Ozzy Osbourne performs at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto in November, 2010. His band Black Sabbath performed their final concert on July 5.J.P. MOCZULSKI/The Globe and Mail
Rust never sleeps, and some iron does not rust.
With 5.8 million or so other viewers, I watched the final Black Sabbath concert on July 5, streamed from the band’s hometown Villa Park stadium in Birmingham, England. The penultimate song by the heavy metal pioneers was Iron Man, sung by Ozzy Osbourne. He was as inimitable as possible under the circumstances.
The overlord sat on a throne, affected by Parkinson’s disease. Improbably, at age 76, he looked fantastic: the long hair, the black eyeliner, the leather pants, the diabolic, bats-beware gaze.
As Tony Iommi’s iconic guitar riff lumbered forward like a zombie, Osbourne sang the first verse, almost drowned out by the vocals of the sold-out crowd of 45,000.
Has he lost his mind?
Can he see or is he blind?
Can he walk at all?
Or if he moves, will he fall?
These were legitimate questions. Osbourne died on Tuesday, 17 days after the concert.
Fans placed flowers and candles around Osbourne’s star at the Hollywood Walk of Fame.Damian Dovarganes/The Associated Press
I was introduced as a child to Iron Man from a jukebox at the YMCA in my hometown of Clifton Springs, N.Y. When I say introduced, I mean terrified. I suppose the metal-music malevolence registered as goofy to the rock critics of the early 1970s, but it cast quite a spell on this little boy.
Hearing Iron Man (and Bloodrock’s D.O.A.) frightened me stiff. And by frightened, I mean fascinated − in particular by Osbourne’s eerie voice. Though he was neither the best metal singer nor the worst, his throat was unique. The sound was coppery, with a fresh hell’s reverb.
He came to be known as the Prince of Darkness. His dark-side legend increased when he bit the head off a bat on stage in 1982. There was a rabies concern, but a hospital test determined that other bats would be fine − Osbourne was not a carrier.
While Osbourne was macabre, he was as avuncular as he was demonic. So what if he laughed maniacally at the beginning of his debut solo single in 1980? We all bought a ticket on the Crazy Train anyway.
When he reinvented himself in 2002 as a doddering reality television star on The Osbournes − something of an actual Addams Family − the world found out it was his wife, Sharon Osbourne, who was to be feared. Ozzy, it turns out, was harmless.
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I spoke to him upon the release of his 2010 autobiography, I Am Ozzy. Naturally I asked what the hellraiser’s gravestone would say when he died.
“I don’t have a choice,” he said. “It’s whatever they want to put. I’m not so bigheaded enough to say, ‘Ozzy Osbourne was a great human being.’”
Black Sabbath’s 10-hour farewell concert – dubbed Back to the Beginning – featured a slew of all-star guests such as Metallica and Slayer and included a solo set by Osbourne. It raised millions of pounds for the Acorns Children’s Hospice, Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Cure Parkinson’s.
The show’s finale was Sabbath’s classic Paranoid. The lyrics were penned by bassist Geezer Butler, but if we’re looking for epitaphs:
And so, as you hear these words
Telling you now of my state
I tell you to enjoy life
I wish I could but it’s too late
Ozzy Osbourne died at the age of 76. The Black Sabbath frontman was infamous for both his onstage antics and reality-TV personality.
Reuters
