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George Kooymans 7/2025

George Kooymans (77) – lead guitarist for Golden Earring – was born 11 March 1948 in The Hague, the Netherlands.

In 1961, 13 year old Kooymans and his 15 year old neighbor Rinus Gerritsen formed a rock duo. They originally called themselves “The Tornados”, but changed their name to “The Golden Earrings” when they learnt of The Tornados, a UK instrumental group who had just had a hit with “Telstar“. The name “the Golden Earrings” was taken from an instrumental called “Golden Earrings” performed by the British group the Hunters, for whom they often served as opening and closing act. Initially a pop-rock band with Frans Krassenburg on lead vocals and another neighborhood kid Jaap Eggermont on drums, the Golden Earrings had several pophits with ‘Please Go’, ‘Daddy Buy Me A Girl’ en ‘In My House’ all recorded in 1965. Dissatisfied with Dutch recording studios, the band’s manager Fred Haayen arranged for the next single to be recorded at the Pye Records studios in London. The record cut at Pye, “That Day”, reached number two on the Dutch charts. But then singer Krassenburg was called into military service and for 18 months the band was limited. By 1967 Kooymans and Gerritsen wanted to go a different musical direction and after two albums, and in 1968 Indonesian born Dutch singer/songwriter Barry Hay joined on lead vocals permanently, and by 1970, drummer Sieb Warner had been replaced by Cesar Zuiderwijk, and the principal lineup (that would last for 50 years) was finalized.

Two years later, the band earned their first number one hit in the Netherlands with the song “Dong Dong Diki Digi Dong” and followed it with another chart-topper, the Kooymans-penned epic “Just a Little Bit of Peace in My Heart.” Golden Earring embarked on their first major US tour in 1969–1970. Owing to American influences, their music evolved towards hard rock, and they performed along with Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Procol Harum, and Eric Clapton. Ground work for entering the US market was being laid by East Coast FM radio disc jockey and music critic Neil Kempfer-Stocker, who is credited as the first radio DJ to play the band in the US. These singles were followed by a successful psychedelic rock album Eight Miles High, which featured a 19-minute version of the title track, a cover of the 1966 hit song by the Byrds. The song, played throughout their US tour, became the core performance of their live shows, and their experience in the US led them to make their studio albums resemble their live shows, rather than the other way around.

In 1970, Kooymans branched out into songwriting for other groups, penning Earth & Fire‘s Dutch hit “Seasons.” Meanwhile, his main band shortened its name to Golden Earring and set about revamping its sound to keep up with the times, eventually settling on a straightforward, hard-rocking brand of AOR.

Kooymans (like lead singer Barry Hay) made a brief detour into solo recording in 1971, cutting an album called Jojo that was released on Polydor. 

Between 1969 and 1984, Golden Earring completed 13 US tours. During this period, they performed as the opening act for Santana, King Crimson, the Doobie Brothers, Rush and .38 Special. During 1973–74, when “Radar Love” was a hit, they had Kiss and Aerosmith as their opening acts. The band enjoyed brief international fame in the 1970s when the single version of “Radar Love” (1973), from the gold-certified album Moontan, became a hit in both Europe and the US. The band’s American records during this period were issued by the Perception Records label in New York, and the band’s Golden Earring LP, known as Wall of Dolls, and single “Back Home” performed poorly in the US but became a number 1 hit in the Netherlands.

Golden Earring released the Live album in 1977. The album was recorded at London’s Rainbow Theater.

US stardom evaporated as quickly as it had been built. Punk and new wave forced them to retool their sound once again, and they returned to international prominence in 1982 with the album Cut and the U.S. Top Ten hit “Twilight Zone,” a Kooymans composition that had actually been planned as a solo release at first. When “Twilight Zone” hit the airwaves, the music video of the song was played on the recently launched MTV, and helped the song to become a US hit, spending 27 weeks on the Billboard chart. 

As a key creative force behind Golden Earring, Kooymans co-wrote many of the band’s most iconic songs with singer Barry Hay.

When the Lady Smiles” became an international hit in 1984, reaching No. 3 in Canada and becoming the band’s fifth number one hit in their native country, but was not successful in the United States, reaching no higher than #76 on the US Singles Chart. Reason for that could be found in the fact that the song’s video was banned from MTV because of its “unholy desires about a nun and a lobotomy“.  Tragedy struck when touring the US in 1984, and the band played at the Great Arena Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey on May 11 and were in the midst of their performance when a fire broke out at the Haunted Castle on the opposite side of the theme park, killing eight teenagers.

Following this tour, Golden Earring turned their focus toward Europe where they continued to attract standing-room-only crowds for years to come. The group paused briefly after the release of The Hole in 1986 to focus on other projects, with Hay and Kooymans both releasing solo albums (Victory of Bad Taste and Solo, respectively) the following year. The group then reconvened to record their final album of the 1980s, releasing Keeper of the Flame in 1989.

Over the decades, George Kooymans’ powerful guitar riffs, melodic sensibility, and distinctive voice helped shape the band’s sound through a remarkable career that spanned more than 50 years. And beyond his work with Golden Earring, Kooymans also pursued solo projects and collaborations with other Dutch musicians. His solo album, “Jojo” (1987) showcased his versatility as a songwriter and performer. He also contributed significantly to the Dutch music scene through his production work and support for emerging artists.

In 1991, Golden Earring had another hit in the Netherlands with “Going to the Run”, a rock-ballad about a Hells Angels motorcycle gang member who was a friend of the band and died in a crash. Between 1992 and 2004, the band released three acoustic live unplugged albums, which became quick successes. The first, The Naked Truth, sold 450,000 copies within the first year and became the third-best selling album of 1993 in the Netherlands.

