Ozzy Osbourne opened up his own mortality and revealed he’d accepted his impending demise, as he recalled the Back to the Beginning gig in his memoir, released after his tragic death aged 76.
The Black Sabbath legend died of heart failure at his Buckinghamshire home on July 22, just two weeks after performing a farewell concert with his bandmates at Birmingham’s Villa Park.
But in his posthumously released memoir, Last Rites, he wrote that he hadn’t expected to survive long enough to make the concert, after being struck by a torrent of increasingly serious health issues in the run-up to the gig.
Getting candid about his impeding demise, Ozzy admitted that he had felt ‘death’s been knocking at my door for the last six years’ and acknowledged that he would one day ‘have to let him in’.
While he confessed he ‘wasn’t ready to go’, the brave rocker insisted he wasn’t no longer scared of dying and had ‘had a good run’.
Instead, he admitted his ‘biggest fear’ in his final months was of his beloved wife Sharon dying before him, declaring he wouldn’t survive without her as he ‘lives for the woman’.
Ozzy Osbourne opened up his own mortality and revealed he’d accepted his impending demise, as he recalled the Back to the Beginning gig in his memoir, released after his tragic death aged 76
The Black Sabbath legend died of heart failure at his Buckinghamshire home on July 22, just two weeks after performing a farewell concert with his bandmates at Birmingham ‘s Villa Park (seen)
In an extract published in The Sunday Times, Ozzy penned: ‘Death’s been knocking at my door for the last six years, louder and louder. And at some point I’m gonna have to let him in.
‘The funny thing is, I used to worry more about my mortality when I was younger. It’s weird. You get closer to the end — the very thing you were scared of your whole life — and suddenly the weight’s lifted off you.
‘Not that I’m ready to go. But I’ve had a good run. I think I made a mark on the world. And I’m glad I didn’t check out early, like so many others.’
While touching on Sharon’s dramatic and concerning weight loss after going on Ozempic, he admitted being ‘terrified’ that she would ‘disappear’.
He wrote: ‘I’ve also said to Sharon, don’t you dare go before me. It’s my biggest fear now, Sharon leaving this world before I do. If she does, I won’t be too far behind. I live for the woman.
‘When she went on her big diet a while ago, I was terrified of it going wrong. She lost so much weight, I thought she was gonna disappear.’
Sharon’s shrinking frame has sparked concern among her fans, with her admitting that she feared she’d taken the weight loss jabs too far.
In February, she revealed she’d lost ‘three stone [42 pounds] in four months’ and despite coming off the medication, was left unable to regain the weight.
He admitted his ‘biggest fear’ in his final months was of his beloved wife Sharon dying before him, declaring he wouldn’t survive without her as he ‘lives for the woman’ (seen together)
While touching on Sharon’s dramatic and concerning weight loss after going on Ozempic, he admitted being ‘terrified’ that she would ‘disappear’ (seen in 2023)
She later told Daily Mail of her ‘frustration’ over the lingering effects, saying: ‘Now, I weigh just over 7 stone. I need to put on 10 pounds, but however much I eat, I stay the same weight’.
Revealing the full extent of his health woes prior to the Back to the Beginning show, Ozzy explained how he had been so close to death several times, and didn’t even think he would ‘make it to 2025’.
He told how he and Sharon were originally planning to leave Los Angeles in December 2024, giving him seven months to prepare for his final show, but was struck down by back issues and pneumonia.
The musician explained how his Parkinson’s disease only exacerbated the seriousness of the illness, triggering his emphysema and causing his lung to collapse, with his doctor refusing to operate on his back as the ‘recovery could kill me’.
But both Ozzy and Sharon wouldn’t take no for an answer, with a team at Cedars-Sinai hospital eventually agreeing to operate and filled the cracks in his vertebra with ‘this human cement stuff’.
However, he explained things went from bad to worse as he ended up contracting sepsis and admitted, using his famous wit, that he ‘had about as much chance of surviving a major sepsis infection as I did of winning the next season of Love Island.’
His condition became so serious that he revealed both he and his family had all thought he wasn’t going to make it.
Ozzy wrote: ‘I was getting weaker by the day. Sharon didn’t tell me at the time, but the whole family basically thought I was a goner. They sat at the bottom of the stairs and sobbed their hearts out. As for me, I was like, OK, I’ve had a good run, it’s game over now.’
However, he thankfully pulled through and was able to take to the stage for his emotional final gig, calling it ‘my last hurrah… after six traumatic years’.
Though, Ozzy confessed that he still had his doubts until the last minute, telling Sharon he wouldn’t be able to do it and then joking that the sudden stormy weather would cause him to ‘cough up a lung.’
But he said that when he finally looked out on the thousands of gathered fans, he was overcome with emotion, gushing: ‘There was so much love in that stadium, coming at me in waves. I had tears streaming down my face, but I felt so uplifted.
‘Back to the Beginning was the best medicine I’ve had since all my medical s**t started back in 2019. It was a magical night. It couldn’t have been better.’
A new BBC One documentary Sharon & Ozzy Osbourne: Coming Home will chart the self styled Prince Of Darkness’ return to the United Kingdom after more than three decades in the United States with his wife and children.
A sneak peak sees him accepting his impending demise, while joyfully preparing for what he appears to understand will be his onstage swan song.
in a talking-head interview, he said: ‘If my life’s coming to an end, I really can’t complain. I had a great life.’
Ozzy, Sharon and their children Aimee, Kelly and Jack Osbourne will speak candidly about their father’s late-night fall in 2019 and the life-changing impact of that accident in the Paramount+ documentary.
The star died of a heart attack and had coronary artery disease in addition to suffering from Parkinson’s disease for years, his death certificate, published in August, confirmed.
The singer had suffered from coronary artery disease as well as Parkinson’s, according to the certificate filed at a register office in London and obtained by The New York Times.
