“The jester with a broken crown,
It won’t be me this time around”:
when Ozzy Osbourne was intoning these lyrics, he could hardly imagine they would one day prove prophetic, and unfortunately that day is now. A man affectionately and humorously known as the Prince of Darkness passed away, aged 76, only two and a half weeks after his farewell performance. Ozzy talked about dying right at the Birmingham stage, yet didn’t want to ruin the celebration of his creative life by bringing death into equation. Talk about honesty, then, because Osbourne, for all his clowning, has always been telling the truth – through the plethora of songs recorded with BLACK SABBATH and solo.
All the shenanigans Ozzy was famous for and all the management decisions which saw quite a few of his accompanists estranged never overshadowed his music, and it was via music that people perceived the real Osbourne, the artist. So talk about being iconic, too, because he remained easily recognizable no matter what permutations propelled his music to the fore of the listeners’ attention. “I don’t ever think about being modern or cutting edge but I don’t try to stay in the same place musically either,” Ozzy told this scribe back in 2010. “I’m not afraid to try something new but in the end I still want my records to sound like me.” And it’s those records that matter, much more than anything else, the soundtrack to our existence; no wonder a lot of sentiments shared today in the wake of the tragic news amounted to “I could never imagine my life without Osbourne in it!’
There’s no need for words, and there are books written about Ozzy anyway. Osbourne fully delivered on his erstwhile promise he delivered when singing,
“I’m a rock and roll soldier,
Gonna play it until I’m dead!”
Goodbye, Ozzy!
