Ozzy Osbourne, the rock music icon widely regarded as the Prince of Darkness, has died. He was 76 years old.
In a statement shared to his official X account on Tuesday (July 22), Ozzy died “surrounded by love.”
"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,” read the statement signed by his wife Sharon, and children Jack, Kelly, Aimee and Louis. “He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time.”
The cause of his death was not made known at the time of the announcement. Since 2019, Osbourne was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
Ozzy Osbourne, born John Michael Osbourne on December 3, 1948, was the frontman of the pioneering rock band Black Sabbath.
He co-founded the band in Birmingham, England in 1968 alongside Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward. The band earned critical acclaim through their career thanks to songs like “War Pigs,” “Iron Man,” “Paranoid,” and “Children of the Grave.”
Black Sabbath won two Grammy Awards and secured a place in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.
Just weeks before his passing, Osbourne performed one last time with Black Sabbath on July 5, 2025, at Villa Park Stadium to 40,000 fans, according to the Associated Press.
Osbourne was originally removed from the band in 1979 due to his struggles with addiction. He then launched a successful solo career in 1980 with singles like “Crazy Train” and “Mr. Crowley,” while also gaining notoriety for his outrageous behavior.
As explained by Billboard, in 1981 he bit the head off a live dove during a meeting with record executives, and the following year repeated the act with a dead bat onstage (he initially thought it was a rubber toy) and spat blood on the crowd.
"Immediately, though, something felt wrong," he wrote in his 2009 memoir, I Am Ozzy. “Very wrong. For a start, my mouth was instantly full of this warm, gloopy liquid, with the worst aftertaste you could ever imagine. I could feel it staining my teeth and running down my chin. Then the head in my mouth twitched."
In 2002, Osbourne’s fame expanded with the launch of the reality show The Osbournes, which portrayed him and his family—wife Sharon, and children Kelly and Jack (daughter Aimee opted out), as a loving yet dysfunctional household. The show was a ratings hit for MTV and it gained notoriety for its constant use of bleeping to censor all the profanity in the U.S. broadcasts.
Earlier this month, Jack Osbourne told The Sun that a biopic about his father is in the works, with a possible release in summer 2027.
“We have a film on the way. We have a lot of good momentum on the Ozzy biopic,” he told the UK tabloid. “We have a director attached now, and the script is done, and Sony Studios is going to be producing it. It is about to go through a script rewrite. It’s going to be raw. We are not pulling any punches, we are really laying it all out.”
Reflecting on his life in a 2018 interview with Rolling Stone, Ozzy said, “People have often said to me, ‘If you could go back and change anything, would you do it any different?' I go, ‘No, I wouldn’t change a thing. If I changed anything, I wouldn’t be where I am now.’"
He added, “My life has been unbelievable. You couldn’t write my story, you couldn’t invent me.”