The Crazy Train’s Final Stop Has Arrived: An Ode to Ozzy Osbourne
Image Credit: @ozzyosbourne
When I was in Year Six, we had to write a project on our role models; somebody who had inspired us to reach the greatest heights we could climb at eleven years old. Submission day rolled around, and my classmates bought beautifully handwritten deep dives into the lives of Stephen Hawking, Roald Dahl and Cristiano Ronaldo. My teacher, Miss Abbott, came to my desk. “Who have you done your project on then, Jess?”. Without missing a beat, I cheerily replied, “Ozzy Osbourne, Miss. There’s a bat head and everything in there.” Poor Miss Abbott, fresh out of her PGCE, being confronted with a nice-enough eleven-year-old girl smiling sweetly at her whilst handing over a folder full of research into the life and times of Ozzy Osbourne, heavy metal overlord.
Looking back now, I’m not even sure Miss Abbott knew who Ozzy Osbourne even was, which is a rare type of person to come across in Birmingham. But being from the same city (and even born in the same village) as Ozzy, my mom and I wanted my project to be on a hometown hero, and who better to pick than the frontman of Black Sabbath? The project covered the whole manic journey, from Black Sabbath’s birth to the tumultuous solo career, the bat’s head (no, we didn’t include an actual bat’s head – just a colour pencil drawing which was quite fun to do) and even the birth of the reality television family with “Meet the Osbournes.” To this day, I still look back on that project with fond memories, a reminder of my love for the absurd and downright weird from a young age.
To answer the question as to why Ozzy Osbourne was my chosen role model? I’m not quite sure I can remember what my reasoning back then was, but I can definitely remember what my explanation for it now is. Ozzy Osbourne has had a musical career which has spanned almost sixty years, and throughout it all, has continued to make some of the most unhinged, chaotic decisions. In career littered with drugs, booze, bat heads (I will continue to bring up the bat heads, yes), arguments and running rampant across the world, Ozzy always struck me as being someone quite similar to myself; he was a working-class kid who had all of a sudden been given a lot of power and money and didn’t quite know what to do with it, so he decided to make the most reckless decisions with it. Quite unapologetically as well. The music was a whole other thing in itself. Songs like Fairies Wear Boots, Iron Man and pretty much all of the Paranoid album soundtracked the three-month research period of that Year Six project and have followed me all the way to university. Rock music wasn’t a novelty for me at home, having grown up in a home that played Linkin Park and Nickelback on the regular, but there was something in Black Sabbath’s music that just…clicked for me. It was almost magical and I was able to track the band’s career from start to finish. But the one thing I was missing? A live performance.
The rumour mill has always spun the idea that Osbourne’s final show would take the rockstar home to his original stomping ground of Birmingham, a city that, much like Ozzy himself, I have a strange sort of love for. What we never could haveof predicted was the sheer scale of the farewell performance. Taking place at Villa Park, the all-day festival style event will also feature performances from bands that jumped off the foundation that Black Sabbath built, including Metallica, Slayer and Alice in Chains. All of the proceeds from the event will be split amongst some of the most impactful organisations in the city, Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Acorn Children’s Hospice, as well as Cure Parkinson’s.
This final reunion comes off the back of Osbourne’s struggle with Parkinson’s since 2003. However, due to multiple spinal surgeries, his health has deteriorated quickly, leaving the musician unable to walk. This information, along with the massive scale of the event, adds an emotional weight to the performance, making the decision feel almost final. This will be (at least for a long time) Black Sabbath’s final show.
If you’re heading to Birmingham for the concert, take it from a local: go into the city centre. Find the canals and look for the Black Sabbath bench. Have a seat, take a picture, do whatever you can to savour the moment. But please, sit and think about the power of what is about to happen. An age of heavy metal, rock and alternative music is coming to an end, and I don’t think that is something to be treated lightly.
I still have that Ozzy Osbourne project somewhere in the cupboard of my belongings at home. The recent news has given me a desire to go and dig out and look through the pages, to remind myself of the awe I first felt when researching one of the most influential figures in both music and reality television (my two biggest obsessions now) almost a decade ago. As a born and bred Brummie, I have so much love and appreciation for what both Ozzy and Black Sabbath have done for the culture and the music scene in the country’s most hated city. Just so you know Ozzy, in some weird, twisted way, you’re still my role model.
Words by Jess Cooper.
