When Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath Thrilled Long Beach

Any heavy metal rock fan in Long Beach who wanted to see what Ozzy Osbourne was all about in person had no shortage of opportunities to do so. Over a 20-year period (1971 to 1991), Ozzy appeared 15 times at the Long Beach Arena.

There was no heavy metal before Black Sabbath, though best-selling guitar-heavy acts abounded, including Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple, Cream and Led Zeppelin.

Then came the slow, loud and heavy riffs for Ozzy Osbourne as the head-banging, bat-munching Black Sabbath front man, a band that introduced “doom rock,” according to Danny of London. Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward coined “downer rock” to describe this style of music revolving around the use of Quaaludes and the drinking of wine. The term was soon replaced by “heavy metal”.

Ward performed on Ozzy’s very recent and final show, the pay-per-view “Back To the Beginning” on July 5. Lakewood author Mike Stark of “Black Sabbath: An Oral History” saw the concert. “Seated in a king’s type chair. This was it, the swan song for the band. Bill left in the mid-70s, he was upset Ozzy wasn’t in the band anymore, alcohol and drugs got the best of him, with all of them.”

Ozzy was born John Michael Osbourne in in the multicultural city of Birmingham, England on Dec. 3, 1948. In 1968, Ozzy hooked up with two former members of Mythology, guitarist Tony Iommi and Ward, along with bassist Terence “Geezer” Butler to form what would become Black Sabbath after ditching the name Earth, already taken. Boris Karloff’s 1963 horror flick, “Black Sabbath” was the name source.

Black Sabbath’s debut release, a January 1970 cover of “Evil Woman” originally by the Minneapolis band Crow backed with “Wicked World” was issued only in the UK, where it promptly tanked. At about the same time Jimi Hendrix died in London on Sept. 18, 1970, Black Sabbath released its first hit, “Paranoid,” #4 on the UK charts. At first played mainly on offshore pirate radio like Radio North Sea and Radio Veronica At Sea, “Paranoid” reached the States and charted nationally #61 on Nov. 28, 1970.

Linked to the band’s success, the band were afforded a “briefcase full of cash” to buy drugs, “coke, big time,” said Ward. “Uppers, downers, Quaaludes, whatever you like. It got to the stage where you come up with ideas and forget them, because you were just so out of it.”

In those pre-metal days, concerts in the Long Beach Area were the likes of Linda Ronstadt, Steve Martin and the Guess Who. After a raucous Jethro Tull concert on April 19, 1970, the Long Beach City Council banned rock at the Long Beach Arena for the summer. On Sept. 25, 1971 Black Sabbath appeared at the Long Beach Arena. “It was mind blowing,” said one concertgoer. “People and the smoke, the music, the show he put on, I was hooked.”

On the band’s biggest U.S. hit, #52 in January 1972, “Iron Man,” Ozzy used an RAF oscillator to alter his voice. Hitting #1 on San Diego in March 1972, “Iron Man” was not issued as a single in the UK.

Black Sabbath returned to Long Beach on Sept. 7th, 1975 and on Nov. 6, 1976. In 1977, Ozzy left the band, but returned in short order. Appearing with the Ramones on December 4, 1978 at Long Beach Arena, Ozzy fans showing their displeasure with the Ramones proto-punk sound. “What a mismatch of bands,” said one fan. “Why in the hell wasn’t Van Halen playing with them?”

In April 27, 1979, Osbourne was ousted from Black Sabbath, recording the “Blizzard of Ozz” album with guitarist Randy Rhoads, hitting UK and Chicago charts with “Crazy Train.” Ozzy was sued over another track, “Suicide Solution” by the parents of an American teen who said the song prompted their son to kill himself. In 1984, the case was dismissed.

Ozzy brought his new act to Long Beach on June 27, 1981, the same year he shocked record executives by drunkenly biting off the head of a live dove. Six months in, on January 20, 1982, a fan threw a possibly dead bat on the stage during a Des Moines, Iowa concert while Ozzy’s people catapulted raw meat into the audience.

Despite police warnings over harming animals during his show and thinking the bat was fake, Ozzy decapitated it. For the following three weeks of his tour, Osbourne had to take rabies shots.

Ozzy returned his act back to the Long Beach Arena on April 4 and 5, 1984, June 13 through 15, 1986, Dec. 30 and 31, 1988 and Feb. 8, 1991.

In 1995, Osbourne staged a “retirement” tour, but re-emerged with Ozzfest in 1997, attracting top metal acts. MTV’s “The Osbournes” was a hit with a 2002 Emmy. In January 2020, Osbourne announced that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. It all ended two weeks after “Back to the Beginning” when Ozzy passed away of cardiac arrest on July 22, 2025.

Ward told Mike Stark on KLBP-FM, during that final concert, “My feeling, at that point, was really to get off the drum. Really, that’s what I was thinking about, and to see if Ozzy was okay.” Asked whether this might well be the end of Black Sabbath, Stark replied, “I’m confident it’s the end. It was supposed to be over the last time they went out without Bill Ward, until the other members had second thoughts about ending it without Bill.”