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Dear readers — we need to start with an apology for those who read yesterday’s edition. We led, of course, with an item about the shock passing of Ozzy Osbourne, lead singer of one of Brum’s most famous exports: Black Sabbath. Except a sleep-deprived staffer, updating the edition at midnight, accidentally mixed up their heavy-metal bands and made Ozzy the lead singer of Metallica. Blasphemy, we know. We’re very sorry! Although we suspect, as one X commenter said, Ozzy himself would have found it funny.
Anyway, today we’re bringing you a short and bittersweet edition dedicated to the Blizzard of Oz. There’s a mini collection of reflections on Ozzy’s life and legacy from the Brum figures that knew and were inspired by him, a remembrance from Rhi Storer, who was at Black Sabbath's final Villa Park gig in early July, plus a selection of our favourite Ozzy and Black Sabbath reads, picked by Dan. Rest in peace, Prince of Darkness.
‘He’s like many of our Dads’: the city remembers Ozzy
Birmingham mourns. On Tuesday night, news broke that one of the second city’s favourite and most well-known sons passed. John Michael Osbourne; Ozzy to all of us. Black Sabbath frontman, heavy metal pioneer, Hall of Fame solo artist, unexpected reality TV star, a working-class anti-hero. The global rock superstar that everyone could relate to — especially so if you had a B-something postcode.
The ‘Prince of Darkness’ survived sexual abuse, prison, inner city economic depression, infamy, illness and accident, and the hedonism of the heyday of heavy metal to make it all the way to 76. Somehow, as one cultural industry insider tells The Dispatch, he outlasted Hendrix, Presley and Bowie as he did so, turning the sounds of Birmingham’s industry into pioneering musical genius across his lifespan. His last act? Reuniting with his Sabbath bandmates for an Aston Villa stadium show, a stone’s throw from where he grew up, raising £140m for local charities (according to the event's musical director, Tom Morrello) in the process. It was a fitting goodbye.
There are countless stories of Ozzy’s genius, hard work and idiosyncrasies. Turning up to gig venues uninvited in the early years, in the hope of simply getting on the bill, playing six times a night as the band grafted to the big time, to wandering around Moseley with a plimsoll on a string, telling shopowners he ‘couldn’t afford a dog’. He was someone who managed to achieve global fame while maintaining a personable everyman everyman-likeability — with a delightfully kooky edge. He also was inadvertently responsible for pioneering a particular sub-genre of reality TV, after agreeing to have his family appear in The Osbournes.
Jim Simpson, Black Sabbath’s first-ever manager and founder of Big Bear Records, tells The Dispatch that part of Ozzy’s appeal was his unique voice and his ability to communicate. He’s speaking to me as he’s walking away from paying his respects, at the so-called ‘Black Sabbath bench’ on Broad Street, which has become a de-facto memorial in the wake of Ozzy’s passing. “There are young children there, five or six years old, with Sabbath tees… and there are 80 and 90-year-olds…that range of fan base is not usual,” says Simpson.
He recounts us how Black Sabbath (then known as Earth) would turn up to The Crown first as listeners but then to play, and he had a sense that they were the real deal due to the audience’s immediate positive reactions and then their hard work gigging — something that would get lost in tales of boozing and drug taking. “They’d do 30 shows a month [in early days] and built up great energy and tightness.”
Darren John, founder of Save Station Street Campaign — the central Birmingham, street on which the functionally derelict The Crown pub, which made Black Sabbath’s name stands — says that Ozzy’s appeal could because “he’s like many of our Dad’s who grew up in Aston, Small Heath or Handsworth at the time”. Except, yknow, with some magic, too. “Loki, the Norse god of mischief, reportedly has an Ozzy poster on his bedroom wall,” he adds.
Darren adds we’ll “never see another Ozzy”. “He’s a true one off,” he says. But he adds the city could do more to help future creative forces arise. “There can be no greater tribute from Ozzy's beloved Birmingham than ensuring that the UK's most historic grassroots arts street, Station Street, and The Crown is and are returned to their artistic glory days,” he adds.
