Ozzy Osbourne, the rock and heavy metal icon turned reality show star, has died, according to his family. 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,” his family said in a statement signed by wife Sharon Osbourne and their children Kelly, Jack, Aimee, as well as his son Louis from his prior marriage to Thelma Riley. “He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time.”
The Black Sabbath rocker lived with Parkinson’s disease. Earlier this month Osbourne played what was dubbed his “final bow” from a throne at Villa Park in the U.K.
Born John Michael Osbourne, the English musician rose to fame as the so-called Prince of Darkness with his heavy metal band, Black Sabbath, which he co-founded in 1968. The band released popular hits like “Paranoid,” “Iron Man” and “War Pigs.”
After his 1979 departure from the band due to substance abuse issues, Osbourne launched a successful solo career beginning with 1980’s Blizzard of Ozz, which featured his hit track “Crazy Train.” Osbourne became widely known for his wild onstage persona, including infamously biting the head off a bat during a 1982 concert. (He later got a rabies shot.) He went on to release 13 studio albums and was inducted twice into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — in 2006, with Black Sabbath, and again in 2024 as a solo artist.
Outside of music, Osbourne also had an influence on pop culture: He became a part of the first reality TV show family thanks to his hit MTV show, The Osbournes, which documented the chaotic, often hilarious home life he shared with wife Sharon and their children, Kelly and Jack. The show also illuminated darker sides of his personal life, however, as it revealed his struggles with substance abuse and health issues. The show ran for four seasons, from 2002 to 2005.
Osbourne announced he had been previously diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a progressive nervous system disorder, in January 2020, a condition he later told the Los Angeles Times he had lived with since 2003.
“I’m not dying from Parkinson’s. I’ve been working with it most of my life,” the singer told the newspaper. “I’ve cheated death so many times. If tomorrow you read ‘Ozzy Osbourne never woke up this morning,’ you wouldn’t go, ‘Oh, my God!’ You’d go, ‘Well, it finally caught up with him.’”
In addition to Parkinson’s, the musician also suffered other health issues, such as a severe staph infection in 2018 and multiple spinal surgeries following a fall that aggravated an old injury.
In May, Osbourne told the Guardian about his condition: “You wake up the next morning and find that something else has gone wrong. You begin to think this is never going to end.”
Tributes to Osbourne from the worlds of music and entertainment are pouring in online. Yahoo is collecting them in the blog below.
Live24 updates
- Wed, July 23, 2025 at 5:43 AM GMT+8
- Terence “Geezer” Butler posted a tribute to Osbourne on X.
- “Goodbye dear friend – thanks for all those years – we had some great fun. 4 kids from Aston- who’d have thought, eh?” the Black Sabbath bassist wrote. “So glad we got to do it one last time, back in Aston. Love you.”
- Wed, July 23, 2025 at 5:23 AM GMT+8
- As word spread of Osbourne’s death, more people in the rock world took time to write tributes. Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day took to Instagram to write “No words. We love you Ozzy,” along with a photo of the star.
- Brian May, cofounder of Queen, also shared kind words, writing on Instagram alongside a photo from Osbourne’s final show that he was “so sad to hear of Ozzy’s passing.”
- “His last appearance at Villa Park was a glorious way to say goodbye — the love in that place for him was gigantic,” May continued. “I’m grateful I was able to have a few quiet words with him after the show. And happy to know he passed peacefully with his loving family close by. But the world will miss Ozzie’s unique presence and fearless talent. My heartfelt consolations to Sharon and their great family. And to Bill and Geezer and my dear friend Tony — for this is family — I know only too well. REST IN PEACE dear Ozzie. Bri.”
- Meanwhile, Jon Bon Jovi shared two photos of himself with Osbourne, writing”Much luv to Sharon and the beautiful Osbourne Family. So sorry to hear of your loss. Rest easy Ozzy..”
- Wed, July 23, 2025 at 5:02 AM GMT+8
- Guitarist Tony Iommi, one of the founding members of Black Sabbath, took to X to respond to the death of his former bandmate.
- “I just can’t believe it! My dear dear friend Ozzy has passed away only weeks after our show at Villa Park,” Iommi wrote. “It’s just 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. My thoughts go out to Sharon and all the Osbourne family. Rest in peace Oz. Tony.”
