For the Back Street Kids
July 29, 2025 at 06:30PMOzzy Osbourne died last week, shortly after performing in his final concert before a global audience of 6 million. Here, John Darnielle, the lead musician of the Mountain Goats—and novelist, activist, and all-around good-seeming dude—opines on Ozzy’s impact. On music, yes, because Ozzy and Black Sabbath created a whole new genre. But also on individual listeners, which Darnielle illustrates with an anecdote from his youth:
One of the older among the partying teenagers sat mainly by himself, drinking beer from a can; he had a beard; he might have been in his twenties. My habit was to ask every older person what music they liked, to get as much information as I could. From a swiveling chair near him, I asked: What are you into? And he said—word for word—“Ozzy Osbourne. I’m just telling everyone I know, Ozzy Osbourne.”
I was desperate to learn what the grown-up world was like. I registered this lesson as if I might later need it under duress.
Under the stewardship of his wife, Sharon, and with the support of his family, Osbourne’s fame grew until he’d successfully infiltrated the mainstream. About that, and about the head of the bat and also the dove, and the TV show and the pissing event at the Alamo, you can read in all the other obituaries. But for me, as, I suspect, for many of us who have followed his music through various lineups, departures and returns, cycles of growth, the nameless bearded guy in the bubble car speaks to the Ozzy whose work would be with us when, in harder years, we became the guy stealing beer from the unattended bar, and revealing our hearts to whoever happened to be nearby.
Contemplating the music that would speak to us then, in our time between stations, surrendering out of necessity to the uncertain motion of the moment—that moment of need, not for direction but just for the voice of someone who sounded like he understood. Someone who might be us, if we got lucky: who sounded like us when we sang to ourselves, hollering “Yeah!” when the intensity peaks but otherwise requiring words written by a friend. Because sometimes you can’t, yourself, find the words beyond the moment. So you lurch, and you whip your hair, or you lean back drunk in your chair. Lost. Wasted. Telling everyone we know: Ozzy Osbourne.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/07/29/for-the-back-street-kids/
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