Ozzy Ozbourne is dead at the age of 76. The English rocker died July 22 after a long battle with Parkinson’s. He had just performed his final concert, a farewell appearance, earlier this month.
In a statement to the BBC, his family said, “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. He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time.”
It’s fitting that his family was able to release the news of Osbourne’s passing to the world. For as much as he styled himself the Prince of Darkness, a heavy metal rocker devoted on stage to all things performatively evil, for the last nearly quarter century of his life, he was best known as a family man, the patriarch of a clan that shaped much of the media landscape we’ve lived in ever since.
More to come…