- Wed, July 23, 2025 at 4:48 AM GMT+8
- From left: Jack, Sharon, Ozzy and Kelly Osbourne. (Courtesy of Everett Collection)
- The Osbourne family was one of the earliest celebrity clans to star in a reality television show based on their day-to-day lives. Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne starred alongside their children, daughter, Kelly, and son, Jack, on The Osbournes, which premiered on MTV in March 2002.
- The show, which concluded in 2005 after four seasons, was MTV’s highest-rated program at the time.
- “When we did it, it was a hundred percent real,” Ozzy Osbourne told Hunger magazine in 2023. “What you saw is what we were like. We didn’t plan on getting up and doing what we did, we just let things happen. And that was the trick of The Osbournes. People would come into our house and go, ‘Is she always like this?’ and we’d go, ‘Like what?’ People would say, ‘You’ve got to film this. This is amazing!’ But I was confused; I thought everybody had rows with their kids and their dog crapping on the floor.”
- Wed, July 23, 2025 at 4:37 AM GMT+8
- The music streaming platform shared a post on X in honor of Osbournem writing, “From the first notes of ‘Black Sabbath’ to the final chords of ‘Paranoid,’ Ozzy changed music forever. We’re crushed, but forever grateful, and we’ll never stop listening. Rest in peace, Ozzy.”
- Wed, July 23, 2025 at 4:34 AM GMT+8
- David Draiman, frontman for the heavy metal band Disturbed, called Osbourne a “dear teacher,” his friend and “a father to us all.”
- Wed, July 23, 2025 at 4:30 AM GMT+8
- The tributes to Osbourne continue to pour in from all corners of the music industry.
- Wed, July 23, 2025 at 4:25 AM GMT+8
- In a post on X, Adam Sandler paid tribute to Osbourne. He included a still from the 2000 film Little Nicky, in which Osbourne played himself in a scene featuring Sandler as the titular son of Satan.
- “Whether we were in our basements with our brothers, in the woods with our buddies, in the car, at a keg party, on a boat, at football practice, at a sleepover … Nobody was more badass to crank up on our speakers than the one and only prince of darkness — Ozzy Osborne!” Sandler wrote. “Loved him a lot like we all did! Sending love to the family and so happy to have spent time with the legend himself. RIP.”
- Wed, July 23, 2025 at 4:24 AM GMT+8
- Nirvana’s official X account posted a short message thanking Osbourne and Black Sabbath for inspiring the iconic grunge rock band led by the late Kurt Cobain.
- Wed, July 23, 2025 at 4:21 AM GMT+8
- Though Osbourne famously bit the head off a dead bat onstage during a 1982 concert, he also advocated for animal welfare, something that the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) acknowledged in a statement after his death.
- “Ozzy Osbourne was a legend and a provocateur, but PETA will remember the ‘Prince of Darkness’ most fondly for the gentle side he showed to animals — most recently cats, by using his fame to decry painful, crippling declawing mutilations,” PETA Senior Vice President Lisa Lange said in a statement to Yahoo News. “Ozzy may have been the singer, but his wife, Sharon, and his daughter, Kelly, were of one voice when it meant protecting animals. Ozzy will be missed by animal advocates the world over.”
- Osbourne previously participated in a 2020 campaign for the animal rights organization, which, in true shock rock fashion, featured his fingers amputated and bloody. The tagline for the campaign read, “Never Declaw a Cat. It’s an Amputation, Not a Manicure.”
- “Amputating a cat’s toes is twisted and wrong,” said Osbourne in a statement via PETA. “If your couch is more important to you than your cat’s health and happiness, you don’t deserve to have an animal! Get cats a scratching post — don’t mutilate them for life.”
- Wed, July 23, 2025 at 4:17 AM GMT+8
- Talk show host Piers Morgan, who interviewed Osbourne and members of his family numerous times in recent years, paid tribute to Ozzy on X.
- Wed, July 23, 2025 at 4:15 AM GMT+8
- Ozzy Osbourne performs in East Troy, Wisconsin in May 1982. (Paul Natkin/Getty Images)
- Osbourne, the beloved Prince of Darkness, infamously shocked fans during a show on Jan. 20, 1982, when he bit the head off a bat while performing at the Des Moines Veterans Memorial Auditorium.
- At the time, Osbourne, who had been on the road over a year, developed an onstage ritual involving raw meat. Osbourne would chuck raw meat at the crowd, at which point audience members would throw back whatever outrageous things they could.
