Not Only Did Ozzy Osbourne Bring Us Momentous Songs, but He Doused Us in Memorable Moments Too

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Today we mourn the loss of a metal giant and the man known as the Prince of Darkness to his fans. Ozzy Osbourne will be remembered eternally… that I have no doubt about. Ozzy was one of the greatest frontmen of all-time and he gave us some of the grandest bangers in Rock and Roll history. He was also well known for his crazy antics both on and off the stage. Ozzy has passed over on this, July 22nd 2025 and his legend is etched in the annuals of music history. His family has graced us with this note:

“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,” the statement read. “He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time.”

He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2019, and I figured we didn’t have much time left with this lovely person that had worked so hard to right his life in his final decades. Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath’s final concert (on July 5th), “Back to the Beginning,”raised over $190 million making it the highest-grossing charity concert of all time, according to most reports. The funds were split between Cure Parkinson’s, Birmingham Children’s Hospital, and Acorn Children’s Hospice. The concert, held in Birmingham, England, was attended by 40,000 fans and streamed to an additional 5.8 million viewers worldwide. Here are some of my favorite Ozzy moments:

OZZY GETS A REALITY SHOW

Don’t forget, that before the Kardashians, we had the Osbourne’s. Things were way better then. The series went on to win an Emmy for outstanding reality program in its first year. In the show, we saw Ozzy complain and act incoherent and arguable, but his overall demeanor was always tinged with innocence. The Prince ultimately seemed like a good husband and father. He became America’s TV dad – better than that Cosby fella.

OZZY ESCAPES A SATANIC CURSE

Osbourne wrote in his autobiography, I AM OZZY, about a specific occasion where the band were asked to perform at Stonehenge. He wrote, “I couldn’t believe it when I learned that people actually ‘practiced [sic] the occult.’ These freaks with white make-up and black robes would come up to us after our gigs and invite us to black masses at Highgate Cemetery in London,” he said. 

“I’d say to them, ‘Look, mate, the only evil spirits I’m interested in are called whisky, vodka, and gin.”

He continued: “At one point we were invited by a group of Satanists to play at Stonehenge. We told them to fuck off, so they said they’d put a curse on us. Britain even had a ‘chief witch’ in those days… Mind you, we did buy an Ouija board once and have a little seance. We scared the shit out of each other.” 

OZZY JUMPS THE SHARK

The Black Sabbath guitarist, Tommy Iommi was speaking with the Daily Star (2011) in promotion of his upcoming book, Iron Man: My Journey through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath, and recanted some of the dark stunts that Ozzy pulled when the band were deep in the throes of drug abuse. Iommi recalled “With drugs always you get bored, so you must do something to one another. Like Ozzy hauling a shark through a window, dismembering it and soaking our room in blood.” The fact, that Iommi leaves out any other additional context and writes it like it’s something normal that happened on the road is the best part.

OZZY SNORTS ANTS!

“At that time, it was just kind of a thing — everybody was into [trying to] out-rock star and out-gross somebody out, like out-partying,” Lee continued. “So Ozzy’s wasted. He sees there’s a little trail of ants going all the way to this kid’s popsicle that he left on the ground. And Ozzy looks down and fucking just snorts the line of ants going to the popsicle. And Nikki [Sixx] is like, ‘Okay. Well, fuck that.’ So Nikki pulls his dick out at the pool. This is a hotel. This was, like, the Four Seasons [hotel], I think, in Dallas. And [there were] people, kids, everything. Nikki goes, ‘Fuck that. Watch this.’ Nikki goes to pee on the ground and Nikki’s gonna lick up his own piss to outdo Ozzy. And before Nikki could do it, Ozzy fucking beats him to it and licks up his piss. And we’re, like, ‘All right, Ozzy. You win. You win, dude.’”

POISONING BILL WARDS JUNK

Osbourne once revealed a cocaine-fuelled prank he attempted to pull on drummer Bill Ward in 1972 whilst they were pissing next to each other during a recording session. Ozzy told Rolling Stone Magazine years later: “I see this aerosol can and squirt his dick with it. He starts screaming and falls down. I look at the can and it says, WARNING: DO NOT SPRAY ON SKIN – HIGHLY TOXIC. I poisoned Bill through his dick!”

However, in his 2010 autobiography, he would remember the incident a little different and tried to rewrite history by painting himself in a more innocent light. He wrote: “One day, Tony gets this can of blue spray paint and sneaks around the other side of the railing, and when Bill starts pissing over the railing, he sprays his dick with it. You should have heard the scream, man. It was priceless. But then, two seconds later, Bill blacks out, falls headfirst over the railing and starts rolling down the hillside.” Either version seems plausible, but I like the first one better.

