CLEVELAND, Ohio — It was hard to know just how Ozzy Osbourne would feel about being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Fame — not once, but twice.
After all, the singer famously tried to have his band Black Sabbath removed from the nominating ballot in 1999, declaring the organization “meaningless.” (The group was later inducted as part of the class of 2006.) And last year his wife and manager Sharon Osbourne slammed the Rock Hall for ignoring Osbourne, even though he’d been eligible since 2006.
“They know that Ozzy deserves to be in there,” she said on the “Adam Carolla Show.” “They know…He’s been 43 years a solo artist. He sold nearly a hundred million albums as a solo artist. So where is he? Induct him!”
Now that it’s happening, however, he’s more than happy to become one of the Rock Hall’s handful of multiple inductees.
“It feels big. I’m more than honored,” Osbourne, 75, who’s been battling Parkinson’s disease, says via email. The first-time nominee was particularly buoyed that he finished fourth in the fan voting with more than 400,000 votes. “Since the Rock Hall involves the fans in the voting now, it feels more special, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way.”
He also adds that, “It feels different than with Sabbath because my solo career, it’s been a much larger part of my overall music career as a whole.”
Osbourne parted ways with Black Sabbath acrimoniously in 1979 but found solo success immediately. “Blizzard of Ozz” was a five-times platinum smash in 1980, the first of eight consecutive multi-platinum albums that launched iconic rock hits “Crazy Train,” “Flying High Again,” “Bark at the Moon,” “Shot in the Dark,” “No More Tears and the atypically gentle “Mama, I’m Coming Home.”
He won his first Grammy Award in 1994 for “I Don’t Want to Change the World” and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as well as the Birmingham Walk of Fame in his home town in England.
“I definitely wouldn’t say I was confident” about solo success,” says Osbourne, whose late guitarist and songwriting partner Randy Rhoads was a 2021 recipient of the Rock Hall’s Award For Musical Excellence. “With every new music venture there’s always a certain amount of surprise that comes when you see the fans embrace it, because no one wants to make a record and have it flop.
“I feel like I was invited to a party in 1980, and it hasn’t stopped. Not bad for a guy who was fired from his last band.”
The crazy successful train has, in fact, continued in recent years with a pair of Top 5 albums — “Ordinary Man,” Osbourne’s first in 10 years, in 2020 and “Patient Number 9″ iin 2022. The latter also netted a pair of Grammy Awards — Best Rock Album and Best Metal Performance for “Degradation Rules,” a reuniion track with Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi.
And while the Parkinson’s and other health issues have kept Osbourne off the stage, he did deliver a brief performance to support the latter album during halftime of the Los Angeles Rams’ 2022 home opener. He’s maintained a desire to play live again and has broached the idea of a final Black Sabbath concert back in Birmingham. In the meantime, however, Osbourne says that, “I plan to start working on a new album sometime in the near future,” albeit without any stated timeline.
Osbourne will be celebrated at the Oct. 19 ceremony in Cleveland by inductor Jack Black. An all-star band will perform in his honor, featuring longtime guitarist Zakk Wylde, Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo, Tool’s Maynard James Keenan, Wolfgang Van Halen, Jelly Roll and Billy Idol with his guitarist Steve Stevens.
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductions
What: The 2024 Induction Ceremony will take place at 8 p.m. on Saturday, October 19 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. 1 Center Court, Cleveland. The event is sold out but verified RESALE tickets are still available at Seatgeek.com. The ceremony will be broadcast live on Disney+ with a special re-airing on January 1 on ABC and available Jan. 2 on Hulu.
Inductees: The 2024 performer inductees are Mary J. Blige, Cher, Dave Matthews Band, Foreigner, Peter Frampton, Kool & The Gang, Ozzy Osbourne and A Tribe Called Quest. The Musical Influence inductees are Big Mama Thornton and British bluesmen Alexis Korner and John Mayall.
Jimmy Buffett, the MC5, Dionne Warwick and Norman Whitfield are Musical Excellence inductees, and the Ahmet Ertegun Award goes to pioneering music industry executive Suzanne de Passe.
Guests, presenters and performers: The Rock Hall has said that Blige, Cher, Dave Matthews Band, Foreigner, Frampton, Kool & the Gang and Warwick will be performing at the ceremony. A star-studded list of other performers and presenters will also be at the show, including Julie Roberts, Dua Lipa, Jelly Roll, Busta Rhymes, Dr. Dre, Demi Lovato, Chuck D, Method Man, James Taylor, Keith Urban, Kenny Chesney, Mac McAnally, Roger Daltrey, Sammy Hagar, Slash, Kelly Clarkson, Ella Mai, Chad Smith, Billy Idol, Wolfgang Van Halen, Zakk Wylde, Robert Trujillo, Maynard Kennan, Steve Stevens, Andrew Watt, Lucky Daye and The Roots.
