THE BEST JOB I EVER GOT FIRED FROM: OZZY OSBOURNE ON HIS DARK FALL AND UNLIKELY REBIRTH
“Leaving a band,” Ozzy Osbourne once said, “is like a divorce. At first, you’re angry. You don’t even know what you’ve lost until it’s gone.” For him, that divorce came in the most brutal of ways — when the other members of Black Sabbath finally told him he had to go.
The reasons were no mystery. The band was drowning in alcohol, drugs, and chaos, and Ozzy, the wild heart of Sabbath, seemed the most lost of all. Yet when the moment came, it still felt like betrayal. “Why are you firing me?” he asked. The answer was simple, almost cruel: “Because you’re pissed.” But the truth was, they all were. Every one of them was spiraling, every one caught in the same storm that had fueled their music and threatened their lives.
For Ozzy, the aftermath was devastating. One day he was on stage in front of thousands, the next he was alone in a hotel room, curtains drawn, drowning himself in drink. Days blurred into weeks, weeks into months. “I thought I’d be back in Birmingham, working in a factory again,” he later admitted. From stardom to nothing, from arenas to oblivion — it seemed as though his story had ended.
But fate has a strange way of rewriting endings. At his lowest, a knock came at the door. It was Sharon Arden, the daughter of Sabbath’s manager. She was not there with a record deal or a tour offer. She was there with belief — belief in the man behind the chaos, the voice inside the wreckage. She refused to let him sink. Slowly, she pulled him back from the edge.
Out of those ashes came a rebirth. With Sharon at his side, Ozzy began to rebuild, gathering a new band, writing new material, and taking the first uncertain steps toward a future he could barely imagine. The result was Blizzard of Ozz, a solo debut that not only reintroduced him to the world but cemented his place in rock history. Songs like Crazy Train and Mr. Crowley weren’t just hits; they were proof that he had survived, proof that he could rise again without the name Black Sabbath behind him.
Looking back, Ozzy laughs at the irony. “The best job I ever got fired from,” he calls it now. At the time, it felt like the end. In truth, it was the beginning of the second act — the act that would make him not just a former frontman, but a legend in his own right.
Today, that chapter is remembered not just as a moment of collapse, but as a lesson in resilience. Being fired from Black Sabbath might have broken him. Instead, it forced him to discover the strength to rebuild, the courage to trust his own voice, and the will to keep going.
And as fans still chant along to Crazy Train decades later, one thing is clear: sometimes the fall is the very thing that sets the stage for a greater rise.