It was a crazy train.
The Paramount+ documentary “Ozzy: No Escape From Now” covers the metal legend’s final six years and health battles leading up to his death in July 2025 at age 76.
Premiering Tues. Oct. 7, Paramount never intended it to be a posthumous project.
The two-hour film features interviews with Ozzy before his death, his widow Sharon, 72, daughter Kelly, 40, son Jack, 39, and even publicity-shy oldest daughter Aimee, 42. A slew of musicians also weigh in, including Billy Idol and Slash.
The doc covers the Black Sabbath frontman’s ailing health amid the making of his 2020 album “Ordinary Man” and his 2022 album “Patient Number 9,” his appearance with Black Sabbath to perform at the 2022 Closing Ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in the UK, behind the scenes of his 2024 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and his July farewell concert in Birmingham shortly before his death.
Here are the biggest revelations.
His family said he survived a broken neck
The rock icon ultimately died from on July 22, 2025 cardiac arrest, acute myocardial infarction, coronary artery disease and Parkinson’s disease.
However, his condition took a downturn in Feb. 2018 when he sustained a fall. He subsequently had to cancel his 2019 world tour, and in 2023, he called his health issues “five years of absolute hell.”
Onscreen, Kelly recalled that her father was rushed to the hospital after that fall, but they initially sent him home and said he was fine.
“The next day, he couldn’t move his arms,” Sharon said.
When they sent him back to a different hospital the following day, Ozzy and his family were told that “he’d broken his f–king neck,” Kelly said.
“It’s just insane to me that they let him out of the first hospital, anyway.”
Following that diagnosis, they were told that he needed surgery. But Ozzy said he woke up “completely f–ked” and felt like, “what the f-k have they done to me?”
Jack recalled his father’s spirits being high at first. “Going into surgery, I was there, he was laughing. He was in his hospital bed, supposedly with a broken neck, dancing.”
But, Jack said, “He comes out of the surgery, and he’s far worse than when he went in.”
His family blames his health decline on a botched surgery
Sharon said that after that 2018 surgery, they got an opinion from a different doctor who told them that Ozzy’s neck surgery had been overly “aggressive.”
They put metal plates and surgical screws in him, “which didn’t need doing” and “caused even more damage,” the former “The Talk” host explained, adding that the next doctor tried to “patch him up,” but the “main damage was done.”
Jack said about Ozzy’s health: “The Parkinsons is progressing, but the main problem is the nerve damage from the bad neck surgery. That f–king doctor stripped him of his abilities to move.”
He added, “It makes me so angry, because I felt like all this could have been avoided.”
According to Sharon, the surgical screws they put in him during that first botched neck surgery were “coming loose and chipping the bones,” and the “bone fragments” under his spinal cord were causing damage.
She recalled, “it was just one thing after another. While he was in hospital for 3 months, he developed blood clots.”
He also got pneumonia and sepsis during his stints in and out of the hospital.
Aimee weighed in
Aimee Osbourne has been publicity-shy, as she famously declined to appear on her family’s hit reality show “The Osbournes.”
However, she made a rare appearance in the doc and opened up.
Referring to her famous parents needing to slow down amid Ozzy’s mobility issues, stints in the hospital, and physical therapy, she said, “They were both so used to the ‘go go go.’ And, I think for that to be taken away at such a drastic level has been heartbreaking and terrifying.”
Aimee added, “My mom’s role has been maintaining control of all the moving parts of this. To have those things essentially break away has been extremely painful.”
Ozzy’s said he was ready to ‘off’ himself
Ozzy admitted that his health issues made him so depressed that, “I was ready to off myself.” He added, “I’d f–king set myself on fire…I mean, I wouldn’t die, you know? That’s my luck.”
Throwing himself into music projects in his final years helped his mental health, his family said.
“The making of the album saved my ass,” Ozzy said, referring to his 2020 album “Ordinary Man.”
He said, “I’m the luckiest man in the world to do what I do. Because a lot of people have f–king jobs that they’ve got to do, and they absolutely hate, every day. I don’t hate my job.”
He later quipped, “I can’t complain, I was actively rocking until I was 70. Hey, it could be worse. I could have been Sting.”
The Prince of Darkness also said, “That’s the thing about getting older, I used to take pills for fun. Now I take them to stay alive.”
Ozzy said he shouldn’t have lived past 40
In the doc, Ozzy noted that he didn’t drink or do any more drugs than any of the fellow rock stars he used to party with.
“But all the guys I used to do it with are all dead,” he said.
He credited “my Sharon” with being the reason he lived to see his seventh decade. Ozzy and Sharon were married from 1982 until his death.
“I didn’t think I was gonna live past 40. I shouldn’t have lived past 40,” he said. “But I did. And if my life’s coming to an end, I really can’t complain. I’ve had a great life.”
“Ozzy: No Escape From Now” premieres Tues. Oct 7. On Paramount+.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
