The Osbournes have revealed that the late Black Sabbath icon Ozzy Osbourne was secretly hospitalised just two weeks before his final concert.
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The Prince of Darkness passed away in July at the age of 76, just 17 days after he played one final show as the frontman of Black Sabbath at a concert at Villa Park in Birmingham.
Now, in the first episode of The Osbournes Unfiltered podcast since Ozzy’s passing, Sharon, Kelly and Jack remembered the metal pioneer, revealing several unknown things about his final year.
While Ozzy had long been battle a number of medical conditions and setbacks – including Parkinson’s Disease – Jack shared that “things started getting worse” in the first week of December last year, when Ozzy “took a little fall”.
Later on in the podcast episode, the family opened up to reveal that Ozzy had been hospitalised just two weeks before his final concert with Black Sabbath, and no one knew. Reflecting on Ozzy’s hospitalisation.
While they didn’t reveal why Ozzy was hospitalised in that instance, Sharon turned to Jack with a funny story: “The story, I don’t think even you know it, we had him in the hospital and we were just terrified that people were going to find out.”
“So we had all the security and the hospital – the hospital was amazing, they really were – the people at the front desk were told ‘nobody, if they ask for Ozzy, he’s not here. Nobody’s allowed up’, all of that. They had pictures of all of us who were allowed up, and names, and this guy comes up and says ‘I want to see John Osbourne (Ozzy’s legal name)’ so of course there’s a red light and they go ‘who are you?’ and he goes ‘I’m his brother.'”
“So they call up to the security, and they say ‘Ozzy’s brother is here,'” Sharon continued. “‘He’s asked to see him. He knows he’s here.’ I’m like, there’s no way, his brother doesn’t even know he’s in here. His sisters, his brother didn’t know. So I sent security down and I said ‘find out who this guy is, he’s definitely from the press.'”
“They’re not the most polite in the world, they’re the most threatening. This guy kept saying ‘He’s my brother, he knows I’m coming.’ After harassing this poor man, there was [another] John Osbourne in the hospital, and it was his brother. We felt so terrible.”
Osbourne had experienced a number of health issues in recent years, including a 2019 fall that aggravated an earlier spinal injury, requiring numerous surgeries. In addition to suffering pneumonia and a longstanding infection, he had also been diagnosed with a form of Parkinson’s.
Recently, Jack Osbourne said the final Black Sabbath show became a “living wake” for his late father Ozzy Osbourne. Speaking to Good Morning America he shared his memories of being present for the final show. “Before he went on stage, I ran back into the dressing room and I just gave him a big hug and I just kissed him and I just said, ‘Crush it, you’re going to do so good’,” he explained.
“I was in the crowd and I was with my brother and we both were just crying – it wasn’t because of feeling sorry for him, it wasn’t because we were sad for him, I think it was because we knew it was the last time…In hindsight, it kind of was a living wake, if you think about it. He got to say goodbye to everyone.”
The final stage of Osbourne’s life has been captured in the new BBC documentary Sharon & Ozzy Osbourne: Coming Home, which is available to watch on the BBC iPlayer for UK viewers here.
In poignant scenes at the end of the doc, Ozzy reflects on the experience of playing in front of 44,000 people for one final time. “The only thing I really got… what was terribly frustrating for me, I had to sit there instead of running across the stage,” he said. “That was fucking torture, because I wanted to get off that [chair] so much.”
He continued: “It was very humbling, to sit in that chair for nine songs. What a great way to go out, that gig was.”
Another new documentary, Ozzy: No Escape From Now, details the Prince Of Darkness’ final six years is available to stream on Paramount+ now. Osbourne’s memoir Last Rites was also published in October and included Ozzy speaking about a heart problem days before his passing and how the late Friends actor Matthew Perry once attended AA meetings at the Osbourne’s house.