Favorite Seventies Artists In The News

Posted by Administrator on July 24th, 2025

Countless artists and fans are paying their respects to Ozzy Osbourne after the legendary heavy metal icon passed away on July 22 at age 76, just weeks after he reunited with his Black Sabbath bandmates for a final concert. In an interview with ITV News aired on July 23, Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi revealed his deep relief that Ozzy made it on stage for the Back to the Beginning concert held in his hometown of Birmingham, England. "I think he really just held out to do that show," Iommi explained. "I really feel - and me and Geezer (Geezer Butler, Sabbath bassist) were talking about it last night -- that we think he held out to do it, and just after that, he's done it and said goodbye to the fans. And that was the end of it, really. I think he must have had something in his head that said, 'Well, this is gonna be it, the last thing I'm ever gonna do.'" Earlier in a post on Twitter/X, Iommi wrote: "I just can't believe it! My dear dear friend Ozzy has passed away only weeks after our show at Villa Park. It's such heartbreaking news that I can't really find the words. There won't ever be another like him. Geezer, Bill and myself have lost our brother." He added, "Rest in peace Oz." Posting on Facebook, Geezer Butler said he was thankful they had one last chance to perform together during their July 5 reunion. "Goodbye dear friend - thanks for all those years. We had some great fun. Four kids from Aston -- who'd have thought, eh?" he wrote. "So glad we got to do it one last time, back in Aston. Love you." Drummer Bill Ward also shared an emotional tribute on Instagram: "Where will I find you now? In the memories, our unspoken embraces, our missed phone calls. No, you're forever in my heart. Deepest condolences to Sharon and all family members. RIP. Sincere regrets to all the fans. Never goodbye. Thank you forever." The band's official social media accounts posted a striking image of Osbourne from their farewell show, captioned simply: "Ozzy Forever." Elton John also posted a heartfelt tribute on Instagram. "So sad to hear the news of @ozzyosbourne passing away," John wrote, posting a throwback photo of himself and Osbourne. "He was a dear friend and a huge trailblazer who secured his place in the pantheon of rock gods -- a true legend. He was also one of the funniest people I've ever met. I will miss him dearly." Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood shared a photo of himself and Osbourne on X and wrote, "I am so very sad to hear of the death of Ozzy Osbourne. What a lovely goodbye concert he had at Back To The Beginning in Birmingham." Alice Cooper, posting on Instagram, said: "The whole world is mourning Ozzy tonight. Over his long career, he earned immense respect among his peers and from fans around the world as an unmatched showman and cultural icon." Over on X, Gene Simmons of KISS wrote: "Sad to report Ozzy has passed away. He was a giant. Admired and loved by millions of fans worldwide. Prayers and condolences go out to the Osbourne family." Other musicians and celebrities posting tributes to Ozzy include Zak Starkey, Billie Joe Armstrong, Jack White, Coldplay, Ice T, Billy Corgan and Adam Sandler. Meanwhile, fans are pushing to rename the airport in Birmingham, England and a stage at UK Download Festival after the late Osbourne. "Ozzy Osbourne was the most important musician ever to hail from Birmingham," a Change.org post by Dan Hudson on X reads. "Ozzy's influence on music and culture is undeniable. Naming our international airport after him would be a fitting tribute to his extraordinary career and contributions to the arts." Fans have taken to social media including the Download Festival's Instagram page to suggest that organizers rename one of the stages after him, as a way to pay their respects to him and acknowledge the huge impact he had on the music industry. "He has inspired an entire generation -- all the bands you have play at your festival have in some way been inspired by Black Sabbath and Ozzy," one fan wrote. Meanwhile, clips of the MTV reality series The Osbournes have flooded social media in wake of Ozzy's death. Specific moments were celebrated by some fans, including Ozzy's love of burritos in the show. One said: "if you really wanna honour Ozzy Osbourne in a way he would love beyond his music & please, enjoy a burrito in his memory. those who remember, know this for sure. the man loved a good burrito." Other areas outside of music are also honoring