LOS ANGELES — Ozzy Osbourne, the storied Black Sabbath lead singer known as much for his excesses and bizarre onstage antics as his pioneering heavy metal music, has died in London.

Bedeviled by health issues for years, Osbourne died Tuesday morning, his family announced in a statement obtained by The Times. He was 76.

“It is with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning. He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time,” the family said in a statement released by Osbourne’s publicist.

Osbourne announced in early 2020 that he’d been diagnosed nearly a year earlier with Parkinson’s disease, just the latest but by far the most serious ailment that over his career had repeatedly forced him to cancel public appearances, delay releasing new material and scrap concerts, including his own retirement tour.

The heavy metal pioneer’s career spanned more than four decades as both a member of Black Sabbath and a solo artist, then as the maestro behind the annual Ozzfest that featured him — some of the time — alongside upcoming acts. It didn’t seem to bother Osbourne that he was largely disregarded by critics: Fans cheered him wildly, he sold more than 100 million records as the leader of Black Sabbath and as a solo artist, and he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame along with his bandmates in 2006.

Guided by his wife, Sharon, who was his manager and steadying force, Osbourne reinvented himself in the 1990s as an elder statesman of heavy metal. The musician also found late-in-life notoriety through his family’s popular MTV reality series, “The Osbournes,” where he played himself — the mumbling, nearly comatose patriarch of a fully dysfunctional family.

“People wonder why they can’t understand him,” his wife told GQ magazine. “Well, you’d be hard to understand too if you drank two vats of coffee, two vats of wine and took 25 Vicodin a day.”

Osbourne didn’t disagree,

“If anyone has lived the debauched rock ’n’ roll lifestyle,” Osbourne admitted. “I suppose it’s me.”

Born John Michael Osbourne on Dec. 3, 1948, the youngest of four children, Osbourne was raised in a working-class neighborhood in Birmingham, England. His mother worked in a factory; his father worked nights as a toolmaker. Osbourne said his parents were poor and had few expectations their son would amount to much.

“All I ever wanted to do was to do something good so that my parents could be proud of me,” he told GQ. “I never received any encouragement.”

He had an early interest in theater, performing in school plays. But when he first heard the Beatles, he knew he wanted to be a musician.

Alongside guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward, Osbourne emerged as the voice and face of Black Sabbath in 1969.

The group was menacing and dark. But it was credited with introducing the basics of heavy metal, including the aggressive vocal wail, bass-heavy riffs, demonic subject matter and a general spirit of rebelliousness, according to former Times music critic Richard Cromelin.

Black Sabbath released its self-titled first record on a Friday the 13th in February 1970, the date hardly a coincidence. It went platinum in England and the U.S. Dismissed or simply ignored by critics, it nonetheless became required listening in college dorm rooms across the nation. The band went on to release more than a dozen studio albums, many that coincided with world tours.

Weary of his lead singer’s erratic behavior, Iommi had Osbourne fired from the band in 1979 as he descended in a haze of alcohol and drugs. For years other singers — from Ronnie James Dio to Deep Purple lead singer Ian Gillan — fronted Black Sabbath. Osbourne reunited with various iterations periodically and, in 2006, the band performed at its Hall of Fame induction.

Osbourne married Sharon Arden, the daughter of the band’s manager Don Arden, in 1982 and she took over managing his career. The couple launched OZZfest in 1996 and the touring festival became the first dedicated to hard rock music and emerging heavy metal artists. Osbourne headlined the inaugural shows in Phoenix and Devore, California, and donated a portion of the proceeds to charities across the country.

Osbourne released his first solo record, “The Blizzard of Ozz,” in 1980 and it also went platinum. More solo records followed and in 1985 he performed at the Live Aid famine relief concert at Wembley Stadium in London alongside Queen, David Bowie, Madonna and the Who. His 12th album, “Ordinary Man,” was released in 2020 to generally positive reviews and charted quickly

His sometimes alarming antics onstage became part of the group’s allure but also proved controversial.

