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Posted on 07/22/2025 5:36:16 PM PDT by DoodleBob
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People in high-profile lifestyles like this are rarely as bad nor as good as the way they are perceived in media. Ozzy was a showman living a life many could not handle. I’ll simply say RIP Ozzy and offer prayers to the family.
Bravo! Well said!
He didn't love Satan. In fact, in his autobiography, "I Am Ozzy," he makes that perfectly clear. It was all theater, in the vein of Vaudeville-type horror and Bela Lugosi/Boris Karloff films. Artists have been plowing those same fields for centuries.
Alice Cooper, a devout Christian, plowed a similar field. I saw a recent interview with Cooper and he said that earlier pop icons, including Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope, who he was friends and golfing buddies with, recognized instantly where Cooper's schtick came from.
There's a hilarious anecdote by Ozzy in "I Am Ozzy" where he says that one night, a group of fans outside his hotel room door were sitting in a circle around a candle chanting some satanist gobblediegook. To the obvious pleasure of the chanters, Osbourne took a seat in the circle in front of the candle. The he started softly singing, "Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me!"
Lolololol! That was the end of the circle.
Ozzy was talented, innovative, crazy, hedonistic, a drug addict, an alcoholic and sometimes a madman, a husband and a father. But he was no Satanist, just a flawed human, like us all, barreling through life, trying to make sense of it all, looking for Salvation. I hope he's with God today.
Some people don’t care what damage they do to society, our country, and to people’s lives when there is money to be made.
The love of money.
Ozzy was a religious guy.
Bizarre take but expected by many here.
I see the over the top religious freaks are out in force.
Rocco, possibly for the first time ever, I’m saying a hearty amen to one of your posts.
Ozzy, Alice Cooper, Arthur Brown* and many others, were simply drawing on a long history of Gothic melodrama. The whole satanic schtick was never taken seriously in the UK; we got the joke. But, add booze and drugs to the mix, and the musicians would end up playing to the persona 24/7 instead of switching it off.
The fans and the critics both taking the stage persona too literally isw what killed the career of the brilliant actor Warren Mitchell. He was subtly taking the piss out of bigotry with his Alf Garnett persona... But bigots loved that character and the anti racists thought he needed cancelling for promoting racism, sexism and jingoism!
That’s kinda what happened with Ozzy. He was never a Satanist; he just felt that playing the role of a hellbound clown suited his music better than pretending to be like Cliff Richard.
So, if anything, Ozzy was taking the piss out of Satanists. He never actually ate a bat either; sensible people know it’s just a whale of a tale that Ozzy thought funny enough to riff on.
* A heavy influence on Cooper, Iron Maiden and others, the self professed “god of hellfire” is a frugal former hippy philosopher who, since setting himself alight and parading naked six decades ago, has mastered yoga and came up with Healing Songs Therapy.
Actually, the bat thing was if anything an accident. A member of the audience threw it on stage and Ozzy thought it was a plastic joke bat and bit into it for a laugh.
The whole thing was then exaggerated, as if he’d set it up.
What’s less well known is, he did bite the head off a dove, after getting extremely annoyed with an executive (ironically, he’d brought the doves along as a peace offering!).
That nearly got him permanently cancelled by CBS.
So it was all schtick and just harmless carnival like fun for music loving impressionable young people? Of course those young people who sat in a circle paging Satan outside his door got the point and were no doubt in Church with their familes on Sunday morning. Wonder what the parents of these kids and other celebrity worshipping fools did with their collection Ozzy albums after they died or were lost to the depths of neopagan ,hedonistic decadence. Perhaps you feel Osborne performed a Darwinian service. Are you of the belief that when a pied piper like Osborne leads people to the depths of hell on earth, the world is better for eliminating such people from the mainstream of society?
For all the miserable scolds here
Watch this get back to us
https://youtube.com/shorts/UOlK5j0QrM0?si=XQ2vIRqQo-XY7u1V
Twofer here... Randy at sound check and a very good interview with Ozzy:
Really? So you are arguing that he had a positive influence on the teens who embraced him and his music. (BTW, devils are portrayed with wings in classic art. They are fallen angels who tempt and do evil.)
He did for me. My friends and I weren’t morons though. We knew the entire thing was a show. We just liked the music and were a bit surprised every time we actually read the lyrics. Hip-hop and rap has done far more damage to our youth than Ozzy ever did. As far as that goes, Ozzy was an optimist, dreamer and a conservative (except for weed). He thoroughly enjoyed taking shots at false prophets Like Little Jimmy Baker, pedos, tyrannical governments, and doctors who would prescribe anything to anyone. He wrote about alcoholism, drug addiction, porn, the woes of all three. He wrote about how living fast will do nothing but kill you. He wrote about the ravages of the failing mental health system too. Pretty much everything we here on Freerepublic rant on about daily. Anywho, let those without sin cast the... well, you know the rest.
Here's what I learned, first hand, about those "lost to the depths of neopagan, hedonistic decadence." And yeah, I've known a few of those folks: If it wasn't booze, it was endless women or men. If it wasn't women or men it was coke. If it wasn't coke, it was heroin. If it wasn't heroin it was pot, PCP, 'Ludes, uppers, downers - whatever it took for them to avoid themselves. And of all the wrecked and addicted folks I've run across through the years, it wasn't music that drove any of them towards the Abyss. It was themselves or their genes or their families or some horribly traumatic experience(s) or, most often, some combination of those things.
On a related note, why do I get the sense that you're one of those folks who, back in the day, would have joyously burned a minstrel at the stake for displeasing you or jarring your sensibilities?
Thanks, man. Lololol! Yep - you completely understand this art form. Been around forever. Ozzy was very good at it.
The ruination of so many people, especially young people, that you accurately describe is a sad, unfortunate reality. Where I live now and where I grew up entire communities have been transformed and there has been much suffering and grief. You list the various ways individuals come to perdition. Why? A popular term in the venacular is “influencers”. Whether they be teachers, entertainers, politicos, the media, the internet elites who control information flow, medical quacks or those who just have loud determined power and money, most observers argue that they have immense influence on people especially young people and the vapid. They really do influence their choices and their epicurean behaviors.
It has been your argument that Osborne with his satanic schtick was really at his core a decent man, despite his public embrace of hedonism and decadence, just made entertaining music and did no real harm to those that he influenced. There are many reasons that rational, decent , educated people would disagree with you.
You claim to be a musician yourself and have a band. I’ll desribe just one observation on how music influences people and is a subject of some neurological research. If you attend big concerts where a male voice is projected through electric amlifiers observe the behavior of many of the women. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has an exhibit of the hotel keys and the underwear women throw on stage at the performers. Often the manage to copulate. Now ordinarily these women may be reserved and would not give these singers the right time of day if they met them in another setting. Obviously people like Osborne do influence people with their “schtick”. They have the wealth and adulation to prove it.
BTW to the best of my recollection ,I have never physicaly harmed any individual because of cultural, ideological or artistic reasons. The only people I have held personally accountable are those who physically attacked me or my family first. Also as an aside there is little doubt that our hypothalmi are shaped differently ( look up what that means if you are interested) and our values do not coincide. Nevertheless I wish you well.
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