Ozzy -- gamers shared a famous PlayStation ad featuring him, while The Alamo in Texas remembered an infamous moment where Osbourne mistakenly urinated on the monument, sharing an unusual tribute. As fans and friends remember Ozzy, the "Prince of Darkness" will be in our lives for a long time to come thanks to the handful of legacy ventures he was working on before his death. Mercury Studio recently announced that the best bits of the epic "Back to the Beginning" show will be compiled in a 100-minute concert film, Back to the Beginning: Ozzy's Final Bow, slated to hit movie theaters in early 2026. A feature-length documentary chronicling Ozzy's six-year struggle to recuperate from a devastating 2019 fall, Ozzy Osbourne: No Escape From Now, will debut on Paramount+ later in 2025. Osbourne had also announced a new memoir, Last Rites, which is due out on Oct. 7 through Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group. The follow-up to the rocker's 2009 memoir, I Am Ozzy, will reportedly cover the health crises the 76-year-old metal god endured over his final years, including the Parkinson's diagnosis that forced him to retire from touring. And a new cosmetics line had been announced just weeks before his death - "Ozzy Osbourne x Jolie Beauty." In light of the news of his passing, the Birmingham-based beauty business said fans have been scrambling to snap up the devilishly dashing range of eyeshadows, makeup brushes and metallic lipsticks and glosses. - Billboard/New Musical Express, 7/23/25.

Ozzy Osbourne, one of heavy metal's best-loved and most successful frontmen, died on July 22, his family announced in a statement. 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," reads a statement. "He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time." No cause of death was provided. Mixing equal parts of bone-crushing volume, catatonic tempos, and ominous pronouncements, Black Sabbath was one of the Seventies' premier heavy metal bands. Although despised by rock critics and ignored by radio programmers, the group sold over eight million albums before Ozzy departed for a solo career in 1979, dismissed from the band for excessive drug use and drinking. Born John Michael Osbourne on Dec. 3, 1948, in the Aston area of Birmingham, England, he was the fourth of six children to mother Lilian, who was a factory worker, and father, John, also known as Jack, who toiled as a toolmaker. He earned the nickname Ozzy in elementary school, by which time he was struggling with undiagnosed dyslexia, attention deficit disorder and low self-esteem. Embarrassed about the lack of money in his home, Ozzy lost himself in the fantasy of music. Listening to the Beatles' "She Loves You" made him want to be a musician. He quit school at age 15 and worked in construction, plumbing and in an abattoir. Ozzy's first gig came in 1967, when future Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler hired him for his band Rare Breed. After two gigs, they broke up, freeing the singer and Butler to join with the other future Sabbath members, guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward. The foursome were billed for a while as Earth before adopting their haunted moniker in 1969, based on a like-named horror movie. Stressing menacing guitar riffs, shadowy bass lines, and thundering drums, and topped by Ozzy's devilish voice, Black Sabbath was signed to a record deal by Warner Bros. in 1970. Sabbath's self-titled debut made the British top 10 and the top 25 on the Billboard Hot 200 album chart, remaining on the charts in the U.S. for a full year. By the fall, the band issued a powerful follow-up, Paranoid, which sold even better, leaping to No. 12 on the Billboard 200 while generating Sabbath's two Billboard Hot 100 hits, "Iron Man" and "Paranoid." As the band readied their third album, Master of Reality, in 1971, Ozzy married his first wife, Thelma Riley. He adopted her son from a previous marriage and the couple soon had two other children of their own. Ozzy later referred to his young marriage as a terrible mistake, given his absence on the road and growing substance abuse. While his inebriation didn't affect the artistry of the band's first five albums, by the late '70s, Sabbath were floundering, both creatively and personally, due to in-fighting, lack of inspiration and heavy drug use. As a result, Ozzy was fired by the band in the spring of 1979, and replaced by ex-Rainbow singer Ronnie James Dio. His solo career, which began in 1980, saw his notoriety soar through a series of increasingly outrageous, and