In 1995, Kooymans and Hay discovered female rock singer Anouk, and wrote material for her 1997 debut album, Together Alone, which made her a star in the Netherlands. Golden Earring celebrated their 50th anniversary in 2011, which the Dutch postal service honored with a stamp that contained a music link: when a smartphone with a special app is held up to the music stamp, Golden Earring’s “Radar Love” plays.

Kooymans reached the Dutch charts once again in 2010 with On Location, recorded as part of a duet with American singer Frank Carillo.

On 11 May 2012, the band released what was to be their final studio album, Tits ‘n Ass.

On 5 February 2021, the band’s manager announced to the Dutch press that the band’s active career was over due to George Kooymans’ serious ALS illness.

During their career they had nearly 30 top ten singles on the Dutch charts and released 25 studio albums.

In the shadow of Ozzy Osbourne’s death on the same date, George Kooymans passed on July 22, 2025 from complications of ALS. He was 77 years old.

 

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Ozzy Osbourne 7/2025

John MichaelOzzyOsbourne (76) – frontman with Black Sabbath – was born 3 December 1948 in northern Birmingham, England. With 3 older sisters and 2 younger brothers the family lived in a 2 bedroom home in the Aston area of Birmingham.

This is a tribute to one of rock’s true superstars; someone who was so far out from the norm that pigeonholing him and his band Black Sabbath, was virtually impossible. In 1970 Led Zeppelin was considered heavy metal. A couple of months later but Sabbath had a new, already younger audience. Despite getting terrible reviews initially, the band gained traction. Kind of like KISS. But KISS was flamboyant, the fantasy of middle class players (and listeners!), Sabbath was dark and dirty and the band came from Birmingham, not London.

It was late July 1970 and we -my band- were on the road to a Saturday night gig in Dusseldorf Germany, when “Paranoid” came on the radio. All five of us instantly stopped what we were doing and turned up the volume. The pumping energy was intoxicating. All powerchords I knew and since it fit our musical bill, I suggested we’d play that song that evening without knowing the title nor the lyrics. My opening lyric was “I did it (finished!?) with my woman, ’cause she couldn’t help me with my mind”. The pulsating hook was easy “Can you help? Occupy my brain, ok yeah” The rest was improvised gibberish. The audience was German, nobody would probably know the song yet. So what the hell, we went for it, improvised the lead in an E-minor pentatonic….and got a thundering applause. That was our introduction to the Gentle Prince of Darkness and his band Black Sabbath. We had improvised something like this before with Guess Who’s “American Woman.” It was the exhilarating fun of being a rock circuit band of the day.

Ozzy’s life was so multi faceted, cross experienced and balls against the wall, that no tribute could do it complete justice. But next to Lemmy Kilmister, he was the truest personification of rock. Lemmy was an icon, but Ozzy is the Legend. So here  goes his life (in a nutshell).

At the age of 11, Ozzy suffered sexual abuse from school bullies. He said he attempted suicide multiple times as a teenager. But later he participated in school plays, including Gilbert and Sullivan‘s The Mikado and H.M.S. Pinafore. The extroverted part of Ozzy began showing, albeit sometimes a bit over the top. Upon hearing the first hit single of the Beatles at age 14, he became a fan of the band and credited their 1963 song “She Loves You” with inspiring him to become a musician. In later life Osbourne said that the Beatles made him realize that “he was going to be a rock star the rest of his life”. He said so to Paul McCartney in a 2001 video clip.

Osbourne left school at the age of 15 and was employed as a construction site laborer, trainee plumber, apprentice toolmaker, car factory horn-tuner, and slaughterhouse worker. At the age of 17, he was convicted of robbing a clothes shop, but was unable to pay the fine; his father also refused to pay it to teach him a lesson, resulting in Osbourne spending six weeks in Winson Green Prison.

In late 1967, Geezer Butler, another Birmingham musician, formed his first band, Rare Breed, and recruited Osbourne to be the singer, actually against the advice of guitarist Tony Iommi, who was doubtful of Ozzy’s singing capacity. The band played two shows and broke up. Osbourne and Butler reunited in another band, Polka Tulk Blues, which included guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward, whose band Mythology had recently broken up. They renamed the band Earth, but after being accidentally booked for a show instead of a different band with the same name, they decided to change the band’s name again, settling on the name Black Sabbath in August 1969. The band’s name was inspired by the film of the same title. Black Sabbath noticed how people enjoyed being frightened during their stage appearances, which inspired their decision to play a heavy blues style of music laced with gloomy sounds and lyrics. While recording their first album, Butler read an occult book and woke up seeing a dark figure at the end of his bed. Butler told Osbourne about it, and together they wrote the lyrics to “Black Sabbath“, their first song in a darker vein. Soon he adopted the moniker “Prince of Darkness”.

The first album was the self-titled ‘Black Sabbath’, released 13 February 1970. Seven months later the second album Paranoid was released and broke the band worldwide. Eight months after ‘Paranoid’, the third album ‘Master of Reality’ was released. It was Sabbath’s third album in 18 months. The album reached the top ten in both the United States and UK, and was certified gold in less than two months. In the 1980s, it received platinum certification and went Double Platinum in later years. Initial reviews of the album were unfavorable. Lester Bangs of Rolling Stone famously dismissed Master of Reality as “naïve, simplistic, repetitive, absolute doggerel”, although the very same magazine would later place the album at number 298 on their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list.

