When the world lost Ozzy Osbourne on July 22, 2025, it wasn’t just the passing of a rock legend — it felt like the end of an era. For decades, he was the madman of metal, the unkillable frontman who stared death in the face more times than anyone could count — and laughed back. But even Ozzy knew that the curtain had to fall someday.
Now, with his final memoir, Last Rites — set for release on October 7, 2025, via Grand Central Publishing — fans will hear from the Prince of Darkness one last time. In his own words, unfiltered and deeply reflective, Ozzy looks back on the chaos, the music, and the mortality that finally caught up with him.
“I think I made a mark on the world,” Ozzy writes. “I didn’t check out early, like so many others. I stuck around long enough to see what comes after the madness.”
In Last Rites, Ozzy pulls no punches. The memoir covers everything — his childhood in Birmingham, his rise with Black Sabbath, decades of solo stardom, and the toll fame took on his mind and body. But this time, the tone isn’t wild or chaotic. It’s peaceful, almost tender.
He admits that his failing health — from Parkinson’s struggles to back surgeries — forced him to see life differently. Still, Ozzy being Ozzy, there’s dark humor even in his reflections on death. “If that happens to me,” he wrote, speaking about being kept alive artificially, “please… turn me off. Or fly me to Switzerland, give me one final sip of the jolly juice, and send me out like a Viking.”
Despite the morbidity, Last Rites is far from a sad book. It’s filled with gratitude and defiance — the words of a man who spent his life breaking rules and still somehow found peace. He also opens up about his family — especially Sharon Osbourne, his wife of more than four decades. Ozzy reveals that he wants to be buried beside her, though he jokes that Sharon doesn’t like to talk about it: “Death freaks her out,” he admits. “So I just tell her, when the time comes, throw me in the backyard and let the dogs have me.”
Few musicians lived with the reckless abandon of Ozzy Osbourne and still managed to outlive so many of their peers. Last Rites reads as both confession and victory lap — a reminder that his story could have ended a hundred times before it actually did. The book also revisits his final performance — the “Back to the Beginning” farewell concert — just weeks before his passing. There, standing before thousands, frail but smiling, Ozzy gave fans one last roar. He later called it “the hardest and most beautiful night of my life.”
It’s that mixture of madness and heart that Last Rites captures best. Even in death, Ozzy doesn’t sound defeated. He sounds content — like a man who, after a lifetime of chaos, finally found peace in the noise. Ozzy’s story closes where it began: a kid from Birmingham who dreamed big, sang loud, and refused to die quietly. His final words in Last Rites echo like one last scream from the stage: “I’ve been a drunk, a druggie, a husband, a dad, a survivor — and somehow, I’m still here in people’s heads. That’s all I ever wanted.”