alarming, antics, two of which involved animal decapitation. During a 1981 meeting with executives at his record company, he bit the head off a live dove to get their attention, while the next year, he performed the same act on a dead bat while on-stage, spitting the creature's blood on the audience for good measure. One month later, while wearing a dress owned by his later wife Sharon Arden, he urinated on a monument erected to honor those who died at the battle of the Alamo in Texas. As a consequence, he was banned from the city of San Antonio for a decade. Ozzy later blamed all those actions on profound intoxication, a state he frequently admitted to maintaining for much of his career. One such binge escalated to the point where he tried to strangle his third wife Sharon Osbourne, an act he didn't remember committing. "It's one of the most regretful things," he told British GQ. "I woke up in jail the next morning. Thank God, she dropped the charges. And still I didn't stop drinking." For the next few months, a despondent, dejected Ozzy went on a self-destructive binge. He was rallied by Sharon Arden, whose father, Don Arden, then managed both the singer and his ex-band. Ozzy credits Arden with turning him around, and with encouraging him to form his own band, who backed him for his solo debut, Blizzard of Ozz. It became one of the best-selling works of his career, bolstered by songs like "Crazy Train" and "Mr. Crowley," the latter penned for the famous Satanist Aleister Crowley. His follow-up, Diary of a Madman, in 1981, sold over 3 million copies. But tragedy came the next year when the gifted guitarist in his band, Randy Rhoads, was killed in the crash of a light aircraft, which also took the lives of two others. Though deeply depressed, Ozzy married Sharon four months after the incident. His solo albums continued to sell in huge numbers, never dipping below gold status, or missing the top 25 of the Billboard 200, right through his last studio work, 2010's Scream; the only exception was a 2005 collection of interpretive recordings titled Under Covers. Ozzy's image received an improbable overhaul when he arose as an oddly lovable TV star in the early 2000's. Along with his wife and two of his children, Jack and Kelly Osbourne, he starred in the MTV series The Osbournes, one of the first family-centered reality shows, and one of network's biggest hits. The show presented Ozzy as doddering, gibberish-spewing dad but one who adores his family unendingly. While some saw the portrayal as a contradiction of his devilish image, he viewed them as part of a piece. "I'm just a zany ham," he told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2018. "It's all entertainment." In late 2011, the original lineup of Sabbath announced a reunion tour and an album to be produced by Rick Rubin. When contractual issues caused drummer Bill Ward to bow out, Rage Against the Machine drummer Brad Wilk stepped in. Two years later, the band issued their first album with Ozzy in over thirty years. Titled 13, it hit No. 1 both in the U.K and on the Billboard 200. The band began a farewell tour in Jan. 2016, playing their final show the next February. One year later, Ozzy announced his farewell tour as a solo artist, though he insisted he would still do isolated gigs. Later in his life, Ozzy took pains to point out that he spent far more time as an established solo artist than in Sabbath and that he preferred the freedom allowed by the latter role. He also became sober, after years of drying out only to fall off the wagon. In interviews, he expressed an increasing sense of appreciation. "When we did our first Black Sabbath album fifty years ago I thought, 'this will be good for a couple of albums and I'll get a few chicks along the way,'" he told Rolling Stone in 2018. "My life has just been unbelievable. You couldn't write my story; you couldn't invent me." Ozzy had undergone multiple surgeries and battled Parkinson's disease in recent years, and his last full gig was in 2018. He is survived by his first wife, Thelma Riley, their two children, Jessica and Lewis, and their adopted son Eliot, as well as his second wife Sharon and their children, Aimee, Kelly and Jack. His death comes 17 days after the epic, sold-out "Back To The Beginning" Black Sabbath farewell concert in Birmingham, alongside such acts as Metallica, Slayer, Pantera, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, raised more than $190 million for three charities, making it the highest grossing charity concert of all time. - Billboard, 7/22/25.