To be somewhat fair, the early critics simply couldn’t adjust quick enough to the changes in popular music taking place at the time. From the Summer of Love to Psychedelic folk rock, Westcoast Popart to Hendrix and Joplin and the eighteen wheeler sound of Led Zeppelin, nobody was ready for the persona of Ozzy Osbourne and a band named Black Sabbath. The kids from Birmingham steamrolled over accepted blues based formulas and had opened an alternative universe.

After the unexpected success of their first album, Black Sabbath were considering Don Arden, as their new manager. His 18 year old daughter Sharon was at that time working as his receptionist. Ozzy admits he was attracted to her almost immediately but assumed that “she probably thought I was a lunatic”. Osbourne later recalled that the best thing about eventually choosing Don Arden as manager was that he got to see Sharon regularly, though their relationship was strictly professional at that point.

In September 1972, Black Sabbath released Black Sabbath ‘Vol. IV’ featured the song ‘Changes’. Critics were still dismissive of the album; however, it reached gold status in less than a month and was the band’s fourth consecutive album to sell over one million copies in the United States.

In November 1973, Black Sabbath released the critically acclaimed Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. For the first time, the band received favorable reviews in the mainstream press, who seemed to have finally caught on. Gordon Fletcher of Rolling Stone called the album “an extraordinarily gripping affair” and “nothing less than a complete success”. Decades later, AllMusic’s Eduardo Rivadavia called the album a “masterpiece, essential to any heavy metal collection”, while also claiming the band displayed “a newfound sense of finesse and maturity”. The album marked the band’s fifth consecutive platinum selling album in the US. Sabotage was released in July 1975. Again, there were favorable reviews. Rolling Stone stated, “Sabotage is not only Black Sabbath’s best record since Paranoid, it might be their best ever.” In a retrospective review, AllMusic was less favorable, noting that “the magical chemistry that made such albums as Paranoid and Volume 4 so special was beginning to disintegrate”. Technical Ecstasy, released on 25 September 1976, was also met with mixed reviews. AllMusic gives the album two stars, and notes that the band was “unravelling at an alarming rate”, perhaps the result of Ozzy rapidly coming undone in a world of drugs and alcohol.

Between late 1977 and early 1978, Osbourne left the band for three months to pursue a solo project called Blizzard of Ozz, a title which had been suggested by his father. Three members of the band Necromandus, who had supported Sabbath in Birmingham when they were called Earth, backed Osbourne in the studio and briefly became the first incarnation of his solo band.

At the request of the other band members, Osbourne rejoined Sabbath. The band spent five months at Sounds Interchange Studios in Toronto, where they wrote and recorded their next album, Never Say Die! “It took quite a long time”, Iommi said of Never Say Die! “We were getting really drugged out, doing a lot of dope. We’d go down to the sessions, and have to pack up because we were too stoned; we’d have to stop. Nobody could get anything right; we were all over the place, and everybody was playing a different thing. We’d go back and sleep it off, and try again the next day.”

In May 1978, Black Sabbath began the Never Say Die! Tour with Van Halen as an opening act. Reviewers called Sabbath’s performance “tired and uninspired” in stark contrast to the “youthful” performance of Van Halen, who were touring the world for the first time. The band recorded their concert at Hammersmith Odeon in June 1978, which was released on video as Never Say Die. The final show of the tour and Osbourne’s last appearance with Black Sabbath for another seven years, was in Albuquerque, New Mexico on 11 December.

In 1979, Black Sabbath returned to the studio, but tension and conflict arose between band members. Osbourne recalled being asked to record his vocals over and over, and tracks were manipulated endlessly by Iommi. The relationship between Osbourne and Iommi became contentious. On 27 April 1979, at Iommi’s insistence but with the support of Butler and Ward, Osbourne was ejected from Black Sabbath. The reasons provided to him were that he was unreliable and had excessive substance abuse issues compared to the other members. Osbourne maintained that his use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs at that time was similar to that of the other members.

Ozzy had been lead singer for the first eight Black Sabbath albums.

He was replaced with another voice of rock and roll Ronnie James Dio, who sang with Black Sabbath from 1979 – 1982 and 1991 – 1992, while also participating in the Heaven and Hell project  from 2006 until his death in 2010.

After leaving Black Sabbath, Osbourne recalled,

“I’d got £96,000 for my share of the name, so I’d just locked myself away and spent three months doing coke and booze. My thinking was, ‘This is my last party, because after this I’m going back to Birmingham and collect unemployment benefits.”

However, Don Arden signed him to Jet Records with the aim of recording new material. Arden dispatched his daughter Sharon to Los Angeles to “look after Ozzy’s needs, whatever they were”, to protect his investment. Arden initially hoped Osbourne would return to Sabbath, who he was personally managing at that time, and later attempted to convince the singer to name his new band “Son of Sabbath”, which Osbourne hated. Sharon attempted to convince Osbourne to form a supergroup with guitarist Gary Moore.

“When I lived in Los Angeles”, Moore recalled, ” Moore’s band G-Force helped him to audition musicians. If drummers were trying out, I played guitar, and if a bassist came along, my drummer would help out. We actually felt sorry for him, basically. He was always hovering around trying to get me to join, and I wasn’t having any of it.”

A year after Ozzy was kicked out of  Sabbath, Sharon Darden started managing his solo career, which mostly because of her influence sky-rocketed. The two got married in 1982 after Ozzy got divorced from his first wife Thelma. Ozzy released his first solo album ‘Blizzard of Ozz’ in 1980. The album featured songs that became true Ozzy classics, ‘Crazy Train’ and ‘Mr Crowley’, supported by  guitar virtuoso Randy Rhoads fretboard pyrotechnics.

