard of Ozz album cover to upside-down crosses to wearing a cross while dressed in satanic garb has been used by Ozzy to further his “Prince of Darkness” image. He even sat on a devilish throne during his goodbye concert with Black Sabbath.

However, there is only one Prince of Darkness, and his name is Lucifer, not Ozzy. Now that Ozzy is dead, I can’t help but wonder where his soul ended up: heaven or hell? I do not know, but for much of his life, Ozzy used a warped, mocking version of Christianity to make money, and it worked very well for him. But nothing is free, and I wonder if he is paying for it now? 🤔

Sooner or later, all humans stand before God to be judged. I wonder if all the fame, wealth, and success Ozzy achieved by exploiting Christianity are worth it to him now? We cannot know, but the thought crossed my mind, so I’m sharing it with you here.

God will not be mocked, and I suspect Ozzy realized that shortly after his life ended.

And the winner is: Keith Richards!

Over the years, many people have wondered who would live longest: Ozzy or Keith Richards. It is a toss-up as to which one of them consumed more hard drugs and booze over the years of their careers. Many people wondered how it was possible for either of them to have lived into their 70s in the first place.

Well, now we know that Keith Richards takes the crown as the sole survivor! There can only be one, and Richards is it! 😉

A final word about Black Sabbath

Although Ozzy is now dead, I must at least include a few words here about Black Sabbath. That band is where he got his start, and it is where he made some of his best music, long before his solo career began. I remember hearing Sabbath when I was still very young and listened to them more when I got older.

Ozzy, of course, was fired from Black Sabbath. And, once he was gone, Sabbath went through various iterations with different singers. I must admit here that my favorite version of Black Sabbath was not the one with Ozzy in it. Instead, I must give the crown of my favorite Black Sabbath singer to Ronnie James Dio. Dio died in 2010, preceding Ozzy to the grave by 15 years.

Dio did something that Ozzy was never able to do for Black Sabbath: he gave them their own “Stairway to Heaven” type epic song. “Heaven and Hell” was a song that needed a singer like Dio, it was not something Ozzy could ever have sung well. To me, the song exemplified the best of Black Sabbath, and it put that band on a higher musical plane than it was ever able to reach with Ozzy as its singer.

Ozzy also never liked that Tony Iommi and company continued to use the Black Sabbath name after he left the band. Ozzy was known to be highly insecure, and he even forced Black Sabbath to change their name to Heaven and Hell when they did their last tour with Dio, shortly before he died.

Strangely, Ozzy was probably right about that, and it might have been better if Iommi and company had called the Dio version of Sabbath “Heaven and Hell” right from the start. It would have removed or at least lessened the comparisons of Dio and Ozzy’s singing. Alas, that is not what happened, and the use of the same name caused a lot of anger and resentment on Ozzy’s part. It’s all ancient history now, and Dio and Ozzy are likely in a heated argument as to who was the better Sabbath singer in the after-life as I write this article. 😂

I will leave you with my all-time favorite Black Sabbath song. I think those of you familiar with the band will recognize it, and it was not sung by Ozzy. 😉

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