The Prince of Darkness, looking quite devilishly handsome.

Raise your horns, metal friends, and drink to one of our great masters. On this day, 61 years ago, in the smoky, industrial town of Birmingham, England, John Michael “Ozzy” Osbourne burst forth upon the world.

In 1968, Ozzy helped form Black Sabbath, the most important heavy metal band of all time. Metalheads say that no new riffs have been written since 1968. Every metal riff is just a sped-up, slowed-down, played-backwards version of a Black Sabbath riff.

Pounding, crushing, dooming, thought-provoking music. Black Sabbath started it all. Without them, metal might not ever have come to be.

And that isn’t Ozzy’s only claim to metal fame. After being booted from Sabbath in 1979 for drinking and smoking and snorting too much (and this was the seventies, so it must have been a LOT), Ozzy formed a solo band, and recorded some of the wickedest albums to date, like 1980’s Blizzard of Ozz. He recruited former Quiet Riot guitarist Randy Rhoads.

Ozzy – along with his long-suffering wife, Sharon – created the Ozzfest, an american heavy metal festival to rival the Wacken’s of Europe. It’s now a bit too nu-metal, but once it was a great and mighty beast. He helped break Metallica into the mainstream, by having them open for him when they toured Master of Puppets. And lastly, his foray into reality TV with the Osbournes, which remains to this day, one of my Dad’s favorite TV shows.

Happy Birthday Ozzy, here’s to many more years of metal mayhem \m/