Manager Sharon, together with the virtuosity of Randy Rhoads put Ozzy back together and created the Blizzard of Ozzy:

Dana Strum, a bassist and acquaintance of Rhoads in L.A., was aware of Ozzy’s search for a new guitar player and persistently encouraged Rhoads to audition. Nobody is denying the epiphany of Randy Rhoads’ arrival, though. The 22-year-old Quiet Riot guitarist was no Sabbath fan and almost bunked his audition slot, but he only had to doodle a few harmonics through a practice amp for Ozzy to promise him a call-back. “I’d never auditioned anyone, and I was all over the fucking place,” Ozzy admitted later. “But fucking hell, when I first heard Randy play, it was poetry in motion. I thought, ‘Wow, I’m onto a great thing here.’ Who knows why we worked so well. Who knows the answer to anything? But sometimes you’ll meet a girlfriend and it’s more than just a fucking night in the sack.”

“Ozzy said all he’d heard all day was guys trying to play like Tony Iommi,” Randy once noted. “He appreciated that I was playing my own style.” There is a romantic notion that Osbourne and Rhoads shook on their partnership right here. Actually, says bass player Daisley – who kept a diary from 1976 and wrote a tell-all autobiography called For Facts Sake! – after the audition the singer left LA for his home in Stafford, England, and Rhoads only re-entered the frame after yet another guitarist was fired.

“That’s when Ozzy said, ‘Well, I met this great guitar player in LA,’” Daisley explains. “The management wanted to keep it as a UK-based band, but no guitarists were that interested, because Ozzy didn’t have the best reputation to work with.”

Reluctantly, management flew Rhoads to London, continues Daisley. “Ozzy and I went into Jet Records in about October 1979, and Randy was already there. Now Ozzy had told me that Randy was a guitar teacher at his mum’s school in LA, so I anticipated a guy with a pipe slippers, cardigan and glasses. I walk in and see this young guy; his clothes were very fitted, his hair was perfect, his nails were manicured. I actually said to Ozzy: ‘D’you think he’s gay?’”

But when Rhoads plugged in, the planets aligned. “When we finished our first jam,” recalls Daisley, “we said at the same time, ‘I like the way you play.’ He was confident and precise; he had the influence of bluesy players like Hendrix, Blackmore and Jeff Beck, but his classical training gave him another dimension.” So after a decade spent cowering beneath Iommi’s iron fist, Ozzy was back from the dead with a band that nurtured his talent, rebuilt his confidence, and even transposed keys to suit his doomy bark. “In Sabbath,” Ozzy said, “I’d have to put my vocals on whatever key they put the song in, and sometimes I couldn’t reproduce it onstage. But Randy was like, ‘Come on, maybe you should try it in this key.’”

“It really was a band,” agrees Daisley. “We were meant to come together. We fed off each other. The music side was more me and Randy: we’d sit on chairs opposite each other, playing the instruments and putting the songs together. I wrote the lyrics. Ozzy was very good at the vocal melodies. The first songs we wrote were Goodbye To Romance, I Don’t Know and Crazy Train.

“That signature riff for Crazy Train in F# minor was Randy’s, then Daisley wrote the part for him to solo over, and Ozzy had the vocal melody. The title came because Randy had an effect that was making a sorta psychedelic chugging sound through his amp. Randy and Daisley were train buffs, they collected model trains, and Daisley said, ‘That sounds like a crazy train.’ Ozzy had this saying, ‘You’re off the rails!’ so we used that in the lyrics.”

Though it received little radio airplay upon its initial release as a single, “Crazy Train” has become one of Osbourne’s signature songs and a staple of classic rock radio playlists over the ensuing years. In January 2009, the song achieved a 2× Platinum certification status.

Meeting with Randy Rhoads solidified Ozzy’s solo career, but sadly also Randy’s destruction. He died two years and one album “Diary of a Madman” later, in a stupid and completely unnecessary, drug induced light plane crash. Randy never reached his true genius. Blizzard Of Ozz was undeniably great. Unleashed in September 1980, it hit the metal scene like a wrecking ball, flicked two fingers at the flailing Sabbath and provided the year’s hottest setlist when the band took it on the road. But if Diary of a Madman was any yard stick of his talent, he would have been the unmatched emperor of rock guitar.

Management and record company double crossed the other musicians in the band by repackaging what had started as a band, into an Ozzy solo project. Despite growing friction, the line-up was still able to pump out the classics when the label pushed for a follow-up. “After we came off the road,” says Daisley, “we started the writing and recording for Diary Of A Madman. With a US tour booked, the label only allowed the band a six-week window at Ridge Farm Studios. Nevertheless, everyone agreed that Rhoads had blossomed between the two albums, and heard in hindsight, his Diary parts do seem more visionary and ambitious, from the swells and selector flicks of rock ballad Tonight to the seismic brutality of Believer. Diary Of A Madman was arguably the stronger of the two albums. It seemed like a tantalizing hint at what the line-up would do next, but turned out to be a maddening full stop instead, as Daisley and Kerslake were fired in 1981 and Randy Rhoads died on March 19, 1982 in a senseless accident.

The dream team had splintered and nothing would be the same. Bark At The Moon, Speak of the Devil and the Ultimate Sin turned out to be the first of several fine albums, yet it’s no insult to argue that Osbourne never quite matched that opening run. “The two albums Randy played on were fucking monsters,” he sighs. “They still sound great to this day.”

