BEFORE adopting the nickname, “The Prince of Darkness”…
BEFORE biting the head off a bat during a live performance…
BEFORE redefining the meaning of dysfunctional family in the early 2000’s…
Ozzy Osbourne rose to prominence in the music scene during the 1970’s as the lead vocalist
of the Heavy Metal band: Black Sabbath.
But by 1979, Ozzy found himself on the outside of the band, looking in, due to severe drug
and alcohol problems.
Ozzy battled through those demons to put together a hugely successful solo career, releasing
eleven studio albums, the first seven of which all went multi-platinum in the U.S.
With total album sales of his work grossing over $100 Million, it should come as no surprise
that this native of Birmingham with his unmistakable Brummie accent is affectionately known as:
“The Godfather of Heavy Metal.”
What's going on guys?
It's your boy Michael McCrudden back at it with a video I've meant to make for a very,
very long time now.
The man has been making music for much longer than I’ve even been alive.
And I’m starting to feel old, so you can imagine how he must feel…
I wanna do more videos like this on legends from the world of Hollywood and Entertainment
for that to happen I need your suggestions.
Hit me up in my DM's or in the comments down below.
Pull up a chair and grab the nearest dove, bat, or any flying rodent that provides you
with the necessary protein to rock out, and let’s dive into Ozzy Osbourne, Before He
Was Famous.
Ozzy Osbourne was born John Michael Osbourne on December 3rd, 1948.
To put that into perspective for some of us… that’s only three years after the end of
World War II.
What’s World War II, you ask?
Well, that’s a whole other video...
Ozzy Osbourne was born in the Aston area of Birmingham, England.
His mother, Lilian was a non-observing Catholic who worked at a local factory.
His father, John Thomas Osbourne worked nightshifts as a toolmaker for General Electric.
Osbourne had three older sisters growing up, Jean, Iris, and Gillian.
He also had two younger brothers, Paul and Tony.
This large family lived in a small two-bedroom home at 14 Lodge Road in Aston.
Apparently kids at school took to calling him Ozzy as an insult, but Osbourne just picked
it up and ran with it, embracing the name he would one-day come to be known by the world
over.
But name calling wasn’t the worst that would happen to this young, dyslexic, Bevster.
At age 11, Ozzy was repeatedly molested and sexually exploited by a pair of bullies that
would terrorize him every day after school.
And while Ozzy has stated that these assaults stopped short of rape, they nonetheless greatly
affected his development at a very precarious age.
Ozzy’s main form of release was the enjoyment he experienced by performing on stage.
In school he took part in plays such as The Mikado and HMS Pinafore.
His other means of escape was popular music.
Upon hearing “She Loves You” by The Beatles at age 14, Ozzy quickly became a huge fan
of their work and was inspired to become a musician.
In the 2011 documentary “God Bless Ozzy Osbourne” he said about that moment:
Ozzy left school at age 15 and went through a series of different jobs: a construction
worker, plumber, toolmaker, car factory horn-tuner and he even worked at a slaughterhouse.
When those gigs didn’t pan out, Ozzy tried less… noble ways to get by.
He attempted to commit burglary by stealing a television which fell on him during his
getaway and had to be abandoned.
All he managed to escape with were some old t-shirts and baby clothes which he mistakenly
grabbed in the confusion.
He spent six weeks in Winson Green Prison when he was unable to pay the fine after being
convicted for the theft.
In 1967, Ozzy began to finally get his music career off the ground.
That year he teamed up with Geezer Butler to form his first band; Rare Breed.
The band played two shows and then broke up.
But Ozzy and Butler would then team up with guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward
under the name Polka Tulk Blues.
That name lasted a very short period of time before they rebranded themselves as Earth.
But after being accidentally booked for a show instead of a different band with the
same name, the four men decided to change their name once again.
Taking note of how people enjoyed to be frightened, the band decided to lean into a heavy blues
style of music laced with gloomy sounds and dark lyrics.