- That night, at the Des Moines show, someone threw a bat onstage.
- “I thought it was a rubber bat,” Osbourne explained in the documentary The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne via Rolling Stone. “I picked it up, put it in my mouth, crunched down, bit into it, being the clown that I am.”
- Osbourne quickly realized that he’d made a horrific mistake.
- “Bats are the biggest carriers of rabies in the world,” he continued. “And I had to go to the hospital afterwards and they started giving me rabies shots. I had one [on each rear and I had to have that every night.”
- Wed, July 23, 2025 at 4:10 AM GMT+8
- In a post on Instagram, rocker Yungblud shared a photo of himself and the star, writing that he didn’t think Osbourne would “leave so soon.” He called the Black Sabbath frontman “so full of life” in their last meeting.
- “But as it is written with legends, they seem to know the things that we don’t,” said Yungblud, whose real name is Dominic Richard Harrison. “I will never forget you — you will be in every single note I sing and with me every single time I walk on stage. Your cross around my neck is the most precious thing I own. You asked me once if there was anything you could do for me and as I said then and as I will say now for all of us the music was enough. You took us on your adventure — an adventure that started it all.”
- He concluded the post with “I am truly heartbroken. You were the greatest of all time.”
- Wed, July 23, 2025 at 4:04 AM GMT+8
- Heavy metal band Metallica posted a wordless tribute to Osbourne, featuring a photo the band took with him along with a broken heart emoji.
- Wed, July 23, 2025 at 4:00 AM GMT+8
- Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, who was among the special guests at Osbourne and Black Sabbath’s star-studded final show on July 5, posted a photo, presumably taken backstage, of himself with Osbourne and fellow guitarists Slash and Jeff Beck.
- Wed, July 23, 2025 at 3:54 AM GMT+8
- Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne in 2020. (Gregg DeGuire/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)
- Sharon Osbourne, who’s been married to Ozzy Osbourne for over 40 years, told Billboard the idea for “Back to the Beginning,” the all-day benefit concert held in Birmingham, England, on July 5, was hers.
- The event was billed as Osbourne and Black Sabbath’s final show ever.
- “It was my idea,” she said, “because [Ozzy’s] one regret was he didn’t get the chance to say thank you to his fans before he finished his world tour. We were in the middle of his [2018 No More Tours 2] world tour, his retirement tour; we’d only done about nine months of the tour and he got sick.”
- The benefit marked the first time in 20 years that the original bandmates had come together to perform. An accompanying concert film, Back to the Beginning: Ozzy’s Final Bow, containing footage from the show, is also reportedly scheduled for release in early 2026.
- Osbourne felt compelled to perform onstage a final time, in spite of his declining health.
- Sharon told Billboard, “He kept saying, ‘It’s my one regret’ and ‘I want a chance to really say thank you.’ And this is what we thought would be the best way to do it. It’s a celebration of Ozzy and Sabbath and the music.”
- Wed, July 23, 2025 at 3:51 AM GMT+8
- Public Enemy rapper and fellow reality TV star Flavor Flav said he was heartbroken over Osbourne’s death.
- Wed, July 23, 2025 at 3:51 AM GMT+8
- Ozzy Osbourne has been the frontman for Black Sabbath, one of the most commercially successful heavy metal bands, since its formation in 1968.
- Osbourne was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice — first with Black Sabbath in 2006, and again as a solo artist in 2024. Here’s a look at photos from his storied music career.
- From left, Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi, Bill Ward and Ozzy Osbourne. (Chris Walter/WireImage)
- Ozzy Osbourne performing live onstage with Black Sabbath on Dec. 1, 1997, in Birmingham, U.K. (Mick Hutson/Redferns)
- Ozzy Osbourne in London, 1991. (Martyn Goodacre/Getty Images)
- Ozzy Osbourne performs with Black Sabbath at Ozzfest 2016 at San Manuel Amphitheater in Los Angeles. (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
- Ozzy Osbourne speaks onstage during the 2024 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. (Kevin Mazur/Getty Images)
- Wed, July 23, 2025 at 3:41 AM GMT+8
- In an Instagram post, Elton John remembered Osbourne as a “trailblazer,” a “true legend,” a “rock god” and “one of the funniest people I’ve ever met.”
- Wed, July 23, 2025 at 3:38 AM GMT+8
- Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready thanked Osbourne for his music, which he described as “terrifying and mesmerizing at the same time.”
