Ozzy Osbourne didn’t regret a single song he ever wrote: “I’m not ashamed”
The lasting legacy of Ozzy Osbourne is one of innovation, resilience, and never bowing to the pressure to conform. However, that still doesn’t mean you would necessarily take a leaf out of his book in terms of lifestyle.
Osbourne made no secret of the fact that he found it miraculous that he lived until the age of 76 – indeed, everyone probably agrees that with the extent of rock and roll moments the ‘Prince of Darkness’ indulged in, his departure from this life could have happened a lot sooner than now.
While, for the rest of the world, that kind of lifestyle may have been tinged with a hint of regret, that was never the case in the eyes of Osbourne himself. Call it living spontaneously or building a concrete sonic brand, he never winced in the face of his hairier moments or musical misgivings simply because he knew they were all part of the ‘Crazy Train’ of life. In some ways, there may be no better mantra to live by.
There is a lot to be said for how this motto served the Black Sabbath frontman until, quite literally, the final breaths of his life, emblematic in his final blazing performance just weeks ago, when there were so many times before then where he could have just thrown it all away. But this wasn’t just an epiphany that came to him with the wisdom of older age and hindsight – his lack of regret was something that fuelled him throughout the height of his career, and never once waned from his spirit.
You see, Osbourne never fancied himself as a man who was constantly evolving or finding himself. He just was who he was, warts and all, and he was perfectly happy to embrace that. This was something he pondered in a rarer moment of clarity in a 1986 interview, reflecting on the whims of his drug addiction by saying: “The other night, I thought, ‘Fuckin’ ‘ell, I sing one song for it and then straight after I sing one song against it.’ But the thing is, that’s OK. Because that was where I was when I wrote that, so why shouldn’t I do it?”
No one can accuse Osbourne of never being anything but brutally honest, as he then added: “It’s part of my life. It’s part of what I am and what I will be. To think that you can’t sing stuff from your last album because now you’re a different man is bullshit. If they’re good enough to write and good enough to hear and to buy, then they’re good enough to sing on stage, you know?”
He wasn’t wrong. There’s frankly nothing more annoying than an artist thinking they’re too big for their greatest hits, so you wouldn’t catch him indulging in any of that.
Ultimately, it all boiled down to one overarching sentiment that the ‘Prince of Darkness’ held close to his heart: “I’m not ashamed of anything that I’ve done in the past.”
He may have occasionally taken things too far, sometimes said things out of line, and come devilishly close to dancing at the gates of hell, but surely it’s the mark of a life well lived if you stand by everything you’ve ever done until your dying breath? Osbourne certainly seemed to think so.
