Ozzy Osbourne: The voice that created heavy metal

The Prince of Darkness has left the stage.

Transcript

00:00Ozzy Osbourne, the prince of darkness, the inventor of heavy metal, is gone, but the

00:11sound he left behind will echo in every moshpit, every riff, every scream.

00:16Born in war-ravaged Birmingham, England in 1948, John Michael Osbourne came from nothing.

00:22A factory worker's son, a school dropout, who even became a petty thief.

00:26But there was something in him, a voice that was raw, haunting, electric.

00:30In 1968, Ozzy joined forces with three other working-class lads, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler

00:36and Bill Ward.

00:37They formed Black Sabbath, and unknowingly, they invented something the world had never

00:42heard before, a new genre.

00:44In 1970, on Friday the 13th, they released their first album.

00:48The opening track, also called Black Sabbath, began with a thunderstorm, a tolling church

00:53bell, then a slow, heavy guitar riff.

00:55Critics hated it, and called it noise, monotonous, too slow, too dark.

00:59But for thousands of young people, it was the sound of something real.

01:03This was fear, anger, chaos.

01:05Black Sabbath wrote songs about war, addiction, greedy, insanity, things no one else was singing

01:10about in 1970.

01:12War pigs mocked politicians.

01:14Iron Man told the story of an outcast turned monster.

01:18And Paranoid, written in 20 minutes, became their biggest hit.

01:21This sound was slower than rock, darker than blues, and heavier than anything before it.

01:26This was the birth of a new genre, heavy metal.

01:29By the end of the decade, Sabbath were icons, but Aussie was spiraling, consumed by fame,

01:34drugs, and chaos.

01:35In 1979, the band kicked him out, and Aussie launched a solo career with a young guitar

01:40genius, Randy Rhodes.

01:42Together, they created classics like Crazy Train, Mr. Crowley, and Flying High Again.

01:48The scream, the makeup, the madness, it was pure Aussie.

01:51And metal, it exploded.

01:53Bands like Iron Maiden brought in operatic vocals, Judah Priest turned up the speed, Metallica

01:58made it heavier, louder, angrier.

02:01By the 2000s, Aussie had somehow become a household name.

02:04Through the Ausburns, a chaotic, hilarious reality TV show, the world met the man behind

02:09the myth.

02:10And then came Ausfest, the music festival that introduced metal to an entirely new generation.

02:16Aussie never slowed down, even when he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2020,

02:20he refused to step back.

02:22In July 2025, he gave fans one last show, slower, softer, but still him.

02:28He said goodbye the only way he knew how, loud, raw, and unforgettable.