PORTRAIT – From its beginnings to Birmingham to its escapades on MTV, English has marked 50 years in world musical life. Back on a career as talented as it is whimsical.
He was still on stage on July 5. A final performance announced as such, as part of a charity concert in Birmingham. Unable to walk, Ozzy Osbourne had sang on a throne, for the first performance of his original formation, Black Sabbath, since 2005. Farewell with great fanfare, for which a good part of the planet Rock and Metal had made the trip. The organizer, Tom Morello, intended to make this day “the biggest metal concert of all time”. After a set of five songs with his guides, Ozzy Osbourne was joined by his former accomplices of Black Sabbath, for four classics of the group.
It was a few kilometers away, that John Michael Osbourne was born, on December 3, 1948, in a modest family of six children. His parents, workers, had started to nickname the Ozzy boy from an early age. Victim of sexual abuse at the age of eleven, Osbourne had made several suicide attempts …