The musician Ozzy Osbourne called his biggest regret: “The greatest tragedy of my life”
There aren’t many people in rock and roll history who could claim to have lived as many lifetimes as Ozzy Osbourne did.
The fact that he was still standing for years at a time was practically a miracle, and even when making some of his final live appearances, you could tell that he still loved what he was doing whenever he got the audience to sing along to every word that came out of his mouth. But even if he had the greatest ride that any heavy metal artist has ever done, there are more than a few times when he felt that he should have been more careful every now and again.
Then again, living on the edge was almost half of ‘The Prince of Darkness’s character half the time he played. His entire persona made him look like one of the most evil figures in the world, and even if he bit the head off a bat by accident when he was performing, all that did was fuel the rumours that he was one of the single craziest people to ever pick up a microphone. But behind the scenes, Osbourne was a lot more wholesome than people realised.
The Osbournes may have been one of the single weirdest reality shows to air at the time, but when looking through every episode, it’s not like Osbourne was putting on a show by any means. He was showing everyone that he was the bumbling dad of the Osbourne clan whenever he was at home, but as far as he was concerned, his band was practically his family every single time he went out on the road.
And it’s not like Zakk Wylde doesn’t cosign that mentality to a certain degree. The guitarist claimed that Osbourne is one of the few people who helped put him on the right path when he was first asked to join, and even though the band has gone through its fair share of ups and downs, Wylde still referred to Ozzy and Sharon as ‘Mom and Dad’ in interviews. But even if Wylde deserved to be by Osbourne’s side, it was still tragic knowing what could have been with Randy Rhoads.
Osbourne had a godsend in his first guitarist, and even if he was a lot different from Tony Iommi in Black Sabbath, that was only a strength in his mind. Rhoads was doing his own thing by making a classical approach to rock and roll guitar, and the fact that he wasn’t there anymore after that horrific plane crash is the kind of tragedy that stuck with Osbourne for the rest of his life.
The frontman would have been the first person to say that he would have been on that plane with Rhoads if he was awake, but he felt that Rhoads’s death was the biggest loss that he ever felt during his career, saying, “Randy was an awesome musician. And he was the sweetest, funniest guy. We loved each other. The day he died was the greatest tragedy of my life. I have no real regrets, except that I wasn’t up to keeping Randy Rhoads from getting on that plane.”
The whole accident was a completely senseless act and robbed us of one of the greatest guitarists in the world, but Osbourne was going to do everything he could to do right by Rhoads while he was still around. There was no one who could accurately replace him, but even when working on some of his later masterpieces, like No More Tears and Ozzmosis, you could tell that he was still trying his best to make music that Rhoads could have been proud of.
And even up until Osbourne’s final show, seeing Wylde lift his hand up to the sky during many of Rhoads’s finest solos was everything that the audience could have hoped for. Osbourne was bowing out gracefully and was ready to close the book on his career for good, but even up until his final hours, he was willing to share the spotlight with the guitarist who helped pull him out of his stupor.
