Kelly Osbourne reveals Ozzy’s birthday cards
Today is Kelly Osbourne’s birthday, and it’s sadly her first without her beloved father Ozzy Osbourne. Kelly posted photos of Ozzy’s handwritten birthday cards for her, and she expressed sadness that she’ll never get another one from him.
Kelly said, “Tomorrow is going to be a first for me. The first birthday without my dad. Every year the thing I look forwarded to the most was spending the day with him and the cards he would write me. Knowing that I will never get one again shatters my heart. Here are just a few of them. They were always short, simple but said everything I needed to hear. I love you Daddy tomorrow will suck without you. 💔”
Ozzy’s everlasting love is surely shining down from Heaven onto Kelly on her birthday today, and these photos of Ozzy’s cards are a touching tribute.
Geezer Butler reveals last rehearsals with Ozzy
It’s been a tough time for everyone close to Ozzy since his loss, from family members like Kelly, to bandmates like Geezer Butler. In the latest episode of his wife Gloria’s podcast “Gabbing with Girlfriends,” bassist Geezer Butler reflected on Black Sabbath’s farewell show “Back to the Beginning” – which took place at Villa Park in Birmingham, UK just a little over two weeks before Ozzy Osbourne’s death.
During their discussion, Butler answered several viewer-submitted questions, including one about how he initially reacted to being asked to perform at the massive event.
“I suppose I was just wondering how everybody would do,” he explained. “I knew Ozzy wasn’t in the best of health. I knew Bill [Ward] hadn’t been well for a while. Tony [Iommi] was up for it, and I was up for it as long as everybody else was. And I said ‘yeah’ straight away, ‘I’ll do it.’ Especially as it was at Villa Park, [the home stadium of] my football team and one of the earliest places I ever went to and I was a little child.”
He then went on to recall reuniting with the band for rehearsals, and admitted how shocked he was to see just how unwell Osbourne was.
“When we get together, it’s almost like we’ve just seen each other the week before, even though it’s been like six or seven years or whatever. Of course, Tony was joking about Bill ’cause he kept saying he looked like [‘The Hobbit’ character] Gollum. [Laughs] The only shocking bit was when Ozzy came in,” Butler said. “I knew Ozzy was very ill, but I didn’t realize how ill he was.”
“We were rehearsing, the three of us. We started — me, Tony and Bill — rehearsed for the first two days just to get all the music together, sort out which songs we were gonna do and everything like that. And then on the third day, Ozzy came in and he was helped in by two helpers. And I was just shocked to see him like that,” he continued. “And, of course, being Ozzy, he had to crack a few jokes and things. And they had like an armchair set aside so he could sit down to sing through the songs, ’cause he couldn’t stand up.
“I think we rehearsed about six or seven songs and picked out four or five. We knew we could only do four or five ’cause of the time limit, and we picked out the four or five songs that sounded the best and which we were most comfortable with. And after that, we fell into the old Sabbath again. Ozzy could only do it once, could only rehearse, go through the songs one time and then he’d leave and we’d sort of carry on. We had to get the solos really well together and stuff like that.”
Speaking specifically about his reunion with Osbourne, Butler added: “It was just great to be back together again after all these years. I mean, he’s probably my oldest friend. I’ve known him for 57 years, so it was great to get back together again.”
Regarding the fact that “Back to the Beginning” only took place 17 days before Osbourne passed away, he said: “I’m so glad it happened like that, that we finished on such a great note.”
