High-profile, eccentric rocker and reality-show star Ozzy Osbourne, 76, died on July 22 (“The lifestyle I've been living for the last 30 years, I could have been dead a thousand times,” he once admitted). The British singer and songwriter rose to fame with the heavy metal band Black Sabbath. He also worked as a solo artist, and his troubles and hijinks kept fans entertained. Did he bite the head off a bat? According to Wikipedia (and if you can’t trust Wikipedia, who can you trust?), “due to intoxication, he grabbed a dove and bit its head off.” Well, who among us hasn’t done that? He made up for the dove by biting the head off an actual bat in 1982 (he thought it was rubber). He and his family became TV stars with the reality show The Osbournes and its spin-offs; Ozzy came off as a comically befuddled old dad. For all his sometimes out-of-it rants, Osbourne could also come across as rather sweet: “I have a genuine love affair with my audience,” he said. “When I'm on stage they're not privileged to see me. It's a privilege for me to see them. One day, my son and I were arguing and he said: ‘Do you mind if people laugh with you, or at you?’ And I said I didn't give a shit, so long as they were laughing. But really, I was thinking, I wouldn't like to know for a fact that they're laughing at me.”
