RIP Ozzy Osbourne

A lot of metaphorical water can flow very quickly under the allusive bridge at our age. On the sixth of this month I referred to my teenage encounter with a very young Ozzie Osbourne and the recently infamous Black Sabbath in 1970, and now, just seventeen days later, that satanic scion of Aston himself is indeed dead, taking his inevitable, final, bow, having played out his life with a last curtain call at the Villa ground. Not many bands can be credited with inventing a musical genre, but Ozzie and Sabbath did, reflecting the dirt, noise and grit of 1960s Brummagem in the direct analogue of their sound: abrasive music for an abrasive city and its people. The Swinging Sixties never really got much further than the Watford Gap: Birmingham was still grinding its way out of postwar austerity even as late as 1980, and the soundtrack that Sabbath provided, more than most, was always more appropriate - and indeed local - than any of the West Coast psychedelia or prog-rock that we were listening to at the time. So, fare thee well on whatever journey you're now undertaking, Mr. Osbourne, and may the road rise up to meet you; although I suspect that blessing may have been a quite literal descriptor many times in your life, our kid...