In 1982, Osbourne reportedly bit the head off a dead bat onstage during an Iowa concert. He already had a history of animal decapitations after he reportedly bit the head off a live dove during a meeting with record company executives. The move prompted Vets Auditorium in Des Moines to prohibit concert performers from using or presenting live animals onstage without the consent of management, according to the Des Moines Register.

He also was dragged into court over the lyrics of one of his songs, “Suicide Solution” — a track on “Blizzard of Ozz.” He was accused in a 1986 civil suit of causing the deaths of two teenagers who allegedly committed suicide after listening to the song. Osbourne said later that the song was inspired by the alcohol-related death of AC/DC lyricist Bon Scott in 1980, though the actual songwriter, Bob Daisley, said he was actually thinking of Osbourne when he wrote the lyrics.

In 1989, Osbourne performed at the Moscow Peace Festival, the first major rock concert in what then was the Soviet Union by Western artists.

The musician released five more records in the 1990s and his 1993 song “I Don’t Want to Change the World” earned him his first Grammy Award for metal performance.

Never fully untangled from his history of addiction and substance abuse, Osbourne’s foggy state of mind was on full display to global audiences during his family’s MTV reality series. The unscripted show ran for four seasons and during its run, Osbourne signed a $10 million renewal deal with MTV, met President George W. Bush at a Washington dinner, performed at Buckingham Palace and shook hands with Queen Elizabeth II.

Osbourne later said that his unshakable stupor was due to his use of Valium and a host of other powerful narcotics prescribed by a Beverly Hills physician under investigation for overprescribing drugs to celebrity patients.

“I was wiped out on pills,” Osbourne told The Times in 2003. “I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t walk. I could barely stand up. I was lumbering about like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. It got to the point where I was scared to close my eyes at night — afraid I might not wake up.”

Prescription records obtained during the investigation showed Osbourne was taking more than 40 pills a day, a regimen that included opiates, tranquilizers, amphetamines, antidepressants and an antipsychotic.

The day before a New Year’s Eve concert in 2018 at the Forum, Osbourne said he’d been free of drugs, alcohol and even tobacco for more than four years.

“I mean, I have grandchildren now and I’m 70 years old, and I don’t want to be found dead in a hotel room somewhere,” he told the Pasadena Star News.

Still, his health declined. He was diagnosed in 2019 with a severe upper-respiratory infection, which his doctors felt could develop into pneumonia given the physicality of his live performances and an extensive travel schedule throughout Europe in harsh winter conditions.

He canceled his farewell tour and then canceled even more shows on his relaunched farewell tour before being hospitalized for complications from the flu. Months later he postponed more shows after sustaining an undisclosed injury that required surgery, after falling at his home. The fall had aggravated an injury sustained in a near-fatal 2003 ATV accident.

In an interview with Robin Roberts for “Good Morning America” in 2020, Osbourne speculated that the fall may have been an early sign of Parkinson’s, a debilitating neurodegenerative disorder for which there is no cure.

Osbourne said the diagnosis actually helped bring his family closer together, though he was left with the thought that he now was the only one in the family not working. Worries aside, the Osbournes were ranked by Forbes in 2018 among the richest couples in England, with a net worth in excess of $200 million.

“Coming from a working-class background, I hate to let people down. I hate to not do my job,” Osbourne told Roberts. “And so when I see my wife goin’ to work, my kids goin’ to work, everybody’s doing — tryin’ to be helpful to me, that gets me down because I can’t contribute to my family, you know.”

But work he did, trudging back to the studio to begin recording “Ordinary Man.”

Osbourne is survived by his wife and their three children, Aimee, Kelly and Jack Osbourne, and numerous grandchildren. He also is survived by three children from a previous marriage: Jessica, Louis and Elliot.

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(Nardine Saad is a former Los Angeles Times staff writer. Staff writer Steve Marble contributed to this story.)

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