With that in mind, they settled on the moniker Black Sabbath in August 1969, after the horror
film of the same name.
While recording their first record, Butler read an Occult book and woke up later that
night to see a dark figure standing at the end of his bed.
After telling Ozzy about the experience, the two men sat down and wrote the lyrics to “Black
Sabbath” their first song to take on this darker tone.
Built around Iommi’s guitar riffs, Butler’s lyrics, Ward’s dark tempo drumbeats and
Ozzy’s eerie, off-kilter vocals, the band’s initial albums, “Black Sabbath” and “Paranoid”
sold to huge numbers and would see lengthy play time on the radio despite only a modest
investment from their US record label, Warner Brothers.
In fact, Osbourne’s one lament about starting off was that:
“In those days, the band wasn’t very popular with the women.”
But that wasn’t to be an issue for Ozzy much longer.
It was around 1971 when Ozzy would meet his future wife, Sharon Arden.
After the surprise success of their first album, Black Sabbath was considering hiring
her father, Don Arden, as their new manager.
Sharon was acting as Don’s receptionist.
Ozzy admits to being attracted to her immediately, but assumed that she probably thought he was
a lunatic.
Despite the fact that their relationship was strictly professional at this point, Ozzy
has always stated that the best thing about choosing Don as their manager was getting
to see Sharon so regularly.
But things weren’t meant to be for these two right off the bat... uh, no pun intended.
First, Ozzy married another woman named Thelma Riley, whom he met at a nightclub in Birmingham
called “The Rum Runner”, where she worked.
The two married soon after and had two children, Jessica and Louis.
Ozzy also adopted Thelma’s son Elliot.
Ozzy would later refer to this marriage as a terrible mistake.
His substance abuse issues, coupled with his frequent absences while touring took its toll
on his family.
In “God Bless Ozzy Osbourne”, Ozzy even admits that he doesn’t remember when Jessica
or Louis were born.
It was 1971 when Ozzy tried cocaine for the first time at a hotel in Denver, Colorado.
Apparently, Mountain’s guitarist, Leslie West, introduced him to the drug.
West is understandably reluctant to take ownership for this story, but Ozzy remembers the experience
quite vividly:
“When you come from Aston and you fall in love with cocaine, you remember when you started.
It’s like having your first fuck!”
Ozzy states that upon trying the drug for the first time, the world went “fuzzy”
after.
Back in his professional life, Black Sabbath’s next albums were “Master of Reality” and
“Volume 4”.
Both did great numbers, despite receiving critical backlash.
At the time of release, Lester Bangs of Rolling stone dismissed “Master of Reality” as
“naïve, simplistic, repetitive, and absolute doggerel”.
But less than 30 years later on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All-Time list, “Master
of Reality” punched in at 298.
In November of 1973, critics jumped on Black Sabbath’s bandwagon after the release of
“Sabbath Bloody Sabbath”.
This release marked the fifth consecutive platinum selling album for the band in the
US.
By 1978 the band had released “Sabotage” and “Technical Ecstasy”, but Ozzy was
getting restless.
That year he left the band for three months to pursue a solo project entitled: Blizzard
of Ozz.
Three former members of Earth backed Ozzy in the studio and briefly became the first
incarnation of this solo act.
Nonplussed by this activity, the other members of Sabbath requested that Ozzy rejoin the
band, which he eventually did.
The band then spent five months in Toronto, Ontario, writing and recording what would
become “Never Say Die!” the last album Ozzy would record with Black Sabbath until
2013.
Iommi recalls the following about that time in the bands’ life:
“It took quite a long time.
We were getting really drugged out, doing a lot of dope.
We’d go down to the sessions, and have to pack up because were too stoned; we’d have
to stop.
Nobody could get anything right, we were all over the place, everybody’s playing a different
thing.
We’d go back and sleep it off, and try again the next day.”
For his part, Ozzy recalls the following about his drug and alcohol issues around this time:
“I get high, I get fucked up … what the hell’s wrong with getting fucked up?
