Ozzy Osbourne

Ozzy Osbourne defined heavy metal twice — first as the voice of Black Sabbath, then as a solo artist who launched the career of guitar prodigy Randy Rhoads and helped establish the neoclassical metal tradition. After being fired from Sabbath in 1979, Osbourne recruited Rhoads, a classically trained guitarist whose fusion of baroque technique with metal aggression on Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman created a new template for metal guitar virtuosity. Rhoads's playing — precise arpeggios, harmonized runs, and controlled feedback through a white Jackson Randy Rhoads V and Marshall JCM800 — was as revolutionary in its way as Eddie Van Halen's tapping. Rhoads's tragic death in 1982 devastated Osbourne, but he continued with a succession of gifted guitarists including Jake E. Lee and Zakk Wylde. No More Tears, featuring Wylde's crushing Les Paul tone, became his most commercially successful solo album. Osbourne's voice — a distinctive, nasal wail of surprising emotional range — remains one of metal's most recognizable instruments. His founding of Ozzfest in 1996 helped launch nu-metal and kept him culturally relevant across five decades.