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Ozzy Osbourne, main singer of the legendary rock group Black Sabbath, who did more than perhaps any other musician to help shape the dark and hard party of the heavy metal genre, even once biting the head of a bat on stage, he died on Tuesday at the age of 76, his family announced.

“It is more sad that the simple words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has died this morning. He was with his family and was surrounded by love,” the statement said.

The singer had just recorded his farewell concert with Black Sabbath a few weeks ago. Titled “Back to the Beginn: Ozzy’s Final Bow”, is ready for a theatrical release in early 2026.

Osbourne told The Guardian in May that he was waiting for a different life after filming the concert, one with fewer people and more animals.

“Yes. Get some ponies and chickens, and one million dogs. I want to open a dog rescue center and a horsepower rescue center. He shouts the neighbors a couple of times. There you have,” he said.

He also recently shared updates about the diagnosis of his Parkinson, saying that he had slowed him, but that “he was still doing things actively.”

“Despite all my complaints, I’m still alive,” he said in his Radio Sirius XM program in February. “I can be moaning that I can’t walk so well … but as long as I look towards the road, there are people who did not do half of me and they didn’t succeed.”

Born John Michael Osbourne on December 3, 1948, Osbourne grew up in a working class family near Birmingham, England. He fought at school from an early age, partly due to his dyslexia, and finally retired at the age of 15. But when she first listened “she loves you”, the Beatles, felt that he had found his vocation. “It was just magic,” he said. “It was like being beaten by lightning.”

“My life changed forever, and at that moment I knew what I wanted to do with my life,” he continued. “I never knew that it would turn out as it did, it was much bigger than my wildest expectations, but I knew I wanted to be the singer in a band.”

Michael Putland through Getty Images

Together with guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward, founded a band called Earth, later renowned Black Sabbath. Amid the revolution of the power of flowers, Black Sabbath decided to move his music in a more sinister direction. Its sound was heavy, dark and different.

The homonymous debut album of the 1970 band sold decently well, but it was his second album, “Paranoid” of 1971, and the successes in him, such as “Iron Man” and “War Pigs”, which shot the band on the lists and solidified their position near the top of the rock and roll hierarchy.

In his interview with The Guardian earlier this year, Osbourne recalled the critical response less than star of the band.

“I don’t think we had a good criticism. Maybe it was a catalyst in some way: we don’t like all critics, so we liked more people. They were a band of people: four types of Aston, one of the poorest parts of Birmingham,” he said.

Perhaps even more influential than the band’s music was his image. Dark in color and rich in religious symbolism, the frightened aesthetic parents of the band, but would help define the heavy metal scene for decades, which leads fans to bend Osbourne “the godfather of metal” and the “Prince of Darkness”, although he personally did not like to associate with the term “heavy metal.”

Paul Natkin through Getty Images

Osbourne married his first wife, Thelma Riley, in 1971. The couple had two children, Jessica and Louis, and Osbourne adopted his son Elliot from a previous relationship.

During the years of Black Saturday, drugs were also made central for the identity of Osbourne. The legend says that he and drummer Bill Ward took LSD every day for two years. But independently, the abuse of drugs and alcohol of Osbourne overwhelmed those around him in the late 1970s, and the other members of Black Sabbath threw him out of the band.

Shortly after, a solo project would begin with the help of guitarist Randy Rhoads, bass player Bob Daisley and drummer Lee Kerslake. In 1980, they released the acclaimed “Blizzard of Ozz”, which had one of the most famous songs of Osbourne’s career, the driver’s anthem “Crazy Train”.

Shortly after, Osbourne did two things that would consolidate his place in the tradition of rock and roll. In a meeting with record executives in Los Angeles, he bit the heads of two living pigeons. Then, in a 1982 concert in Des Moines, Iowa, he bit the head of a live bat. Later, Osbourne said he thought the bat was a rubber toy, but it didn’t matter: he had become the royal of rock.

Osbourne’s life would take a dark turn that year, when her guitarist and good friend Rhoads died in a plane crash near a bus where the singer had been sleeping, pushing Osbourne to a depression. Later, he would say: “I do not regret, except that I was not willing to prevent Randy from climbing that plane.”

That same year, Osbourne divorced Thelma and married her manager, Sharon Arden. The couple would have three children, Jack, Kelly and Aimee, but Osbourne’s substance abuse remained an almost constant problem in the relationship. In a mist of drugs and alcohol, once he even tried to kill Sharon, a moment that would later describe as the most shameful moment of his life. Osbourne would spend much of the second half of his life struggling to stay sober.

In the late 80s and early 90s, Osbourne became the focus of multiple demands that attracted national attention, each brought by parents who believed that Osbourne’s song “suicide solution” had made his son commit suicide. Osbourne won in all cases for reasons of first amendment.

Later in life, Osbourne found fame with a completely new generation about “The Osbournes” of MTV, a reality show that documented the most mundane of the daily mischief of the Osbourne family, and showed a more fun side of a man who had created a life in mytique.

“Bubbles!” He once proclaimed to discover that his program was scheduled to have bubbles and corn palomites. “Oh, come on, Sharon! I’m fucking Ozzy Osbourne, the prince of the damn darkness! Bad! Bad! What is evil on a top of damn bubbles?”

Nothing was without problems for Osbourne. Even when Black Sabbath’s four original members announced in 2011 that they would gather for a new album and a world tour, things took a turn after drummer Bill Ward retired, supposedly for contractual reasons.

Osbourne wanted his own drummer, Tommy Clufetos, to replace Ward, but did not get his way. Producer Rick Rubin had anger against the drummer Brad Wilk, who left Osbourne “angry.”

He was messy and complicated, like Osbourne, a man who could appear stunned, but who, however, possessed humor and self -awareness to know who he was and how he was seen.

“I know what is going to be on my tombstone, and there is nothing that moves,” Osbourne said in 2004. “” Here is Ozzy Osbourne, the former Sabbath singer who bit the head of a bat. “

Via News

In 2014, Osbourne launched “Memoirs of a Madman”, a compilation that covers his career. He had a success between Top 10 in 2019 with “Take What You Want”, a collaboration with Post Malone.

However, Osbourne made a movement, announcing in 2022 that he was moving from the United States due to all armed violence.