There must be something wrong with the system if so many people have to get fucked up … I
never take dope or anything before I go on stage.
I’ll smoke a joint or whatever afterwards.”
Things began to fall apart for the group.
Their 1978, “Never Say Die” tour received negative reviews, new acts like Van Halen,
were touring the world for the first time and when the band hit the studio they were
uninspired.
On top of this, tension and conflict had arisen.
Ozzy was asked repeatedly to record and re-record his vocals, the sound of which was being manipulated
endlessly by Iommi.
This situation caused a tear in the band and Ozzy was fired on April 27th, 1979.
The reasons given to him were that he was unreliable and had excessive substance abuse
issues compared to the other members of the band.
Despite that accusation, Ozzy has always claimed that his drug and alcohol use at the time
was neither better nor worse than that of the other members.
Ozzy recalls the following about leaving Sabbath:
“I’d got 96,000 Pounds for my share of the name, so I just locked myself away and
spent three months doing coke and booze.
My thinking was, ‘This is my last party, because after this I’m going back to Birmingham
and the dole.’”
However, a last second life preserver showed up at his front door.
Don Arden signed him to Jet Records and dispatched his daughter Sharon to Los Angeles to look
after Ozzy and protect her father’s investment.
Originally Arden had hoped to convince Ozzy to return to Sabbath but later on when it
became clear that wouldn’t happen anytime soon, he tried to convince the singer to name
his new band “Sons of Sabbath”, but Ozzy hated this idea.
By late 1979, Osbourne finally formed the Blizzard of Ozz with a series of other talented
musicians.
But by the time the debut album of the group was released, the music was wholly credited
to Ozzy with the title of the album instead taking on the former name of the band, thus
commencing Ozzy’s solo career.
“Blizzard of Ozz” would go onto become one of the few albums amongst the 100 best-sellers
of the 1980’s to achieve multi-platinum status without the benefit of a top-40 single
and even his former band-members were taking note, with Bill Ward, Sabbath’s drummer
saying:
"He seemed to be coming around from whatever it was that he’d gone through and he seemed
to be on his way again; making records and stuff…
I envied it because I wanted that…
I was bitter.
And I had a thoroughly miserable time.”
After signing his first solo record deal with CBS Records in 1981, Ozzy bit the head off
a dove during a meeting with executives from the label.
He had planned to release the dove into the air as a sign of peace, but due to being intoxicated
at the time, he bit its head off instead.
Less than a year later, Ozzy would go for an encore, biting the head off a bat while
performing on stage at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, Iowa.
While no one can quite recall if the bat was already dead or alive, the event has nonetheless
lived on in infamy and was named number two on Rolling Stone magazine’s “Rock’s
Wildest Myths” list.
In February of 1982, while wearing one of Sharon’s dresses for a photo shoot near
the Alamo, Ozzy drunkenly urinated on a monument erected in honor of those who died at the
famous Last Stand in Texas.
A police officer arrested Ozzy and he was subsequently banned from San Antonio for a
decade.
Ozzy’s second album: “Diary of a Madman” was known for its singles, “Over the Mountain”
and “Flying High Again”, and Ozzy has since stated that this is his personal favourite
album of all of his work.
On March 19th, 1982, while touring in support of “Diary of a Madman”, a light aircraft
carrying pilot, Andrew Aycock, and two members of Ozzy’s band, guitarist Randy Rhoads and
costume and make-up designer, Rachel Youngblood, crashed while performing low passes over the
band’s tour bus.
The left wing of the aircraft clipped the bus, causing the plane to brush against a
tree and crash into the garage of a nearby mansion, killing everyone aboard.
Experiencing first-hand the horrific death of his close friends and co-workers, Ozzy
fell into a deep depression.
Despite the tragedy, a ray of light entered his life when he and Sharon were married on
July 4th, 1982.
The two would go onto have three children, Aimee, Kelly, and Jack.
