It may have been Ozzy Osbourne’s night, but the Prince of Darkness was almost nowhere to be found.
The rock icon attended the album release party for Ordinary Man — his first in nearly 10 years — at Sunset Strip haunt The Rainbow Bar and Grill on Thursday night (Feb. 20), though only a lucky few gained entry to his immediate orbit. Tucked out of sight in a corner booth for most of the night with wife Sharon Osbourne, daughter Kelly Osbourne, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith and other members of his sizable entourage, the former Black Sabbath frontman was flanked on both sides by security guards who kept a close watch on those attempting to penetrate their protective shield.
Ordinary Man, which released Friday, may come across like a tongue-in-cheek title — Osbourne has lived anything but an ordinary life — but it comes just a month after one of his most human moments: In January, the singer revealed he had been diagnosed with a type of Parkinson’s disease known as PRKN 2, a milder form of the progressive nervous system disorder that doctors discovered last February when he underwent surgery for injuries suffered from a fall at his home. It also comes just days after he postponed the remainder of his North American tour dates this year in order to seek treatment for an old neck injury that was aggravated by the fall. In a recent interview with British tabloid The Sun, he said the injury has caused him to live with “unbelievable pain 24/7.”
Nonetheless, Osbourne held court in the back booth of The Rainbow’s main room for two full hours as tracks from Ordinary Man played at top volume, the walls of the venue papered with photos from all different phases of the metal god’s career. Walking with the help of a cane and holding onto the arm of a male friend as he entered and exited the venue, Osbourne nevertheless cut a striking figure, his star presence somehow undiminished. Onlookers craned their necks to get a glance and brandished smartphones, held aloft to capture the icon’s brief forays outside the cocoon of his inner sanctum.
Much more visible was Osbourne’s wife and The Talk co-host Sharon, who energetically worked the room to schmooze with record executives and celebrity guests including Rob Zombie and wife Sheri Moon Zombie, rapper Machine Gun Kelly, burlesque star Dita Von Teese, actor Joe Manganiello and Orange is the New Black star Taryn Manning, all of whom got at least a few seconds of face time with the rock legend. (This reporter, for the record, was denied entry.)
For the rest of the night’s attendees, Osbourne remained a potent specter, his presence signified only by the bottleneck of guests attempting to infiltrate the nucleus of his celebrity — or, at the very least, to catch a glimpse of him in that corner booth. For many, it was an exercise in futility if not frustration — the megawatt star, so close and yet so far away, separated from the truly “ordinary” among us by an impenetrable wall of influence. When he was finally ushered through a back door and into a waiting car at the end of the evening, the music inside The Rainbow seemed to fade instantaneously — and the still-crowded room felt suddenly empty in his wake.
Stream Ordinary Man below.