For all his musical accomplishments, what I'll remember most about Ozzy Osbourne is how he truly was authentic. In a recent radio interview, an Osbourne friend said Jack once asked his dad if it bothered him when people made fun of him, how he talked.

A look back at Ozzy Osbourne’s 1981 show in Daytona Beach and how the rock legend influenced local record store owners.

Ozzy Osbourne was demonized as the “Prince of Darkness” for his drug addiction and stage antics and praised for his reality TV show. The truth is complicated.

Ozzy Osbourne died on July 22, 2025. When he was just 34 years old he needed approval of the Lee County commissioners to have his Fort Myers concert.

Clad in a black tank top, leather pants and red shoes, the then 34-year-old Osbourne at one point donned a gladiator helmet as he worked the audience into a frenzy with popular solo songs “Crazy Train,” “Mr. Crowley” and “I Don’t Know.” He also delivered Sabbath staples that included “War Pigs,” “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” and the encore “Paranoid.”

So I really came to know the band’s original lead singer and most iconic figure, Ozzy Osbourne, when he left the band to launch his solo career in 1980. That year, if I was listening to metal, it was either Motorhead’s Ace of Spades or Ozzy’s debut Blizzard of Ozz.

Black Sabbath legend Ozzy Osbourne performed his final show July 5 with original band members before his death at 76, closing a chapter in heavy metal history.

Osbourne presided over a bill that gave equal representation to almost every strain of metal that Black Sabbath begat, its diversity illustrating how the band didn’t just make a scene: They forged a subculture.