23/07/2025
From the streets of Birmingham to the biggest stages in the world, Ozzy turned raw anger and pain into music that changed generations.
We like the Mamas and the Papas, but we see what Ozzy meant .
R.I.P. Ozzy Osbourne
Ozzy Osbourne, the frontman of Black Sabbath, died today, at 76. Osbourne—along with half of the musicians in Led Zeppelin and the key members of Judas Priest—was raised in Birmingham and its suburbs, surrounded by the wreckage of Germany’s attacks on Britain’s manufacturing centers. In “Louder than Hell,” an oral history of heavy metal, Osbourne said, “When I was a kid, I was hungry. I had my ass hanging out of my pants and I hated the fu***ng world. When I heard the silly fu***ng words, ‘If you go to San Francisco, be sure to put a flower in your hair,’ I wanted to fu***ng strangle John Phillips [of the Mamas and the Papas]. I was sitting in the industrial town of Birmingham, England. My father was dying of asbestos from industrial pollution and I was an angry young punk.” Read more about the birthplace of heavy metal: https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/rVZCJO