The rest of the 1980s acts were wearing spandex, cleaned up for mainstream consumption, and Ozzy was still down and dirty. This is the music you listened to while you drank beer and went wild, not worrying about the consequences, this is the music that infected you and drove you, this was ROCK AND ROLL!

The rest of the 1980 saw many shifts of players in his solo band, while Osbourne continued to struggle with chemical dependency. In 1988 Zakk Wylde came on board and became the most enduring replacement for Rhoads. Together, they recorded No Rest for the Wicked. Also in 1988 Osbourne performed on the rock ballad “Close My Eyes Forever“, a duet with Lita Ford, reaching No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Osbourne’s commercial success of the 1980s continued with 1991’s No More Tears, featuring smash hit “Mama, I’m Coming Home”. The album enjoyed much radio and MTV exposure. It also initiated a practice of bringing in ‘outsiders’ (in this case Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead) to help write Osbourne’s material, instead of only relying on his recording ensemble.

Released on 28 June 1993, Live & Loud was intended to be Osbourne’s final album; it went platinum four times over. In 1993, Osbourne had expressed his fatigue with touring, and proclaimed his “retirement tour” (the retirement was to be short-lived), called “No More Tours”, a pun on No More Tears. Osbourne was awarded a 1994 Grammy for the track “I Don’t Want to Change the World” from Live & Loud, for Best Metal Performance.

Back in the saddle in 1995 already Osbourne released Ozzmosis and resumed touring, dubbing his concert performances “The Retirement Sucks Tour”. The album became certified gold and platinum in that same year, and double platinum in April 1999. The line-up on Ozzmosis was Wylde, Butler (who had just quit Black Sabbath again), Steve Vai, and Hardline drummer Deen Castronovo, who later joined Journey. Keyboards were played by Rick Wakeman.

Following two brief, short-set reunions for Live Aid in 1985 and at an Ozzy Osbourne show in Costa Mesa, California, on 15 November 1992, Osbourne, Iommi and Butler did not formally reunite as Black Sabbath until 1997 for the 1997 Ozzfest shows. Ward was absent due to health issues. In December 1997, all four members of the band reunited to record the album Reunion, with Osbourne also touring with the band again from 1997 to 1999 for the album’s concert tour. The album proved to be a commercial success upon its release in October 1998.

But then on December, 8 2003, Osbourne was rushed into emergency surgery following an accident with his quad bike on his estate in Jordans, Buckinghamshire. Osbourne broke his collar bone, eight ribs, and a neck vertebra. An operation was performed to lift the collarbone, which was believed to be resting on a major artery and interrupting blood flow to one of Osbourne’s arms. Sharon later revealed that Osbourne had stopped breathing following the crash and was resuscitated by Osbourne’s then personal bodyguard, Sam Ruston. It later turned out to be the beginning of the end. While in hospital however, Osbourne achieved his first ever UK number one single, a duet of the Black Sabbath ballad, “Changes” with daughter Kelly. In doing so, he broke the record of the longest period between an artist’s first UK chart appearance (with Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid”, number four in August 1970) and their first number one hit: a gap of 33 years. He recovered from the quad accident and went on to headline the 2004 Ozzfest, with the reunited Black Sabbath.

Besides some family reality TV work such as ‘the Osbournes’ on MTV between 2002 and 2005 and ‘Osbourne’s Reloaded’ in 2009, Ozzy stayed productive with more album releases and world tours. In his later years Osbourne attempted to press on with his rock career, but was hampered several times by illness and injury. In early February 2019, Sharon revealed he had been admitted to hospital after suffering from flu. The illness led to him cancelling a string of tour dates while he recovered, including postponing the UK and European legs of his No More Tours 2. In 2022, the rocker revealed he had a rare form of Parkinson’s disease called Parkin 2, which he had since birth.

Ozzy released 11 solo albums between 1983 and 2022. ‘Patient Number 9’ was the last Ozzy album with guests Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Tony Iommi and Taylor Hawkins. He sold in excess of 100 million albums in his lifetime.

In 2025, with the curtains closing on his eventful life, Ozzy Osbourne and the original Black Sabbath members Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward played at their final Birmingham show “Back to the Beginning on July 5.

Ozzy knew this show was it. His last stand on earth. He actually stayed off his pain meds to be lucid for the show and raised $190 million for children’s hospitals and Parkinson’s research. I can’t think of a more rock exit from this world. He also admitted that he should not have done the spinal surgery, because it made his last years much worse.

It was their first appearance with founding drummer Bill Ward since 2005 and first (and last) Black Sabbath show since 2017.

The setlist for posterity purpose was:

• War Pigs
• N.I.B.
• Iron Man
• Paranoid

Ozzy also performed a solo show with setlist:

• I Don’t Know
• Mr Crowley
• Suicide Solution
• Mama I’m Coming Home
• Crazy Train

Ozzy Osbourne died 17 days later on July 22, 2025, a legend of rock. He was 77.

Ozzy was a lad from the back streets of Aston, Birmingham, raised tough and hungry in a place where dreams felt distant…There’s something unique about growing up in a place like that…it teaches you the true meaning of desire. Not the fleeting kind, but the kind that burns deep, the kind that makes you work relentlessly, shaping pain into passion and struggle into skill.
Ozzy Osbourne was, and will be a legend for a couple of generations to come. But before the stages and the spotlight, he was just the lad from Lodge Road who dared to dream….and he did good.

