memes

Ozzy Osbourne aka: the prince of darkness and his band Black Sabbath and later solo Ozzy, are some of the originators of what we now know as heavy metal. Ozzy was well known for onstage theatrics which were popular at the time for bands like Sabbath and Alice Cooper. Big stage shows showing fake gore and violence like the precursors to Gwar. They would act out killing people and animals on stage as part of their showmanship routine and throw offal and guts into the crowd. "Worship Satan". Have women in lingerie on stage for no reason but to get covered in "blood" or act like they were being murdered. Eventually the crowds started throwing stuff back. One such stage show involved a fan throwing a "live" bat on stage. Ozzy picked it up and bit it's head off "not knowing" it was alive. There are conflicting stories about this of course.

Much of this also led to the satanic panic we experienced as kids in the 80's and 90's.

Likely a lot of these actions were because Ozzy was a raging alcoholic and drug user for much of his professional life. There are lots of interviews with him completely fucked out of his brain. He would intentionally drop acid and booze before said interviews and sometimes even his band mates couldn't handle him. Like Kieth Richards people even joked that Ozzy would outlive everyone because he had done so much stupid shit publicly over the course of his life and survived.

Ozzy was one of the artists that morphed the huge epic stage shows of the 60's rock and roll era into the chaos and drama of early heavy metal. Aside from his shortcomings Ozzy was an original rock and roll master.