Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy has spoken at length about the death of Ozzy Osbourne, describing it as a cultural event on the same scale as the loss of John Lennon. In an interview on SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk on August 6, Portnoy said the news had a deep emotional impact on him, unlike anything he has felt before in music.
He acknowledged that the passing of other giants in rock and metal, including Ronnie James Dio, Motörhead’s Lemmy Kilmister, and guitar legend Eddie Van Halen, were huge moments for fans. But in his view, Osbourne’s death is different. Ozzy’s influence, he said, went far beyond the world of heavy music. He was not just a singer but a figure recognised far outside the genre, someone whose name was familiar to people who may never have listened to his albums. That kind of recognition, Portnoy believes, is why the loss feels so significant.
Ozzy Osbourne died on July 22, only 17 days after performing his last show at Villa Park in Birmingham. The concert was both a celebration and a farewell, closing out a career that lasted more than five decades. Portnoy noted how rare it is for a musician to end their performance career in such a public and definitive way.
In the days following his death, interest in Osbourne’s work surged. Spotify data showed that his monthly listeners rose sharply from 12.4 million to 18.7 million. Black Sabbath, the group that first put him on the global stage: also recorded a sharp rise in listeners, moving from about 19.8 million to roughly 24.6 million in the same period. To Portnoy, those numbers reflect not only the size of Ozzy’s following but also the enduring appeal of his music, which continues to reach new listeners decades after it was recorded.
Mike Portnoy said that his own way of dealing with the loss was to go back through Osbourne’s catalogue. He started with the Black Sabbath albums, then moved on to the solo records. Listening again, he said, was both nostalgic and energising. “It’s been a great musical trip to be revisiting all this stuff,” he remarked. “It’s amazing. What a career. But, yeah, what a loss.”
He also pointed out how important it was that Osbourne had the chance to deliver a final performance, streamed to more than five million viewers worldwide. It was, he said, a rare opportunity for an artist of that stature to step away from the stage on his own terms, surrounded by fans and fellow musicians.