my own 'master of reality'

i've taken this week off work on account of recovering from an infection that is boring in details & uninteresting for me to talk about.  needless to say, i'm on the road to recovery, tho still feeling weak & symptomatic.  so it is perhaps my mental state was already mush when anna told me this afternoon that ozzy osbourne died.  i did just as thousands upon thousands of people did today when they heard that the prince of darkness passed away: go online & listen/watch my favorite black sabbath/ozzy songs.

& when i did i went down a deep rabbit-hole of songs from albums i have not listened to in ages.  it was when i was listening to 'the wizard' from black sabbath's debut album the eponymous black sabbath from 1969 is then the tears flowed.  because for me, & for a great, great lot of others like me, ozzy was my own 'master of reality.'  he was the voice for us misfits who loved things dark, spooky, hard, sludgy, & thrilling.  along with tony iommi's killler guitar riffs & a rhythm section that could rock the hinges off hell, bill ward on drums & geezer butler on bass.  this was my very own band.

a friend of mine & my brothers introduced us to black sabbath perhaps in 1980.  i was either 12 or 13 years old.  i think the first song i heard was 'black sabbath' that haunted house of a song that ratches up the tension to a crescendo that even beelzebub would find scary.  even when punk rock changed my life the band black sabbath, & ozzy as a solo artist, would remain by my side.  

i remember i had a huge crush on a girl when i was 14.  there was a party at her house.  i was invited along with my friends & i think my brothers too.  at any rate, this girl loved metal & her parents had a VCR.  they played a concert video of black sabbath.  i was fucking entranced.  enchanted.  mesmerized.  i have not seen that concert since.  tho you can find performances & recordings of black sabbath, & even their earlier incarnation when they were called earth, stretching back nearly 60 years.  i'd think i maybe hallucinated that videotape but no, it was real.  it must've been recorded in the 1970s because of the bandmembers style of dress, e.g. ozzy was wearing a jacket with fringes on the sleeves as he performed often with both arms stretched high & fingers doing the peace sign.  today i looked for that concert film & found a great many performances but not that one i remembered so vividly.   

my youngest brother would soon become a metalhead so we also had ozzy's two solo records on cassette, blizzard of ozz & diary of a madman.  both of these records featured the wild blistering guitar of the late randy rhoads.  these recordings were always on either mine or my brother's cassette player.  these were the songs of heartbreak, horror, love & ecstasy.

ozzy was, which is well-known, a larger than life personality who did a great many things, & drugs, that made it seem he would die an early death.  i remember seeing him live at the old Arco [Echo (because its design & sound system really sucked)] Arena in 1989 on the no rest for the wicked tour with zakk wylde on guitar & geezer butler on bass.  i thought bill ward was on drums too until i looked it up this afternoon.  no, on drums was randy castillo.  still, it was thrilling to see ozzy & geezer live on stage.  but even in 1989 was the rumor that ozzy was so erratic & dangerous to himself that he might not live so long.

but then came the early 2000s & the wild man ozzy was supplanted by the lovable, goofy, yet endearing husband & father on the reality TV show the osbournes.  was that show accurate to the osbourne's real life.  probably not because it was TV & even reality shows are make-believe.  even so, it seemed ozzy beat the odds & tamed a few of his demons.  it felt like he became, like keith richards, an immortal. 

not so.  even if keith richards might seem he would survive the heat death of the universe he is, ozzy is, we all are, mortal & fragile.  ozzy knew he was dying.  the original members of black sabbath, geezer butler, bill ward, ozzy & tony iommi, played one final gig a little over two weeks ago, on 7/5/25, in their hometown of birmingham, england.  the show was a tribute to black sabbath, one of the greatest metal bands, indeed they founded metal, but also to ozzy with guest performances that was a veritable who's who of rock&roll artists.  you can find these performances easily online.

ozzy osbourne died today at the age of 76.  it was both a good run & too short a time for the prince of darkness.  i love rock&roll.  i very much love black sabbath.  i will listen to their music until i can't any longer.  all i can say, i feel great good luck to live in an age at the same time as ozzy osbourne.  & that we have the tech & means to continue to watch & listen to ozzy for as long as we can.  until the wheels fall off.

godspeed, sweet prince of darkness