You Can't Kill Rock and Roll

How the Prince of Darkness brought light into my life

Today, July 22, 2025, John “Ozzy” Osbourne left this world a better place than he found it.

On July 5, 2025, Ozzy Osbourne gave his final performance in Birmingham, England, as part of the “Back to the Beginning” concert. At one point during the show, he disclosed that he didn’t expect to be alive much longer due to his recent litany of health issues.

When I heard this news, it broke my heart. I never want to see Ozzy die because, in a way, he saved my life.

Picture downloaded from Facebook. All credits to original photographer.

My First Encounter

The first time I heard Ozzy’s music, I was just eight years old. Below is an excerpt from my memoir detailing that experience.

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I was eight years old when I fell in love for the first time. It was summertime, the air sweet with birdsong and chirping insects. The shade of the giant lilac bush cooled the corner of the yard where my swing set – a small slide, two chain-link swings with hard plastic bottoms, and a teeter-totter suspended from the center beam – rusted quietly.

I sat on the center swing with Tippy at my feet, clutching a new transistor radio in the shape of Snoopy, the beagle from the Peanuts comic strip. It was a gift from my uncle who had recently moved into the apartment upstairs.

This radio could tune in both AM and FM stations. Nana kept the big radio in the kitchen tuned to the news station on the AM dial or the country music station on the FM dial. Nana preferred the news while my mother preferred the music. I was not a fan of either one. The news was boring and the music was annoyingly twangy.

Unlike the big radio that plugged into the wall, my little Snoopy radio was portable, powered by a 9-volt battery. This meant I could take it outside and listen to anything I wanted, the biggest taste of freedom I had known.

The big dial on the side of Snoopy’s head tuned in the stations while the smaller dial on his back controlled the volume. I held his head near my own as I slowly rotated the big dial. Static blasted from his belly as I quieted the noise with the small dial. More static, faint voices, twangy music, and then a deep voice growled “I AM IRON MAN!”

Fixated by that voice, I froze in place, staring at Snoopy. The music flowed through my body, infecting every cell. The bass boomed within my heart. “Ba-ba-bum-bum-bum. Drr-drr-drr, vroom, vroom, vroom. IRON MAN LIVES AGAIN!”

My whole body shook with excitement. That voice, that wail, that hard-driving bass line. I fell in love with Ozzy Osbourne.

Image downloaded from Facebook. All credit to original creator.

The Time He Saved My Life

The next time his music made an impact, he saved my life.

His “Diary of a Madman” album came out in late 1981, shortly before my fourteenth birthday.

I was a lost and lonely teenage girl with no father figure in my life. Little did I know that the Prince of Darkness was about to fill that role for me.

Shortly after my fourteenth birthday, I made my first suicide attempt. It failed, but I was determined to try again. My home life was unbearable, and I saw death as the only escape.

That summer, I was hanging out with a friend who put the album on the turntable in her bedroom, and I heard the song “Diary of a Madman” for the first time. I was blown away. Here was someone who understood what it felt like to live inside my head.

“Screaming at the window. Watch me die another day.”

I saved up every penny and bought my own copy of the album, playing it nearly every day until my mother couldn’t take it anymore and smashed it to smithereens. It didn’t matter. I had memorized every note and every word to every song on both sides. I can still summon it in my head and play it like my own personal Spotify.

The tattered cardboard album cover remained push-pinned to the wall above my cot until I ran away from home a couple years later. I didn’t say my bedroom wall because I didn’t have a bedroom. I had a cot pushed up against the wall in the dining room, a temporary bed to remind me that I could be sent away at any time.

Over the years, I’ve owned Diary on vinyl, cassette, and on CD. Now I stream it online. Classics don’t die. They just go digital.

Image download from Facebook. All credit to original creator.

I share the same birthday as Randy Rhoads, and I consider that to be my lucky number. Now I imagine Ozzy, Randy, and Lemme sharing some cold Fosters and a laugh in Rock and Roll Heaven. They might even invite Dio to sit at their table.

Because of Ozzy and his music, I lived to see the day he died. Because of him, I didn’t die.

You Can’t Kill Rock and Roll. Legends Live Forever.