
“I can’t deal with loss. I can’t deal with losing anything, what I love.”
Love and Loss: two of the most profound feelings one can experience in life. Love, the former, Ozzy Osbourne drew his greatest strength and endless source of inspiration from, spurring on a career and a supernatural voice that overcame any obstacle imaginable. While the latter, loss, was always his greatest Achilles, the source of all his turmoil, despair, and chaotic spirals from which each time he barely escaped its clutches, and where the Prince of Darkness alter ego would stalk away.
Yet Ozzy Osbourne made peace with the two diverging forces, and the endless love he experienced throughout life always was a saving grace from the great losses he suffered. So it was no surprise that Ozzy, being the selfless performer and artist he was, in the face of ailing health, penned a final show for his adoring fans spanning multiple generations in a celebration of his life and all of the love and moments shared.
On July 5, 2025, Ozzy and Black Sabbath held the Back to the Beginning concert in Birmingham as a curtain call for the band and its beloved singer, uniting fans young and old, watching the great stalwarts of heavy metal! The concert exceeded all expectations and was the talk of countless fans for days on end. Ozzy even hoped to continue recording and performing, but sadly passed 17 days later on the 22nd of July. Ozzy was surrounded by his family and love at home when he passed, and the world mourned.
That morning, I felt an indescribable lingering sadness in the air as a light rain and dark clouds blanketed the sky. I heard the news early in the afternoon, and I just couldn’t believe it. Ozzy and Black Sabbath changed my life in high school. They gave me a passion for music and playing the guitar like no other. Even when I was a teenager, fans and regular attendants of the Ozzfest spoke so warmly of Ozzy that he was like a friend and an extended family member to so many.
Ozzy was more than the originator or ambassador to heavy metal, he was its life force, its guardian, an inexhaustible forge for which the world of rock and heavy metal drew its flame, a brilliant knight clad in black dispatching the evil wrought upon the world with a voice that felt like it could absolve anyone of their scars and sins.
Ozzy touched countless and saved so many. No matter his failing health or the shape he was in, or near-death experiences, he always found his way back to the stage, full of love and an unchanged inner spirit of youth, singing to our hearts. Thank you for everything, Ozzy. The stage was your sermon. You saved yourself. You saved us.
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