Ozzy Osbourne has died. Heavy metal’s “Prince of Darkness,” who later had a second career as an avuncular reality TV star, was 76 years old.
“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,” the Osborne family said in a statement. “He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time.”
The family did not disclose the cause of death, but Ozzy had suffered from declining health for years, and had been diagnosed with Parkinsonism, a rare genetic condition similar to Parkinson’s disease. Years of drug and alcohol abuse throughout most of his touring days with Black Sabbath and as a solo artist had also taken a toll.
Ozzy retired from performing three weeks ago, following a show in his U.K. city of Birmingham, where he grew up. Ozzy — John Michael Osborne — was one of six children who grew up in a small house with no plumbing.
His retirement after his final show at the Birmingham festival, which was held in his honor, wasn’t the first time he’d retired. In 1992, he announced he was retiring at the end of that year’s tour, called “No More Tours.” That retirement didn’t stick, and in 2018, he re-upped his intention to leave show business with his “No More Tours II” tour. Despite that title he returned to touring, but in 2023, after the then-74-year-old injured his spine in a fall, he announced his touring days were finally over. Ozzy did eventually decide to continue performing, singing while seated on a throne.
Ozzy was known as a dynamic performer with a powerful voice. But his January 1982 concert at Veteran Memorial Stadium in Des Moines became famous for a reason that has nothing to do with his voice. It was at that concert, Ozzy bit the head off a bat — an incident mentioned, at least in passing, in all the obituaries published Tuesday.
In I Am Ozzy, his 2009 autobiography, Ozzy describes how the tour that brought him to Des Moines “got crazier and crazier.” Fans threw “joke shop stuff, mainly, like rubber snakes and plastic spiders” at the stage. Ozzy thought the bat that landed on stage on Jan. 20 was part of the joke shop stuff, until he bit it and his mouth “was instantly full of this warm, gloopy liquid, with the worst aftertaste you could ever imagine.”
After the show, Ozzy was taken to Broadlawns Medical Center where he started a painful six-week-long course of rabies vaccine injections, and a lifetime of answering questions about the bat.
Two days after the concert, the Des Moines Register ran a story on the local teenager behind the bat. Mark Neal said his brother found the tiny creature about two weeks earlier, and brought it home as a pet. But the bat was unwell and no one knew basic bat-care, so it died. At the urging of a friend, Neal kept the corpse frozen until the show, where he tossed the thawed and slightly rancid bat at the stage.
“It landed in front of Rudy Sarzo, the bass player,” Neal later recalled. “He looked down at it and motioned to Ozzy and, as they say, the rest is history.”
Of course, Ozzy’s real contribution to history was as a pioneer of heavy metal. He earned 13 platinum albums over the course of his career. The bat incident became part of the mix of outrageous stories about him that supported his claim to the title Prince of Darkness. Some were lighthearted, most involved drinking or drugs, and some were very serious, such as the time in 1989 when he was arrested for attempted murder after trying to strangle his wife Sharon while he was drunk. Sharon, who married Ozzy in 1982 and served as his manager, dropped the charges after deciding Ozzy was truly remorseful once he sobered up.
“All the stuff onstage, the craziness, it’s all just a role that I play, my work,” Ozzy told the New York Times in 1992. “I am not the Antichrist. I am a family man.”
Ten years later, Ozzy did become known as a family man after he and Sharon, along with their children Jack and Kelly, starred in an MTV reality show, The Osbournes. Ozzy and Sharon’s other daughter, Aimee, declined to participate in the show, which ran for three years.
Even though he was one of the most popular rock stars of his era, Ozzy told the Times he was sure he would be remembered for just one thing: “Ozzy Osbourne, born 1948. Died, whenever. He bit the head off a bat.”
