“He transcends metal, he transcends rock, he transcends music”: Iconic metal drummer says Ozzy Osbourne’s death has made just as big an impact as John Lennon’s

A vaunted progressive metal drummer has compared the death of Ozzy Osbourne to the killing of legendary Beatle John Lennon in terms of cultural impact.

Talking to Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk last week, Mike Portnoy of New York luminaries Dream Theater observes that the tributes to the late Black Sabbath singer, who died of a heart attack aged 76 last month, transcend the heavy metal genre.

“The impact has been huge,” the drummer tells host Eddie Trunk (via Blabbermouth). “I don’t know if I’ve felt a loss like this… This is as big as John Lennon or whatever.”

Portnoy goes on to mention late hard rock and heavy metal icons Eddie Van Halen, Lemmy Kilmister and Ronnie James Dio, and while he says those deaths were “massive”, the response to Osbourne’s “has been a whole other level of mainstream”.

“Because he transcends metal, he transcends rock even, he transcends music,” he continues. “He’s a pop culture figure. So this has been a huge one.”

Osbourne died at his Buckinghamshire home on July 22, just 17 days after he played his retirement concert, and last concert with the original Sabbath line, Back To The Beginning. The all-day extravaganza took place at Villa Park in Osbourne’s hometown of Birmingham, with a who’s who of rock and metal acts supporting, including Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Tool, Slayer and Anthrax.

Back To The Beginning was a charity concert, with proceeds going to Acorns Children’s Hospice, Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Cure Parkinson’s. It’s been reported that the event will raise upwards of $190 million for those causes, but Osbourne’s wife/manager Sharon recently disputed that figure.

“It takes a really long time [to work out the sums involved],” she told Pollstar, “because we’ve had all of the bands that we had come in and their expenses, and it’ll take a good six weeks to get the final number.”

Talking to Trunk, Portnoy says that he revisited Sabbath’s discography in the wake of Back To The Beginning, then again after Osbourne’s death.

“And it’s been a great, great musical trip to be revisiting all this stuff,” he says. “It’s amazing. What a career. But, yeah, what a loss.”

Osbourne had a private funeral on July 30, but his procession passed down Broad Street in Birmingham and stopped at the city’s Black Sabbath Bridge to let fans pay their respects.

Tens of thousands of people showed up to see the cortège, with Sharon and her and Osbourne’s children – Aimee, Kelly and Jack – alongside Louis, a son of Osbourne’s from a previous marriage, all appearing in public for the first time since the singer died.