In a new interview with Australian Musician, Sebastian Bach spoke about Ozzy Osbourne’s recent passing and his reaction to hearing the news that he had died.
“I was still recuperating from the concert, [Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne’s farewell show] ‘Back To The Beginning,’ [when I found out Ozzy had died],” Bach said. “I never pay for streaming or whatever, but I saw, the day after that concert, there was some footage on YouTube from the pro-shot [livestream of the event], and I cried watching it ’cause I love Black Sabbath and I love seeing them, at their age, get together and play one last time.
“So I watched it and I was blown away. And so I invited my friends over… So I had this packed house… and I had paid the money for the stream, and we watched as much as we could. And it was just so heavy watching them that I wasn’t prepared for him to die. I was still recuperating from watching that concert, which was only one week or a week and a half before he left us. So the day that he died, I was not prepared. I don’t think any of us were prepared, because we had just seen that concert literally days before.”
He continued, opening up about grief and what it is like to lose your heroes:
“I have this thing… I learned this when my dad died in 2002. I cried so much that I had no more tears left. For months, I was so hurt that my dad died at the age of 57, which is how old I am right now — knock on wood. Anyways, so we all go through that. That’s life. Every one of us has to deal with that. But what I did learn is that sometimes I have to compartmentalize things in order to get through the day.
“And since my dad died, sometimes now when a family member dies or one of my heroes dies, like Ozzy or Gregg Allman or Eddie Van Halen or Neil Peart, sometimes I pretend that it never happened. I know that’s kind of a lousy thing.
“I just lost my cousin Kevin — he was 52 — from cancer, and part of me refuses to accept that. In my brain, I’m, like, ‘F*ck cancer. F*ck you. I’m not gonna let myself really feel that.’ Of course, I do feel it, and sometimes it hits me, but when my dad died, I had no compartmentalization. So as I get older, maybe it’s cold, maybe it’s not right, but sometimes I just pretend that this never happened. And I still haven’t accepted that Ozzy Osbourne is dead, because a part of my childhood dies with Ozzy, and I’m not a child. [Laughs] So I’d better get used to that.”
