The teenage John “Ozzy” Osbourne did “not seem like someone with a glittering future ahead of them”, says Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. He had a troubled childhood in his native Birmingham and struggled at school. His prospects when he left at 15 “seemed non-existent”. He could not even make it as a burglar – some comically inept escapades ended in jail.

But on his release, he wrote “Ozzy Zig needs a gig” on a card in the window of a local music shop, says the BBC. The rest is rock-music history. But no one was more surprised at the success of what became Black Sabbath than Ozzy himself. Ozzy, who died this week at the age of 76, once said the thing he was most proud of was that his band was not the creation of some music mogul. It was just four ordinary guys who decided “let’s have a go” and “succeeded beyond their wildest expectations”.

The music they came up with in response to drummer Bill Ward’s idea that they should trade on the popularity of horror films and create a rock equivalent “arrived fully formed”, says Petridis. Their sound “felt organic, not calculated”, and was a “product of their environment: a grim, provincial, industrial world where the drugs associated with the hippy counterculture had arrived, but not the freedom or opportunities enjoyed by London’s bohemian elite”. Black Sabbath’s carefully cultivated image, dark mythology and tales of rock ‘n’ roll excess were belied by Osbourne’s performances. He was no “preening rock god”, or even the “prince of darkness” as he became known, but always looked “more like a member of the audience who had been allowed up on the stage and couldn’t quite believe his luck”.

Ozzy Osbourne: “It’s all just a role I play”