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Connie Francis 7/2025

Connie Francis (87) was born Concetta Franconero on December 12, 1937 in Newark, New Jersey. She spent her first years however in the Crown Heights, Brooklyn area (Utica Avenue/St. Marks Place) before the family moved to New Jersey. Growing up in a mixed Italian-Jewish neighborhood, Francis became fluent in Yiddish, which led her later to record songs in Yiddish and Hebrew.

When she was 3, her father bought her an accordion and she spent her childhood learning Italian folk songs. By age 10, her parents enrolled her in local talent contests. When her father attempted to book her on the New York-based television show “Startime,” producer George Scheck only agreed because Francis played the accordion and he was “up to here in singers.” Francis remained a fixture on “Startime” through her early teens — Scheck served as her manager during these formative years — during which time she also appeared on Arthur Grodfrey’s “Talent Scouts.” Godfrey stumbled over her Italian name, suggesting she shorten it to something “easy and Irish,” thereby giving birth to her stage name.

Scheck managed to secure Francis a record contract with MGM in 1955. As she received work dubbing her singing voice for film actresses — she subbed for Tuesday Weld in 1956’s “Rock, Rock, Rock” and Freda Holloway in 1957’s “Jamboree” — MGM steadily attempted to move her from pop to rock. Nothing clicked until Francis recorded “Who’s Sorry Now?” as a favor to her father, giving the 1923 tune a romantic sway.

Francis emerged when rock ’n’ roll first captivated America. Her earliest hit — a dreamy arrangement of the 1923 standard “Who’s Sorry Now?.” “Who’s Sorry Now?” caught the ear of Dick Clark, who regularly played the record on his “American Bandstand,” which had just expanded into the national market. Clark’s endorsement helped break “Who’s Sorry Now?” and sent it into the Billboard Top 10. MGM attempted to replicate its success by having Francis spruce up old chestnuts, but to no avail. The singer didn’t have another hit until she cut “Stupid Cupid,” a song co-written by Neil Sedaka and Howie Greenfield, a pair of young songwriters at the Brill Building who were navigating the distance separating Broadway-bound pop and rock ’n’ roll.. 

“Stupid Cupid” was the first of many hits she’d have with the songwriters, including the slinky ‘Fallen’” and the ballad “Frankie.” She later said, “Neil and Howie never failed to come up with a hit for me. It was a great marriage. We thought the same way.” Sedaka and Greenfield weren’t the only Brill Building songwriters to command Francis’ attention: She developed a serious romance with a pre-fame Bobby Darin, who was chased away at gunpoint by her father.

Upon the news that Darin had married Sandra Dee, her father made a negative comment about Darin finally being out of their lives. Angered, Francis later stated, “I wished that somehow God would cause the Hudson River to come gushing in and entrap us in the Holland tunnel.” She wrote that not marrying Darin was the biggest mistake of her life.

Over the next few years, Francis recorded both standards and new songs from Sedaka and Greenfield, along with material from other emerging songwriters, such as George Goehring and Edna Lewis, who wrote the lively “Lipstick on Your Collar.” Within less than two years, her popularity was such that MGM released five different Connie Francis LPs for Christmas 1959: a set of holiday tunes, a greatest-hits record, an LP dedicated to country, one dedicated to rock ’n’ roll and a set of Italian music, performed partially in the original language..

Francis’ commercial peak roughly spanned from Elvis Presley’s induction into the U.S. Army to the Beatles first setting foot on American soil. Over that five-year period, Francis was one of the biggest stars in music, earning three No. 1 hits: “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool,” “My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own” and “Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You.” As her singles offered familiar adolescent fare, her albums were constructed for specific demographics. During the early ’60s, she cut records dedicated to “Italian Favorites,” “Rock ’n’ Roll Million Sellers,” “Country & Western,” “Fun Songs for Children,” “Jewish Favorites” and “Spanish and Latin American Favorites,” even recording versions of her hits in Italian, German, Spanish and Japanese. The success of “Connie Francis Sings Italian Favorites” in late 1959/early 1960 led Francis to become one of the first American artists to record regularly in other languages. She was followed by other major British and American recording stars including Wanda Jackson, Cliff Richard, Petula Clark, Brenda Lee, the Supremes, Peggy March, Pat Boone, Lesley Gore, the Beatles and Johnny Cash, among many others. In her autobiography, Francis mentioned that in the early years of her career, the language barrier in some European countries, especially in Germany, made it difficult for her songs to get airplay. She is estimated to have sold more than 200 million records worldwide.

During the 1960s, her songs not only topped the charts in numerous countries around the world, but she was also voted the number 1 singer in over 10 countries. In 1960, she was named the most popular artist in Europe, the first time a non-European received this honor. From mid-1961 to mid-1963, Radio Luxembourg closed each day’s broadcasts with “It’s Time to Say Goodnight”, a song Francis had recorded especially for them and was not officially released until 1996.

With her popularity at an apex, Connie Francis made her cinematic debut in the 1960 teen comedy “Where the Boys Are,” which also featured a Sedaka and Greenfield song as its theme. Francis appeared in three quasi-sequels culminating in 1965’s “When the Boys Meet the Girls,” but she never felt entirely comfortable onscreen, preferring live performance. “Vacation” became her last Top 10 single in 1962 — the same year she published the book “For Every Young Heart: Connie Francis Talks to Teenagers.”

