(Credits: Far Out / Sony Music Entertainment)
Tue 20 January 2026 17:46, UK
Once Ozzy Osbourne was knighted with the title, ‘The Prince of Darkness’, a self-fulfilling prophecy took over his life, whereby normalcy would never touch his everyday behaviour.
He was a rock star of the purest form, living and breathing the mantra of sex, drugs and rock and roll to an almost dizzying effect, which is ultimately what made him the charismatic frontman he was, and the perfect person to thrust Black Sabbath into rock immortality. If they were going to lay the foundations of heavy metal, as many people thought they would, then he needed to embody its raucous and rebellious spirit.
That spirit laced the vocals of his finest tracks. He orated the revolution on ‘War Pigs’, incited hedonistic violence on ‘Paranoid’ and hypnotised the melody on ‘Sweet Leaf’. Black Sabbath were about to lay the foundations for burning bright and living fast, with Ozzy as their figurehead.
However, the full-throttle approach had somewhat of an expiration date. If Sabbath were to emerge at the beginning of the 1970s, fate had decided that by the end of this new exciting musical decade, the fuel which powered this rock machine would in fact run dry.
Crippled by a descent into drug abuse, one that no longer inspired the chaos of a recording session and instead derailed it, Ozzy was fired from the band and replaced by Ronnie James Dio. Given that the remaining Sabbath members were prolific drug users themselves, the fact that Ozzy tested the limits of their own acceptance shows how truly unhinged he had become.
“We just couldn’t continue with Ozzy,” guitarist Tommy Iommi explained, “As much as everyone wanted us to, we just couldn’t do it. Nothing was happening, and it would have meant the end of the band. We didn’t want to fire him, but we had to if we wanted to continue.”
Naturally, Ozzy didn’t take the news well, which was left to drummer Bill Ward. He said, “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel betrayed by what happened. We weren’t some manufactured boy band whose members were expendable. We were like a family, like brothers. And firing me for being fucked up was hypocritical bullshit.”
As Ozzy rightly pointed out, the band were akin to a family, and that bond ensured that every song on each album was credited with all four members being songwriters. So even though he was largely absent on his final record with the band, Never Say Die!, he is credited as a writer, which means their last song of both the session and album, ‘Swinging The Chain’, served as his last for the band. But aptly, Ozzy refused to sing on the record, given the internal tensions, and so the sealer of his fate, Ward, would step in and cover him one last time, before serving him his notice in the band.
The song itself was dedicated to the band’s situation at the time, and so serves as a rather appropriate, albeit heartbreaking, anthem for Ozzy’s exit, with his helpless brothers wishing him good luck in the final verse.
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