I knew there was a reason I’ve been feeling low the last couple of weeks. I had thought it had been the heat; my bedroom doesn’t have air conditioning and it’s hard to sleep on hot nights. But it wasn’t that. It was because Ozzy Osbourne had died today, about two weeks after his final performance with Black Sabbath.
Had I felt it coming somehow, like a disturbance in the Force? That seems unlikely. I’ve never been a sensitive, and I’ve seen no evidence that extrasensory perception actually exists. But it would be funny if I was wrong, and it might make for a better story.
But I don’t need ESP to tell my story. Ozzy’s been part of my life since infancy. He’s one of the reasons that rock ’n roll is my religion and my law. If he was the godfather of heavy metal, then as a metalhead he was a godfather of sorts to me too.
Besides, I had known that it had to happen someday. The man was in his mid-70s. He had Parkinson’s disease. Nobody survives that. And if it hadn’t been Parkinson’s it might have been something else.
Maybe the man himself had known, and rallied for one last epic show. It would be fitting if he had basically presided over his own wake. He was the ‘Prince of Darkness’, after all. He, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward were among the founding fathers of heavy metal. He was one of the OGs. And seventy-six years is a hell of a run consdering the life he had lived; the man knew how to party.
I never got to see Black Sabbath perform live. Not with Ozzy on vocals, and not with Ronnie James Dio, Ian Gillan, or Tony Martin. Sure, I’ve got recordings of some of their shows on DVD, but that’s not the same. But I had seen Ozzy himself, when he had played the Roseland Ballroom in New York City on 14 October 1995 as part of his Retirement Sucks tour. I had been 17 at the time.
I've written more about what bands like the Blue Öyster Cult, Judas Priest, and even The Sisters of Mercy have meant to me over the years, but Black Sabbath and Ozzy are one of the reasons I often say that I grew up on heavy metal. Sure, my father played a lot of prog rock when I was little, mainly Yes, ELP, Genesis, Renaissance, and Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. But he also had a copy of Sabbath’s Paranoid. And though I don’t remember it myself because of childhood amnesia, my old man had told me that he would sometimes give me little sips of beer when I couldn’t sleep. Depending on his mood, he’d sing “War Pigs” or “The Wizard”. Sometimes even “Spiral Architect”. Never when my mother was around, of course. She would have had kittens if she had known that some of my cradle songs were old Black Sabbath songs. But you’re welcome to make what you can of the fact that one of my lullabyes was an anti-war protest song.
But when I rediscovered Black Sabbath for myself as a teenager and got my own copy of Paranoid, I had felt this frisson when I put it on and heard the intro to “War Pigs”. I had known this song, but had no idea why. Unlike “Paranoid” and “Iron Man”, it didn’t get much (if any) airplay in the US. At least, not on any station I could receive on Long Island in New York.
Regardless, Ozzy Osbourne had been part of my life from infancy.
So had Black Sabbath.
So had heavy metal itself.
When I first heard these lines in “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath”, I felt seen: Nobody will ever let you know / When you ask the reasons why / They just tell you that you're on your own / Fill your head all full of lies
.
It wasn’t about me.
Nevertheless, the lyrics fit what I had been feeling at the time.
Likewise these lines from “Killing Yourself to Live”: Well, people look and people stare / Well, I don't think that I even care / You work your life away and what do they give? / You're only killing yourself to live
.
When I started dating, and would make mix tapes for women, “I Just Want You” from Ozzy’s 1995 album Ozzmosis would be one of the first tracks I’d select. Not to mention Sabbath’s “N.I.B”. Every damn woman. Every damn time. Never mind that Catherine prefers “Perry Mason” — that just proves I married a cultured woman with good taste. I’ve got all three songs on my writing playlist, along with the tracks I’ve already mentioned and other classics like “Mr. Crowley”, “Hellraiser”, “Diary of a Madman”, and “Shot in the Dark”.
Of course, “Goodbye to Romance” has always been on my post-breakup playlist. Because I’ve had my own rides on the crazy train, with nobody but myself to argue for my brain. Hell, I used to annoy the undead Christ out of my music teachers by playing those songs on a viola.
If I hadn’t felt Ozzy’s death before Catherine told me, I’m feeling it now.
Got no idea if the man had ever had a taste for rum, but I’ve got a bottle of Bacardi in the cabinet because Catherine and I sometimes cook with it.
Might as well pour out a shot for a man whose music had helped shape me, and had helped save my life when I needed it; given Bacardi’s bat logo it seems fitting.
Yeah, I’m listening to classic Sabbath now.
And Ozzy’s solo material, too.
Because if there’s a rock ’n roll heaven or a heavy metal Valhalla, he’s up there with Randy Rhoads and GodLemmy.
You know damned well that they’ve got a hell of a band.
The thing is, Ozzy Osbourne isn’t truly dead. His body sleeps, but his soul lives on. Because you can’t kill rock ’n roll.
I won’t say that I wish I had gotten to shake his hand and thank him for the music. After all, they say you should never meet your heroes for a reason; figures that resemble titans at a distance prove themselves all too human when you meet them in person.
But maybe that’s one of the reasons I’m shedding tears for Ozzy that I could never muster for my father. Even at his most outlandish, Ozzy was never anything but human, and unlike my father he was never close enough to hurt me. I’m not so vain as to think that Ozzy or Sabbath wrote a single song with me in mind. Nevertheless, so many of their songs resonated with me, and they were there when I needed them most.
Good night, sweet Prince of Darkness. Maybe, if I’m wrong about this being the only life any of us will ever get, I’ll see you on the other side. But not for many years yet, I hope. There is still much that I would do before I lay down to await the darkness.