This adaptability became a considerable asset once her pop hits dried up in the mid-’60s. Francis continued to be a popular concert attraction through the 1960s, her live success sustaining her as she eased into adult contemporary fare. Too young to be an oldies act, Francis spent the remainder of the 1960s chasing a few trends — in 1968, she released “Connie & Clyde — Hit Songs of the ’30s,” a rushed attempt to cash in on the popularity of Arthur Penn’s controversial hit film “Bonnie and Clyde” — while busying herself on a showbiz circuit that encompassed Vegas, television variety shows and singing for troops in Vietnam.

A popular comeback attempt in the 1970s was swiftly derailed by tragedy. After appearing at Long Island’s Westbury Music Fair on Nov. 8, 1974, she was sexually assaulted in her Howard Johnson’s hotel room; the culprit was never caught. Francis sued the hotel chain; she’d later win a $2.5-million settlement that helped reshape security practices in the hospitality industry. As she was recovering from her assault, she underwent a nasal surgery that went astray, leading her to lose her voice for years; it took three subsequent surgeries before she regained her ability to sing. Francis spent much of the remainder of the ’70s battling severe depression, but once her voice returned, recordings happened on occasion, including a disco version of “Where the Boys Are” in 1978.

Francis returned to the public eye in the early 1980s, first as a victims rights activist, then as a live performer. Her comeback was marred by further tragedy — the 1981 murder of her brother George, a lawyer who became a government witness after pleading guilty to bank fraud; the police indicated the killing was related to organized crime.

Francis continued to work in the wake of his death, playing shows and writing her 1984 autobiography, “Who’s Sorry Now?,” but she continued to be plagued with personal problems. She told the Village Voice’s Michael Musto, “In the ’80s I was involuntarily committed to mental institutions 17 times in nine years in five different states. I was misdiagnosed as bipolar, ADD, ADHD, and a few other letters the scientific community had never heard of.” After receiving a diagnosis for post-traumatic stress disorder, her life stabilized enough for her to return to the stage and live performances ; one of her shows was documented on “The Return Concert Live at Trump’s Castle,” a 1996 album that was her last major-label release. When asked by the Las Vegas Sun in 2004 if life was still a struggle, she responded, “Not for the past 12 years.”

Francis regularly played casinos and theaters in the 2000s as she developed a biopic of her life with Gloria Estefan, who planned to play the former teen idol. The film never materialized. In 2010, Francis became the national spokesperson for Mental Health America’s trauma campaign. By the end of the 2010s, she moved to Parkland, Fla., and published her second memoir, “Among My Souvenirs: The Real Story, Vol. 1,” in 2017.

Connie Francis retired in 2018, and lived in Florida the remainder of her life. In May 2025, her 1962 song “Pretty Little Baby” went viral on TikTok, becoming a sleeper hit; when reached for comment, Francis said she had forgotten about the song but was pleased that her music—and the innocence it sought to represent—was being embraced by a younger audience.

She died from complications of hip surgery in Pompano Beach, Florida, on July 16, 2025 at the age of 87.

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Mick Ralphs 6/2025

Mick Ralphs (81) was born March 31, 1944 in Stoke Lacy, a small village in Herefordshire, England. As a kid he was not really too impressed with the music of the time, as it did not possess the rawness he was looking for.
He began playing guitar after being inspired by a song he heard on Radio Luxembourg.

“It was Green Onions by Booker T and the M.G’s,” he later said in an interview. “Up to that point I wasn’t that into music. The music of the day when I was growing up was syrupy pop like Cliff and the Shadows. It was all very white sounding. I listened to Radio Luxembourg and I heard this song that turned out to be Green Onions.
“I loved the nasty guitar of it and the groove. I had never heard anything like it before and that inspired me to want to play guitar like that. It basically got me into blues and soul music and people like Howlin’ Wolf and Chuck Berry. That was the trigger, I heard it and thought, ‘Yes, I like that.’”

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Lou Christie 6/2025

Lou Christie (82) was born Lugee Alfredo Giovanni Sacco on February 19, 1943, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He won a scholarship to the Moon Area High School, he studied music and voice, served as student conductor of the choir and sang solos at holiday concerts. His teacher, Frank Cummings, wanted him to pursue a career in classical music, but Sacco wanted to cut a record to get on American Bandstand. At age 15 he met and befriended Twyla Herbert, a classically trained musician 20 years his senior, who became his regular songwriting partner and wrote hundreds of songs with him over the next 40 years until her death in 2009.  In 1962 they penned “The Gypsy Cried,” which he recorded on a two-track recorder in his garage. The single became a local phenomenon, and was eventually licensed for national release by the Roulette label, peaking at number 24 on the pop charts in 1963.

“I never worked with anyone else who was that talented, that original, that exciting,” Christie told Goldmine magazine in 2005. “She was just bizarre, and I was twice as bizarre as her.”

Still as Sacco he performed with several vocal groups and between 1959 and 1962 released several records on small Pittsburgh labels, achieving a local hit with “The Jury” by Lugee & The Lions (a group consisting of Sacco, Twyla Herbert’s daughter Shirley, and two others) released on the Robbee label. After graduating from high school in 1961, Sacco relocated to New York City and worked as a session vocalist.

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Brian Wilson 6/2025

Brian Wilson (82) – The Beach Boys – was born June 20, 1942 in Inglewood, California, the first child of pianist Audree Korthof and Murry Wilson, a machinist who later pursued songwriting part-time. Wilson, along with his siblings, suffered psychological and sporadic physical maltreatment from their father. His 2016 memoir characterizes his father as “violent” and “cruel”; however, it also suggests that certain narratives about the mistreatment had been overstated or unfounded.

