“Did you think you’d be a rock star?” an interviewer had asked Ozzy Osbourne back in the day. He replied, in earnest, “I wanted to be a plumber”.
For a man who had dropped out of school as a teenager and jumped around trades positions, being a labourer, an apprentice toolmaker, a car factory horn-tuner, a slaughterhouse worker and, of course, a trainee plumber, world domination as one of the most beloved faces in music wasn’t really in his plans.
But the stories of so many greats begin like that. I’m thinking about Robert Plant, who was busy becoming an accountant when Led Zeppelin called and was genuinely concerned about abandoning that sturdier post. I’m thinking about Debbie Harry, who was everything from a waitress to a Playboy Bunny, trying to make ends meet before achieving fame with Blondie. I’m thinking about the hundreds of thousands of kids, right now, working quote-unquote “normal” jobs while they dream bigger things, unsure of whether it will ever work, or perhaps, more fittingly, if they’d ever have the money to make it work.
That’s a significant part of Osbourne’s legacy and allure as a star; he was as normal as they come. Obviously, the stories of his life very much aren’t. He had a tough childhood littered with abuse and struggle that led him to a deep dive into the hedonistic, reckless lifestyle that’s now associated with his name. Not every normal person is ripping the head off bats or checking into rehab only to ask where the bar is.
In every other measure, though, Osbourne was a normal man. He was born in Birmingham to a working-class family as the son of a factory worker and a toolmaker. He supported Aston Villa, lived in a small two-bed house along with his parents and three sisters. He was, in his own words, “an ordinary man”.
It could be argued that that’s exactly why Osbourne spiralled out of control, becoming the wild ‘Prince of Darkness’ the world knew him as, because what else does a young man do when they go from being strapped for cash to being a world-famous rockstar? As he said in the career-explaining track ‘Ordinary Man’, “I was unprepared for fame / Then everybody knew my name”.
I say career-explaining because that’s what the 2020 track feels like. As he returned with his first album in a decade, it felt like a turning point in which Osbourne wanted to start being more honest, telling the stories of his life and ensuring his fans knew him as a person, rather than just the persona the world had hooked onto. The title track is the clearest example as the singer traces his career, from the initial burst of fame he found with Black Sabbath, through his dangerous antics, holding his hands up to wrong doings but ultimate landing on the same thought that first powered him into the music world: “the truth is I don’t wanna die an ordinary man”.
The song was already poignant, but now with the news of Osbourne’s sad passing, ‘Ordinary Man’ feels like a kind of self-written obituary where the singer reflects on his career, on the highs and lows, and lands on a sense of contentment and a simple desire; “Don’t forget me as the colors fade”, he sings, reminding everyone, “When the lights go down / It’s just an empty stage”, and on it stood John Michael ‘Ozzy’ Osbourne, a man from Birmingham who just happened to become a star.
