A Tribute in Thornbury: Rest in Peace, Ozzy Osbourne
From my hometown of Thornbury, near Weston-super-Mare and Bristol, a friend sent me a photo I’ll never forget—a massive billboard right on the edge of the high street, just opposite the old post office, where buses rumble by and kids in school uniforms gather in little clusters after lessons. But this time, nobody was just passing by. Everyone stopped.
The billboard showed Ozzy Osbourne—eyes half-shadowed under his trademark round glasses, long dark hair spilling over a leather coat that looked more like a battle flag than clothing. The artist had painted him like an icon—part saint, part demon, part showman—gothic script curling beneath him in silver and deep crimson: Rest in Peace, Ozzy.
I walked there myself that evening, needing to see it with my own eyes. It felt unreal. This was Thornbury—quiet, cobbled, historic, with its old pubs and church spires. This was not where you expected to stand under the watchful painted eyes of the Prince of Darkness. But maybe that’s what made it so perfect.
Under the billboard, people had made it more than an advert. It had become an altar. Flowers—some fresh, some beginning to wilt—lined the pavement in old jam jars and plastic buckets. A battered teddy bear sat beside a row of tea lights, flickering against the breeze. Someone had left a battered vinyl of Blizzard of Ozz, carefully propped up in front of the wall.
Nearby, a kid in a school blazer knelt and placed down a single white rose. He must have been about fifteen—far too young to have seen Ozzy on stage, but maybe he’d grown up on the same records his parents once blasted from battered speakers in their cars or kitchens.
A small group had gathered—a dad in a leather jacket that looked older than him, two teenagers in Doc Martens, a woman with a baby on her hip, the baby gurgling happily as if this was just another evening stroll. They all stood quiet, just looking. Nobody spoke for a while.
Someone had scrawled a note on a scrap of cardboard: Thank you for the music, the madness, the magic. Sleep well, Ozzy.
A man with a guitar case slung over his shoulder set the case down, opened it, and began to play. He didn’t sing—he just picked out the unmistakable riff of Crazy Train, his fingers a little clumsy at first, then stronger as he found his courage. People nodded along, some hummed under their breath. It wasn’t a polished performance, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that, for a few minutes, Thornbury became a tiny outpost of heavy metal history.
I thought of how far Ozzy had come—born in Birmingham, a kid with nothing but trouble waiting for him if he didn’t find an escape. And he did—screaming his way out of the grey streets on riffs and rebellion, his voice a howl that cut through every polite conversation the world thought it should have.
It’s strange, the way music threads through your life. I remembered being twelve and hearing Paranoid for the first time, the needle jumping on my dad’s dusty record player, my ears not quite ready for how raw it felt. I remembered my older brother—long hair, denim jacket, patches of Sabbath and Maiden—coming home late from gigs, hoarse from shouting every word. I remembered singing Mama, I’m Coming Home at a mate’s wedding, everyone swaying arm in arm, laughing at the absurdity of it all.
And now here I was, thirty years later, standing with strangers under a giant painting of the man who’d made us all feel a little braver, a little wilder, like maybe we didn’t have to follow every damn rule the world threw at us.
The sun dipped behind the rooftops, and someone lit more candles. Their glow made the billboard look alive—Ozzy’s eyes flickered with reflected flame, like he was still watching, still planning one more surprise for us all.
An old man shuffled up beside me. He wore a battered Black Sabbath tour shirt that must’ve been older than me, the faded dates still legible on the back. He didn’t say hello—just stood, nodding to himself, a half-smile under his grey moustache.
“Never thought I’d see this here,” he said finally, voice gravelly. “Thought I’d have to go to Birmingham, you know? But I like it better here. Feels… close.”
I knew what he meant. Birmingham would have the big tribute shows, the news crews, maybe even a statue someday. But here in Thornbury—quiet Thornbury, where we didn’t have arenas or stadiums or screaming crowds—Ozzy felt like he belonged to us, too. We didn’t need the lights and the noise. We had each other, a battered guitar, and the kind of silence that says everything you can’t find words for.
After a while, the guitarist packed up and left. The dad in the leather jacket picked up a discarded beer can, muttering about keeping it tidy for the kids. The little group drifted off one by one, but not before giving the billboard a final look—like saying goodbye to an old friend.
I lingered, phone in hand, taking one last photo that I knew wouldn’t do it justice. It wasn’t the paint or the candles or the teddy bear that made it remarkable. It was the feeling that for one fleeting moment, a little town in the South West had become part of something massive—a farewell echo that started in Birmingham’s working-class streets, roared through stadiums around the world, and came to rest here, among the brick shops and quiet bus stops of Thornbury.
As I walked home, I thought about what Ozzy always said: You can’t kill rock and roll. He was right. He still is. His voice might be gone from the stage, but it’s still in our cars, our pubs, our back gardens where teenagers learn their first riffs and dream of escaping the ordinary. It’s there in the billboard someone painted for free, and the flowers someone laid down in the dark.
Rest in peace, Ozzy Osbourne. The Prince of Darkness, the Madman, the Legend.
Your train may have left the station, but the rails are ours now—crazy or not. And we’ll ride them, lou
d and wild, for as long as the music plays.
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