From an early age, Wilson exhibited an aptitude for learning by ear. His father remembered how, after hearing only a few verses of “When the Caissons Go Rolling Along“, young Wilson was able to reproduce its melody. His father Murry was a driving force in cultivating his children’s musical talents. Wilson undertook six weeks of accordion lessons, and by ages seven and eight, he performed choir solos at church. His choir director declared him to have perfect pitch. One of Wilson’s first forays into songwriting, penned when he was nine, was a reinterpretation of the lyrics to Stephen Foster‘s “Oh! Susannah“.

At age 12, his family acquired an upright piano, and he began teaching himself to play piano by spending hours mastering his favorite songs. He learned how to write manuscript music through a friend of his father. Wilson sang with peers at school functions, as well as with family and friends at home, and guided his two brothers in learning harmony parts, which they would rehearse together. He also played piano obsessively after school, deconstructing the harmonies of the Four Freshmen by listening to short segments of their songs on a phonograph, then working to recreate the blended sounds note by note on the keyboard.

I got so into The Four Freshmen. I could identify with Bob Flanigan‘s high voice. He taught me how to sing high. I worked for a year on The Four Freshmen with my hi-fi set. I eventually learned every song they did.

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Sly Stone 6/2025

Sly Stone (82) – Sly and the Family Stone – was born Sylvester Stewart on March 15, 1943 in Denton, Texas, before the family’s move to Vallejo, California, in the North Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. He was the second of five children born to K.C. and Alpha Stewart, a deeply religious middle class couple, raising their children on music. Sylvester was identified as a musical prodigy. By the time he was seven, he had already become proficient on the keyboards, and by the age of eleven, he had mastered the guitar, bass, and drums as well.

As a teenager he had settled essentially on the guitar and joined a number of high school bands. One of these was the Viscaynes, a doo-wop group in which Sylvester and his friend Frank Arellano—who was Filipino—were the only non-white members. The fact that the group was integrated made the Viscaynes “hip” in the eyes of their audiences, and would later inspire Sylvester’s idea of the multicultural Family Stone. The Viscaynes released a few local singles, including “Yellow Moon” and “Stop What You’re Doing”; during the same period, Sylvester also recorded a few solo singles under the name Danny Stewart. With his brother, Fred, he formed several short-lived groups, like the Stewart Bros. After high school Stone studied music at the Vallejo campus of Solano Community College.

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Rick Derringer – 5/2025

Rick Derringer (77) was born Richard Dean Zehringer in Fort Recovery, Ohio on August 5, 1947. Aside from his parents’ extensive record collection, his first major music influence was his uncle, Jim Thornburg, a popular guitarist and singer in Ohio.

Derringer recalled first hearing him play guitar in the kitchen of his parents’ home and knowing immediately that he wanted to learn the instrument. He was eight years old at the time, and his parents gave him his first electric guitar for his ninth birthday. Soon after, he and his brother Randy began playing local gigs with his uncle, a country musician, before he was in high school.

After eighth grade, the family moved to Union City, Indiana, where Derringer formed a band he initially called the McCoys. He later renamed it the Rick Z Combo and then Rick and the Raiders before reverting to the original name.

In the summer of 1965, before Derringer turned 18, the McCoys were hired to back up a New York-based band called the Strangeloves in concert. The Strangeloves, who were also record producers from New York City with a major hit song “I Want Candy”, were looking for a band to record the song “My Girl Sloopy”, originally released by the Vibrations the previous year, and chose the McCoys. Derringer later persuaded the producers to change the title to “Hang On Sloopy”. After the Strangeloves recorded the guitar and instrumental parts, Derringer and the McCoys were brought into the studio to sing on the recording, which was then released under their name. The song reached number one on the Hot 100 when Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction” fell from number one to number two and The Beatles’ “Yesterday” shot from number forty-five to number three.

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Roberta Flack 2/2025

Roberta Flack (88) was born on February 10, 1937 in Black Mountain, North Carolina, to parents Laron Flack, a jazz pianist and U.S. Veterans Administration draftsman, and Irene Flack a cook and church organist. According to DNA analysis, Flack was of Cameroonian descent. Her family moved to Richmond, Virginia, before settling in Arlington, Virginia, when she was five years old.

Her first musical experiences were in church. She grew up in a large musical family and often provided piano accompaniment for the choir of Lomax African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church singing hymns and spirituals. She occasionally sings at the Macedonia Baptist Church in Arlington.  From time to time, she caught gospel stars like Mahalia Jackson and Sam Cooke performing there. Her father acquired a battered old piano for her, which she learned to play sitting on her mother’s lap and Flack took formal lessons in playing the piano when she was nine. She gravitated towards classical music and during her early teens excelled at classical piano, finishing second in a statewide competition for Black students aged 13 playing a Scarlatti sonata.
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Marianne Faithfull 1/2025

Marianne Faithfull (78) 1/2025 was born 29 December 1946 in Hemstead, London. Just to sketch her aristocracy come down it should be noted that

Faithfull was born at the old Queen Mary’s Maternity House in Hampstead, London. Her father, Major Robert Glynn Faithfull, was a British intelligence officer and professor of Italian literature at Bedford College, London University. Her mother, Eva, was the daughter of Artur Wolfgang Ritter von Sacher-Masoch (1875–1953), an Austro-Hungarian nobleman of old Polonized Catholic Ruthenian nobility. Eva was born in Budapest and moved to Vienna in 1918; she chose to style herself as Eva von Sacher-Masoch, Baroness Erisso in adulthood. She had been a ballerina for the Max Reinhardt Company during her early years, and danced in productions of works by the German theatrical duo Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. Continue reading Marianne Faithfull 1/2025