Ozzy Osbourne, the Prince of Darkness who left like an angel

With a raspy voice, gripping the microphone with all his strength and with eyes wide open and marked by the glimmer of immense joy that could have assuaged his pain, Ozzy Osbourne sang like never before on July 5th in front of a crowd shedding tears and trying to follow a Prince of Darkness (his great nickname) who clung to life and felt the love of those thousands as he remembered the melancholic lyrics of "Mama I'm Coming Home" , one of his most beautiful songs. "Times have changed and times are strange / Here I am, but I'm not the same / Baby, I'm coming home" came out of the mouth of a rock legend who, ironically, foreshadowed his farewell to this world. His voice gained a little more power, his body trembled, but he did not collapse.

Ozzy had said before that he dreaded the idea of dying on stage, but that afternoon, sitting on a black throne with fake bats on the sides of the comfortable armchair in which he sang during the Back to the Beginning concert (which paid tribute to the legendary Black Sabbath, where he began his career in the late 60s), he left everything on stage.

It was strange and even unusual to see the hard-rockers express their love and excitement at seeing Ozzy in concert for the last time; but fate can be cruel and melodramatic, as John Michael Osbourne (his real name) passed away yesterday morning at the age of 76.

You could say that this heavy metal great, who made priests and mothers of the most conservative lineage tremble as they watched their children proudly wear the t-shirts of the band that made him famous or applaud his madness and cover their rooms with posters of the Beatles fanatic who decided to follow the darkest path of rock, had the decency to say goodbye in an epic, emotional and unforgettable way.

You can read: We talk to Ozzy Osbourne: the Prince of Darkness

He tasted the honey of success with Black Sabbath, after a tough youth and trying jobs as a plumber or slaughterhouse employee. He was dyslexic and a poor student . He sometimes wandered the streets dragging a shoe on a string as if carrying a pet, but he won the applause of thousands when his distinctive voice was revealed in small clubs and on the self-titled debut album of the band considered by many to be the creators of heavy rock; the one that tried to give it direction. But he always escaped control. The psychedelic trips and fights led to his dismissal from the group, and he spent some time as an unemployed rocker, before taking the final step with a solo career, after releasing anthems like Iron Man and Paranoid with his former bandmates Tony Iommi, Bill Ward, and Geezer Butler.

“I've had the best life anyone could have. I came from nothing and touched the riches , meaning my profession has truly opened doors for me in so many ways. My wife (Sharon) has also been a huge contributor,” he recalled in an interview with EL TIEMPO three years ago.

July 22, 2025, will be marked as the day the Prince of Darkness left this world. His family announced the news, and while they declined to go into details of his death, it was known that Osbourne had been struggling with serious health issues for years.

He had Parkinson's disease, could no longer walk, and his body bore the aftereffects of an ATV accident (made infamous by his role as an episode of the MTV reality show "The Osbournes" from 2002 to 2005), when his fame at that time surpassed the heavy metal scene.

He was always a mystery to doctors. In fact, in 2011, a group of scientists studied the singer's genome to determine how he was still alive after decades of pushing his body to the limit. The results showed that the rocker's genetics contained a mutation that made him resistant to drugs. "He's a genetic mutant," emphasized Bill Sullivan of Indiana University, who conducted the research, at the time.

But for the 40,000 souls who watched him on July 5 at Aston Villa Stadium in Birmingham, and those who paid nearly 60,000 Colombian pesos to witness the exclusive YouTube performance (the most-watched metal concert stream in history, with 5.8 million viewers) , the singer wasn't an anomaly. He was a god—a metal god, with permission from Judas Priest vocalist Rob Halford.

Osbourne filled stadiums and made the front pages of tabloids eager to chronicle his twisted false starts. "Ozzy snorted ants on tour with Motley Crue"; "Ozzy bit a bat thrown at him at a concert in Iowa (he thought it was plastic)"; "Ozzy ripped a pigeon's head off after signing a record deal..." But in the end, he always prevailed in the battle against self-destruction.

Music ended up being the exorcism for that tormented soul. His magnetic stage work and his principle of always being accompanied by impressive musicians on his albums gave a new lease on life to heavy metal and overshadowed any of his countless scandals. Ozzy Osbourne recorded 12 studio albums, created a festival ( Ozzfest ) after being denied participation in Lollapalooza in 1996, and turned songs like "Mr. Crowley," "I Don't Know," "Bark at the Moon," "Shot in the Dark," and "Crazy Train," to name a few, into classics. "Crazy Ozzy" danced with death several times without letting himself be dragged down, and with his legendary status, it seemed as if the game would continue a little longer.

“I can't walk, but you know what I was thinking about on vacation? Despite all my complaints, I'm still alive. I may complain about not being able to walk, but I look to the future and see people who haven't done half of what I've done and haven't come this far,” the prince of heavy rock, who loved to dress in black and could easily be a crazy grandfather to his grandchildren or a rock star who tried to erase the word retirement from his mind, recently said in an interview with digital radio station Sirius.

"There are days when he's brilliant and feels amazing, and the next week he could feel really bad. It fluctuates all the time. Ozzy works with a physical therapist, we're looking for every new medication that comes out for Parkinson's, but he's not going to be confined to a chair; that's not how he handles it. He's recorded a new album, he's already working on another (...), his life really hasn't changed drastically," his wife and savior, Sharon Osbourne, admitted two years ago, when his health deteriorated.

She was referring to the album Patient Number 9 , which she released in 2022 when she had to face the reality of perhaps never returning to the stage. A year later, she shouted to the world that, no matter how hard they tried, she would continue performing live on stage.

That was perhaps the only hell that kept the Prince of Darkness awake at night, and he still had the strength to say goodbye like an angel , as the profits from his last concert with Black Sabbath and other bands that grew up with his music, some $200 million, were donated to the Birmingham Children's Hospital, Acorn Children's Hospice, and Cure Parkinson's, an organization working to find a cure for Parkinson's. Today, millions of rockers around the world will listen to his albums and perhaps remember the line from "Inmortal" from his latest album: "They'll bury me underground / But I'll never die."