(Credits: Sony Music Entertainment)
Wed 14 January 2026 14:00, UK
It’s hard to really think of Ozzy Osbourne as a spiritual man whenever looking at footage of him performing.
Despite everyone thinking that he was the Antichrist from the moment he walked onstage, ‘The Prince of Darkness’ did believe in an afterlife, and if you look at Black Sabbath’s material, there are even songs that are pro-religion to be found in there, like ‘After Forever’. Besides, if you look at the way that Osbourne’s career panned out, it looks like he’s had a few miracles happen to him throughout his life.
It’s one thing for him to be able to close that chapter of his life mere weeks before his passing with the Back to the Beginning concert, but the fact that Osbourne managed to get on the charts with Sabbath at all felt impossible. No one wanted to hear music to be scared, and yet when you listen to everything from Paranoid to Master of Reality, there’s a certain sense of swagger that every member of the band had when they started pumping out the riffs to ‘Fairies Wear Boots’ or ‘Children of the Grave’.
That is, as long as they were able to make it to the stage. Osbourne may have been one of the greatest frontmen in hard rock, but the fact that he was demoted to the side of the stage during his final years should have topped everyone off. He was a dead man walking for a while, and once he finally decided to leave the band, it looked like the whole world was about to witness a real rock and roll casualty happen before their eyes.
If there’s one angel to be found in Osbourne’s life, though, it was his wife, Sharon. As much as people like to come down on her for being a dictator of everything that Ozzy did, Sharon was the one who picked him up and made sure that he didn’t drink himself to death. She was sure that he had a future as a solo star, but it wasn’t until Randy Rhoads came into the picture that Osbourne perked up and realised what he had on his hands.
He always had a knack for finding great guitarists, but after leaving Quiet Riot, Rhoads helped shape rock and roll overnight. Blues was never his first love, and when listening to all of the guitar work that was on Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman, he was pulling from genres like jazz and classical music to get the sounds he heard in his head. This was completely alien to most rock stars, but Osbourne was mesmerised.
Aside from being one of the best musicians he ever worked with, Osbourne felt that Rhoads was like a divine musician sent from above, saying, “[Those albums] couldn’t have happened without Randy Rhoads. He was a gift from God – there’s no other way of putting it. I was incredibly fortunate that I ever crossed paths with him.” But even after Rhoads’s tragic passing, Osbourne wasn’t going to let his life be defined by that one tragedy.
Even if no one could fill Rhoads’s shoes, ‘The Prince of Darkness’ still could work his own magic finding brilliant people to fill that slot. And while everyone from Brad Gillis to Jake E Lee did incredible work for him both live and in the studio, Zakk Wylde was the one musician that seem to fit the best with Osbourne, usually putting his own spin on most of his original material while reaching up to the heavens when he played as if to pay tribute to Rhoads for getting him into guitar.
The insane lineup of guitarists in Osbourne’s band may have turned him into one of the greatest talent scouts in the guitar world, but the only reason he ever looked that hard was because of what Rhoads left behind. This was someone that had the perfect balance of flash and taste, and if anyone was going to be filling those shoes, it was going to have to be someone who understood what he meant to the world.
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