Ozzy Osbourne once drugged a vicar but OF COURSE, it was accidental. The situation arose after Osbourne went to the pub and then came back home a “few days” later. “I’d bought some hash and I’d made a cake with it,” Osbourne said to GQ magazine during an interview. “I put it in a tin and went to the pub and I said to my ex-wife, ’Don’t let anybody eat this fucking cake. It will be bad.’” 

He continued on with: “Anyway, I came back from the pub a few days later and I did a double-take, because the vicar was in our house, having a cup of tea in the kitchen with a piece of this cake. I hadn’t got a driving [license], but he was slumped in my kitchen, so I had to drag him out by his hair, push him in the back of his car, drive him to his door and then walk home.”

“I thought I’d killed him,” he admitted. “Then I saw him in a pub on a Sunday morning and he said, ‘I must have caught such a dreadful flu at yours. I hallucinated for three days and had to miss church.’ I was just relieved to see him. ‘Fucking hell, he’s alive!’ Because that was a big chunk of hash. When you move into the countryside they try to get you into the congregation and welcome you to the community. They invite you for a chat, see if you want to confess a few things.” 

He capped the tale off with: “If I’d have gone I’d still be there now, fucking confessing all my sins!”

Open Bar at The White House

Ozzy Osbourne and his family were invited as guests to The White House in 2002, as they were at the peak of their reality TV fame.  Ozzy took full advantage of the free bar offered at the event and had an absolute blast. According to all accounts President George W. Bush did not- he was apparently so fed up at Osbourne that he muttered: “This might have been a mistake.” You’d think George would understand. I mean, he partied pretty hard in his day too. *sniff

Almost as legendary as the rock star himself is the story of the 1982 incident in which Osbourne was arrested for public intoxication and for urinating in public on the Alamo grounds. Ozzy didn’t urinate on the main building, but on a cenotaph, which is a 60-foot structure across the street. The arrest happened the night before a concert at HemisFair Arena. The act was taken as disrespectful to the sacred site of the Battle of the Alamo, but Ozzy worked hard over the years to repair his relationship with the Alamo City. He personally apologized to then-Mayor Nelson Wolff in 1992 and expressed remorse for his actions. Again in 2015, he visited the Alamo grounds, this time with his son Jack, and learned more about the mission’s history as part of a taping for a History Channel show. 

The Alamo’s staff posted condolences on its official Facebook page, calling the famous story one of “redemption and reconciliation.”

BITING THE BAT

The wild event unfolded on Jan. 20, 1982, at the Des Moines Veterans Memorial Auditorium during his Diary of a Madman tour. People had been known to hurl rubber bats towards the singer at shows. During this performance however, someone chucked a real-life bat on the stage, which the Black Sabbath frontman mistakenly thought was fake. As his bit down, expecting to stun the audience, Osbourne’s mouth filled with blood, and he immediately knew that was the one who had been fooled.

He spoke about the cringe moment in his 2020 documentary, The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne. “I thought it was a rubber bat,” he recalled. “I picked it up, put it in my mouth, crunched down, bit into it, being the clown that I am.” Noting that bats “are the biggest carriers of rabies in the world,” Osbourne explained that he immediately went to the hospital after the show.

2 Doves, One Ozzy

After signing the first record deal of his solo career in 1981, Ozzy’s plan was to release a set of doves into the air as what he described as a “sign of peace.” Unfortunately, due to Ozzy being intoxicated and none of the CBS Records executives noticing, it’s claimed he grabbed the closest dove, bit its head off and then spat it onto the ground with blood still dripping from his lips. Said Ozzy to New Musical Express in 1982: “I’ve been in the industry the last 14 years and I’ve been to these bloody board meetings time and time again, and most of the time they don’t know who you are. You might be #93 on some list. Well, this time I thought I’d make sure they wouldn’t forget me. I had intended to just throw the thing in the air and let if fly around the room, but instead I bit its head off. In this world, for some reason, you have to do some pretty bizarre things before people begin to know what you’re about.”

Ozzy Osbourne was one of the last great rockstars we had on this planet. I do not write about these prolific moments in history with the intention to defame or discredit. I love this about Ozzy. His music is the true takeaway from his time on earth but I also love the unapologetic life that he led. Be well our noble Prince. Thank you for your legacy. We will continue to listen to your timeless anthems.