Ever since it was announced Ozzy Osbourne and his Black Sabbath co-stars would reunite for their final ever gig this July, fans and even bandmates have asked: is he up to it?
The 76-year-old’s health has deteriorated over the past few decades, since he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2003 and suffered a near-fatal quad bike accident that same year.
In 2019 Ozzy suffered a fall in his LA home, which aggravated his quad bike injuries, dislodging metal rods in his back, neck and shoulders.
According to his wife Sharon, after Ozzy’s bike accident he stopped breathing and his heart stopped beating, as he was placed in a coma for days.
Ever since, the rocker has updated fans on his health progress, which has been up and down, with multiple cancelled and postponed shows, all culminating in this one-off goodbye show, Back to the Beginning.
Ozzy will enjoy a solo segment, before he’s joined by his fellow Black Sabbath bandmates – Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward – on stage all together for the first time in 20 years.
Ozzy’s heart is being monitored daily
Chatting on Ozzy Speaks, as reported by Mail Online, the rocker revealed recently his blood pressure is being taken 15 times a day after blood clot issues in his legs.
Ozzy explained: ‘I have got this trainer guy who helps people get back to normal. It’s hard going, but he’s convinced that he can pull it off for me. I’m giving it everything I’ve got.
‘It’s endurance. The first thing that goes when you’re laid up is your stamina.
‘I am having my blood pressure taken 15 times a day.. I’ve got this f***ing device on my finger. It’s a monitor to say how my heart rate is.’
He also opened up about his mental health struggles.
‘My head’s crazy. ADHD – I have that badly. I will have done the show and died a death before I even started my exercises. So I try and put it on the back burner,’ he said.
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‘I’m not going up there saying “It’s going to be great. I’m really confident.”
‘In my head I will have died on my ass. I remember being in f***ing Vegas one time being in the dressing room going, “I’m going to play. I’m going to die.”
But he’s determined to see the show through, as Ozzy said: ‘But all I can say is I’m giving 120 percent. If my God wants me to do the show. I’ll do it. Sometimes if I start obsessing on the time, I’ll be insane by Friday. So I’m just taking it one day at a time.’
Ozzy ‘can’t walk’ and may be sitting down for Back to the Beginning
‘I’ll be there, and I’ll do the best I can. So all I can do is turn up,’ Ozzy said in a May interview.
‘You wake up the next morning and find that something else has gone wrong. You begin to think this is never going to end,’ he continued to The Guardian.
‘I’m used to doing two hours on stage, jumping and running around,’ he said, adding: ‘I don’t think I’ll be doing much jumping or running around this time. I may be sitting down.’
A brief history of Ozzy Osbourne’s health struggles
‘If I had a choice between the Parkinson’s and the f***ing neck, I’d go for the Parkinson’s. I’ve been laid up for a year now,’ Ozzy said in 2020.
‘First I had an infection in my hand – that pulled me off the road – then I got pneumonia, then I had the fall, then I had surgery and here I am today. It’s driving me nuts.’
He added of his ‘slow recovery’: ‘I’ve recovered from alcoholism, drug addiction, all of the above. Then I tripped over, and that’s it.’
Since his 2019 fall, Ozzy has endured multiple surgeries, including one he ‘really didn’t need’ which saw his body reject ‘two big metal plates with screws’, Sharon revealed in 2022.
‘The screws in the plates were coming loose and as they were working loose there was debris from bones and muscle and it was caught under his spinal cord’, she shared.
In 2023, Ozzy announced he was undergoing his final ever surgery, because he ‘can’t do it anymore’.
He told The Osbournes Podcast that he will soon have the ‘final surgery on my neck.’
‘Which it is going to be the final surgery because I can’t do it anymore.
Regardless of the way it ends up after tomorrow, I’m not doing it anymore. I can’t.’
Describing how the injury and subsequent surgeries have affected him, the reality star admitted his ‘feet feel like I’ve got bricks tied to them when I’m walking.’
That said, Ozzy has plenty more fire in him, with some choice words for people who think he’s on his ‘last leg’.
Those words? ‘F*** off.’
Ozzy Osbourne predicts his own death
Ozzy said in 2020 he ‘doesn’t think he’ll be around much longer’.
Speaking to Kerrang!, Ozzy said: ‘Do I ever think about when my time’s gonna come? I think about it, I don’t worry about it.
‘I won’t be here in another 15 years or whatever, not that much longer, but I don’t dwell on it. It’s gonna happen to us all. Am I happy now? No. I haven’t got my health. That thing knocked the s*** out of me, man, but I’m still here.’
Five years later in the December 2023 to January 2024 edition of Rolling Stone UK magazine, Ozzy said he’s probably got 10 years left to live.
‘It’s really knocked me about,’ Ozzy said of his operations in recent years.
‘The second surgery went drastically wrong and virtually left me crippled. I thought I’d be up and running after the second and third, but with the last one they put a f**king rod in my spine. They found a tumour in one of the vertebrae, so they had to dig all that out too. It’s pretty rough, man, and my balance is all f**ked up.’
Ozzy added: ‘At best, I’ve got ten years left and when you’re older, time picks up speed.’
Sharon added: ‘It’s been nearly five years of heartache, and at times I’ve just felt so helpless and so bad for Ozzy, to see him going through the pain.’
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