Apparently, the couple picked the 4th of July as their wedding date so that Ozzy would never
forget his anniversary.
By 1986, Ozzy released another album entitled: “The Ultimate Sin”, which, at the time
of its release was his highest charting studio album ever.
It went double platinum by 1994, but Ozzy was still dealing with chemical dependency
issues.
It was around this time that he announced what was to be his short-lived “retirement
tour”.
It was called “No More Tours” a pun on his most recent album, “No More Tears”.
After returning from the Moscow Music Peace Festival in August of 1989, Ozzy was once
more arrested, this time for attempted murder after he had tried to strangle Sharon while
under the influence of alcohol and drugs.
He then spent six months in a rehab clinic, after which time, Sharon said she regained
her strength in their relationship and did not press charges against her husband.
Ozzy’s entire CD catalogue was then remastered and reissued in 1995, just before he dropped
a brand-new album entitled: “Ozzmosis” and returned to touring, playing up his prior
retirement with: “The Retirement Sucks Tour”.
Despite all the success he found with his music, Ozzy’s biggest financial success
of the 1990’s was a musical festival called: Ozzfest, created and managed by Sharon and
assisted by his son Jack.
Since its inception, over five million people have attended Ozzfest and the event has grossed
over $100 Million.
Ozzfest also helped Ozzy become the first hard rock and heavy metal star to hit $50
Million in merchandise sales.
“Down to Earth” was Ozzy’s first album of new studio material in over six years when
it was released in 2001.
The album featured the hit single, “Dreamer” which peaked at number 10 on Billboard’s
Mainstream Rock Tracks.
Despite having unquestionable success as a musician, Ozzy’s greatest claim to fame
is perhaps his reality television show: “The Osbournes”, which debuted on MTV on March
5th, 2002.
The series featured unfettered access to Ozzy’s domestic life and co-starred his wife, Sharon,
as well as his children, Kelly and Jack.
The show instantly became a massive hit, finding its mark in the zeitgeist of the times at
the dawn of reality television.
It led to further professional opportunities for the entire family including hosting the
Annual American Music Awards as well as the 2008 BRIT Awards.
Now a massive part of pop-culture, Ozzy popped up in video games like World of Warcraft and
Guitar Hero World Tour.
In more recent years, Ozzy announced that he would once more embark on his final world
tour dubbed: “No More Tours II”.
Despite the seeming finality of the venture, Ozzy has stressed that he’s not retiring,
saying:
“It’s No More Tours, so I’m just not doing world tours anymore.
I’m still going to be doing gigs, but I’m not going on tour for six months at a time
anymore.
I’d like to spend some time at home.”
Ozzy was rushed to hospital on February 6th, 2019 due to complications stemming from the
flu which his doctor feared was turning into pneumonia.
About a week later he was moved into intensive care, and then soon after released.
He cancelled the rest of his “No More Tours II” dates after falling in his home and
sustaining further injuries.
That same month he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, but he would not publicly reveal
the diagnosis until January 2020.
On September 6th, 2019, Ozzy was featured on the song “Take What You Want” by Post
Malone.
The song would peak at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it Ozzy’s first US Top 10
single in 30 years since Lita Ford’s “Close My Eyes Forever”.
In February of 2020 Ozzy will release his twelfth studio album, “Ordinary Man”,
which will feature appearances from Post Malone, Travis Scott, and Elton John on the title
track.
As to where Ozzy goes from here?
Who knows.
The man has accomplished everything there is to do in the music game.
He’s had a hugely successful second act as a television star.
And despite being 71 years old, he’s still pumping out the jams.
Here’s hoping he can continue to battle through his illnesses to spend time with his
family and continue to thrill us with his unique brand of entertainment.
I’m Michael McCrudden and this has been Ozzy Osbourne, Before He Was Famous.
Any other classic musicians’ you guys want to see get done here?
How about other Death Metal acts?
Drop a line in the comments below with what you want to see and we’ll get back to you.