Ozzy Osbourne wasn’t afraid to reinvent himself or his career. No matter what life threw at him, he always was able to bounce back or find success in a new realm. But there was one tragedy that impacted the rest of his life.
The British musician, who died Tuesday, July 22, at age 76, first made a name for himself as the vocalist for the metal band Black Sabbath in the 1970s. With fast-paced success also came drug and alcohol abuse—which eventually got Osbourne kicked out of the group in 1979.
“He got fired from one of the biggest rock bands in the world,” his wife Sharon Osbourne said in the TV special, Biography: The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne. “He was an addict, so they wrote him off.”
In true Osbourne style, this major career setback started him on the path to solo stardom—until a tragic plane crash took away one of his best friends and collaborators.
Osbourne said guitarist Randy Rhoads “pulled the best out of me”
When Osbourne first found himself without a band, he started on a downward spiral. Sharon, then his manager, said she’d continue supporting him as a solo act. While that provided some hope, he still needed a spark.
Enter guitarist Randy Rhoads. “I knew instinctively that he was something extra special,” Osbourne said of meeting Rhoads. “He was like a gift from God—we worked so well together. Randy and I were like a team.”
The two meshed perfectly, but more importantly, Osbourne discovered his purpose again. “As soon as he found Randy, it was like night and day,” Sharon said. “He was alive again. Randy was a breath of fresh air, funny, ambitious, just a great guy.”
With Sharon as his manager and her father financing his solo start, Osbourne was back to what he did best: creating music, this time with a partner he saw eye to eye with. “One thing that he gave to me was hope, he gave me a reason for carrying on,” he said. “He had patience with me, which was great. He was great to work with. He pulled the best out of me. We had a lot of fun.”
A plane crash Killed Rhoads—and nearly the Osbournes
Soon, Osbourne and Rhoads began taking their fun on the road. “I remember we did a gig in Knoxville, Tennessee, and we were driving from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Orlando, Florida, to do a gig with Foreigner,” Osbourne recalled.
They were staying at a mansion on March 19, 1982, before their concert in Leesburg, Florida, when tragedy struck around noon.
“Ozzy and I were sleeping in the back of the bus, and we got woken up by this huge, huge blast,” Sharon remembered. She recalled bassist Rudy Sarzo shouting, “Get off the bus!” while Sarzo added, “We all get out of the bus and we had no idea what was going on.”
When Sharon got out of the bus, she saw the tour manager on his knees crying. She turned and saw an airplane sticking up through a house. Inside the plane was 25-year-old Rhoads, 36-year-old pilot Andrew Aycock, and 58-year-old hairdresser Rachel Youngblood.
“They had been on a plane and the plane had crashed,” Sarzo said. “One or two inches lower, it would have crashed into the bus, and we would have blown up right there.” The cause of the accident was never fully determined.
Even almost four decades after it happened, Osbourne sp0ke about the incident with devastation, remembering seeing a gigantic blaze. “I couldn’t understand what’s going on—it’s like I’ve been in a nightmare,” he said.
“I don’t know what the hell happened that killed them, but everyone died on the plane.”
Osbourne felt guilty about the crash
The effect of the crash on Osbourne’s life was tremendous, considering he lost such a cherished friend and musical partner. “I lost a dear friend in my life—I miss him terribly.” Osbourne admitted. “I just bathed my wounds with alcohol and drugs.”
Sarzo said the stakes for Sharon’s job also became greater because she not only had to keep the singer from abusing drugs and alcohol, but also “doing damage to himself.”
In every sense of the word, Rhoads meant “everything” to Osbourne, according to Sharon. “Ozzy still to this day feels guilty. ‘If only I was awake, I would never have let him get on that plane.’ And, you know, it’s something that Ozzy lives with,” she said in 2020.
After that, every show became a tribute to the guitarist whose life was cut so short. In 1987, Osbourne released a tribute album, Randy Rhoads Live, in the musician’s honor. Most of the songs included were recorded during a 1981 show in Cleveland, Ohio.
Even though Osbourne eventually continued on to decades of success and even television stardom, the crash still weighed on him.
“The day that Randy Rhoads died was the day a part of me died,” he said.