Elsewhere, Lyle Bignon, night-time economy ambassador, adds that he thinks he knows why Ozzy cut through: he was a working-class anti-hero, coming from a typical 1960s Birmingham industrial background. His early days were spent like so many of ours, bouncing around various jobs, before he went on to stardom and to define a genre. “From a Birmingham perspective, we love that narrative,” he says. “And bringing it back to the city, weeks before he passed away was a masterstroke.” He adds, similarly to Darren, that it’s now on Birmingham to memorialise the rocker. “We have to get behind efforts to preserve The Crown [...] and look at ways the city can embrace music tourism…not just for economic impact but civic identity too.”
There's so much more to be said and written in the coming days and years. We've pulled together an initial list of features, essays, reviews and obituaries that give insight into Ozzy Osbourne, musical pioneer and a true son of the heaviest rocking city on earth.
"It changed me fundamentally when Ozzy sang: “Treat your life for what it's worth'"
by Rhi Storer
When you come from nothing it’s music that keeps you going. That’s the philosophy I hope many of us can relate to. The first time I heard Ozzy’s wail and the droning thunder of Black Sabbath was on long car journeys down the M6 to arrive onto Aston Expressway, and eventually, the city centre.
Dad always made me CD mixtapes while I was growing up. He used to burn CD’s with his favourite tracks and give them to me as presents — the album covers usually a mock infant photo of me with fuzzy edits, done on a clunky Windows 98 computer. It was always self deprecating — you understand if you’re from this part of the world.
I’d choose what to put on when we were on those lengthy car rides. The first ever song I heard by Black Sabbath was ‘A National Acrobat’ off Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. It changed me fundamentally when Ozzy sang: “Treat your life for what it's worth. And live for every breath.”
I can only say so much about Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath, as they came into my life during their later years. To really understand his legacy, I asked my Dad his memories of Ozzy Osbourne. He’s seen Sabbath seven times.
“The first album that I bought was Masters of Reality, a day after my friend Neil had,” he begins. “The following week I got Paranoid and Black Sabbath.”
Dad was rebellious and didn’t really care what others thought. “It was our class' turn to do the school assembly. The girls wrote some pretty boring stuff and me and my friends Neil and Paul chose the music. The whole school was rocking to ‘Lord of this World’.”
I used to think I was the only one who heralded musicians almost like a second family. But so did my Dad when he was growing up in the 1970s.
“[Ozzy] was like a big brother, same as the other three members. He was there through my teenage years,” he says.
This was true for me too. As car rides changed to a dreary sixth form college commute, Black Sabbath's music — along with other big bands like Alice In Chains, Tool, and Pantera — was the constant, seeing me through long bus journeys to Sutton Coldfield.
In 2012, I badgered my Dad for tickets to see Sabbath on their tour the following year. Both he and Mom told me they couldn’t afford the tickets. I was disappointed but tried not to show it; it felt reflective to me of Ozzy’s own situation growing up in the West Midlands: you can’t get nice things if you’re from Birmingham.
But it was a ruse. Dad actually bought tickets the day they announced the tour, for my 18th birthday. It was Mom’s idea to put them in my birthday card. “Your face lit up like a picture,” she tells me.
For a moment I thought I was transported to another dimension when I heard the opening riff to ‘Into The Void’. Geezer Butler’s bass sounded like an idle overpowered spaceship, his amps painted with symbols of crosses and their band logo of Lucifer. I could have sworn Tony’s Iommi’s guitar delivered a malevolent sermon to the masses.
But it was Ozzy clinging onto his microphone stand like a flaming spear, ready to strike burly blokes and young devotee fans, flaying wildly to the music, that really stuck in my mind. He wanted the crowds to feel what he was feeling onstage. To go “f—ing crazy!” as he put it.
Those same burly blokes, twice my age, crammed into the standing pits, may have been the very same people I stood close to thirteen years later at the Back To The Beginning concert, just a few weeks ago. Again, I was there with my Dad, a bit older, maybe a bit wiser, and both understood the passage of time. But Ozzy was still himself, still raising hell. Thank you to the boy from Aston.
The Dispatch's recommended Ozzy Osbourne reading list
Richard Franks
Alexis Petridis
Dan Cave
Nick Reilly
Ash Percival
Sian Cain
Kirsty Bosley
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