With his rebellious image as a dangerously extreme rock musician, Ozzy Osbourne became, in the 1980s, one of the foremost creators of the heavy metal genre and one of the era's most outrageous performers. He first came to prominence as the lead vocalist for the British hard-rock group Black Sabbath from 1969 to 1978. Throughout his career, his music has consistently focused on alienation and nonconformity, from "Paranoid" (1970), one of Black Sabbath's biggest hits, to his "Mama, I'm Coming Home" (1991). As a master of overwrought stage performances, Ozzy Osbourne taught other performers how to transform hard rock into theater, continuing in the vein of Black Sabbath, which had employed pseudo-religious images like the upside down cross and pentagrams. He advocated the notion that a modern rock hero should be a troubled, alienated outcast. Of all of his contemporaries, his rebellion against church, family, and convention seems...