(Credits: Far Out / Daniel Zappe)
Tue 13 January 2026 19:30, UK
For someone that was synonymous with all things macabre, Ozzy Osbourne wasn’t all that comfortable being considered a metal artist.
When Black Sabbath first formed, he wasn’t looking to invent a whole new genre, and while they may have become musical heroes almost by accident, it didn’t hurt that he was treated like a rock and roll elder statesman the minute he struck out on his own after Sabbath. But for all of the fantastic riffs that blared out of Tony Iommi’s amplifier, there were just as many artists that were willing to be a little bit dirtier than those classic licks.
But ‘The Prince of Darkness’ tended to have a heart of gold whenever he began talking with bands he took out on tour. It’s one thing for him not to get along with every single person he came in contact with, but at heart, he was still a passionate fan of music, so it was a thrill for him to see everyone from Motley Crue to Metallica giving him a run for his money whenever they opened up for him.
Going out on tour with Osbourne might as well have been a right of passage for the metal legends, but the generation that ‘The Ozzman’ came from had a much different outlook on the genre. They were hard rock at the end of the day, and chances are no metal band would have been able to get away with a song that sounded as Beatlesque as ‘Goodbye to Romance’ off of Blizzard of Ozz.
If Osbourne took inspiration from The Beatles whenever he sang, Lemmy was his Stonesy counterpart whenever he hit the road with Motorhead. He was the epitome of what a rock and roll star was supposed to sound like, but between his everyday rotation of booze and drugs, he always found a way to keep himself at the right level up until the moment he passed away. And while ‘Ace of Spades’ might have been the most overplayed tune in their catalogue, Osbourne felt it was like that for a reason.
Sabbath had already made classics like Paranoid by this point, but Osbourne felt that Lemmy’s tune was among the greatest songs in hard rock, saying, “That was their ‘Paranoid’ as far as I’m concerned. It even got them on Top of the Pops, so it’s a good job Lemmy hadn’t called the band Bastard. I mean, ‘Ace of Spades’ is just one of the great metal anthems of all time. When that came out, I was like, okay, they’ve made it. They’re gonna be around forever now.”
But it was more than the riffs that made Lemmy one of the greatest bandleaders in rock and roll. People can talk about the myth behind Motorhead, but if Sabbath pioneered pieces of metal as a whole, a tune like ‘Overkill’ took everything that Lemmy stood for and pushed to into speed metal territory, to the point where nearly any metal band could easily get away with doing a half-decent cover of the tune and sound convincing.
Underneath those mutton chops and the largest facial warts, though, Osbourne remembered Lemmy as a sweetheart whenever he collaborated with him. He was someone that truly believed in the brotherhood of rock and roll, and even if he saved a lot of his heartfelt side for the records he made, the fact that he was able to make something as gutwrenching as ‘Mama I’m Coming Home’ is insane considering the reputation that he had.
Then again, that was part of the whole appeal of Lemmy in the first place. The regular rules for rockstars never really applied to him, and if anyone tried to get in his way when he was writing his tunes, he was going to either go in the exact opposite direction or give them a good thrashing.
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