From left: Rock musicians Rob Halford, Ozzy Osbourne and Nikki Sixx pose during a news conference in Los Angeles, April 30, 2010. (Reuters Yonhap)
From left: Rock musicians Rob Halford, Ozzy Osbourne and Nikki Sixx pose during a news conference in Los Angeles, April 30, 2010. (Reuters Yonhap)

Ozzy Osbourne, the gloomy, demon-invoking lead singer of the pioneering band Black Sabbath who became the throaty, growling voice — and drug-and-alcohol ravaged id — of heavy metal, died Tuesday, just weeks after his farewell show. He was 76.

"It is with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning. He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time," a family statement from Birmingham, England, said. In 2020, he revealed he had Parkinson's disease after suffering a fall.

Either clad in black or bare-chested, the singer was often the target of parents' groups for his imagery and once caused an uproar for biting the head off a bat. Later, he would reveal himself to be a doddering and sweet father on the reality TV show "The Osbournes."

Black Sabbath's 1969 self-titled debut LP has been likened to the Big Bang of heavy metal. It came during the height of the Vietnam War and crashed the hippie party, dripping menace and foreboding. The cover of the record was of a spooky figure against a stark landscape. The music was loud, dense and angry, and marked a shift in rock 'n' roll.

The band's second album, "Paranoid," included such classic metal tunes as "War Pigs," "Iron Man" and "Fairies Wear Boots." The song "Paranoid" only reached No. 61 on the Billboard Hot 100 but became in many ways the band's signature song. Both albums were voted among the top 10 greatest heavy metal albums of all time by readers of Rolling Stone magazine.

"Black Sabbath are the Beatles of heavy metal. Anybody who's serious about metal will tell you it all comes down to Sabbath," Dave Navarro of the band Jane's Addiction wrote in a 2010 tribute in Rolling Stone.

"There's a direct line you can draw back from today's metal, through Eighties bands like Iron Maiden, back to Sabbath."

Sabbath fired Osbourne in 1979 for his legendary excesses, like showing up late for rehearsals and missing gigs. "We knew we didn't really have a choice but to sack him because he was just so out of control. But we were all very down about the situation," wrote bassist Terry "Geezer" Butler in his memoir, "Into the Void."

Osbourne reemerged the next year as a solo artist with "Blizzard of Ozz" and the following year's "Diary of a Madman," both hard rock classics that went multiplatinum and spawned enduring favorites such as "Crazy Train,"

"Goodbye to Romance," "Flying High Again" and "You Can't Kill Rock and Roll." Osbourne was twice inducted to the Rock Osbourne released the live album "Tribute" in 1987 in his memory.

Osbourne then signed Jake E. Lee, who lent his talents to the platinum albums "Bark at the Moon" and "The Ultimate Sin." Hotshot Zakk Wylde joined Osbourne's band for "No Rest for the Wicked" and the multiplatinum "No More Tears."

"They come along, they sprout wings, they blossom, and they fly off," Osbourne said of his players in 1995 to The Associated Press. "But I have to move on. To get a new player now and again boosts me on."

Whomever he was playing with, Osbourne wasn't likely to back down from controversy. He had the last laugh when the TV evangelist the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart in 1986 lambasted various rock groups and rock magazines as "the new pornography," prompting some retailers to pull Osbourne's album.

When Swaggart later was caught with a sex worker in 1988, Osbourne put out the song "Miracle Man" about his foe: "Miracle man got busted/miracle man got busted," he sang. "Today I saw a Miracle Man, on TV cryin'/Such a hypocritical man, born again, dying."


khnews@heraldcorp.com