| Getting his start
with one of heavy metal monolith Black Sabbath, singer Ozzy Osbourne
split from the band in 1979, and forged a highly successful solo career
that quickly eclipsed his former outfit. While Osbourne's strange antics
sometimes overshadow the music, he helped introduce one of metal's
greatest guitarists in Randy Rhoads, creating numerous metal classics in
the process. Rhoads died in a plane crash in 1982, ending the first
great era of Osbourne's solo career, but Ozzy soldiered on to continued
success. In the '90s, the Ozzfest was inaugurated, a heavy-metal package
tour that helped introduce some of the biggest nu-metal bands of the
late '90s/early '00s. Ironically, Ozzy's greatest stardom came in 2002
with MTV's reality show THE OSBOURNES, focusing on the amusing foibles
of Ozzy's family life |