Friends, family and industry veterans continue to share their memories of Ozzy Osbourne following his July 2025 passing. Specifically, Grammy-winning music producer Andrew Watt recently spoke to Rolling Stone about how Ozzy was “normal” the day before his death – making the tragic news “a great shock” – as well as about his deep bond with the late Prince of Darkness.
What Watt Said About Ozzy’s Death + Impact
During the interview (published online on Sept. 27), Watt – who produced 2020’s Ordinary Man and 2022’s Patient Number 9 – reflected on why the loss of Ozzy was so surprising and painful.
“Everything was normal [the day before], and the next day, the news was just a giant shock,” he told the magazine.
When asked if losing Ozzy feels like “losing a family member,” Watt said that it does. “He saw me in a way that I did not see myself, and if you talk to anyone that loves him or was lucky enough to be loved by him, that’s a constant thing.”
He continued [via Rolling Stone]:
He could see you in your good, your bad, and just in a way that you were — he was witchy like that. He often knew things that were gonna happen before they happened and just had an incredible sense. When we made all those albums together, he was recovering from this accident [a fall at home] that he had. And it was the first time that I was ever making music where I realized that music was something bigger than just making songs. It was giving him a purpose when he didn’t feel well and making him feel great and laugh and sing and dance and heal. Those two albums were incredible, and they, for me, are the reason why I’m here talking to you today.
In fact, Watt claimed that working with Ozzy “changed everything” for him, adding [per Rolling Stone]:
He saw me as a serious album producer. Up until then, I wasn’t really making full albums. I had made one or two full albums that I was involved in, but I wasn’t doing it like that. And he saw in me that I could do this. And it was a dream come true. . . . He really believed in me. He let me play guitar on his albums, and that’s just unbelievable. We were really big for each other, both as collaborators and as friends. And, fuck, man, more than anything, I miss the laughter. He’s the funniest person ever of all time.
READ MORE: Judas Priest Officially Drop New Duet With Ozzy Osbourne on ‘War Pigs’
What Ozzy Taught Watt About Mixing
Watt also remarked that Ozzy helped him become more adept and self-assured when it comes to mixing albums [per Rolling Stone]: “He gave me the confidence, and he taught me so much about how to mix rock music and take it all the way to the end.”
Later in the interview, he clarified:
You have to understand. This man was making ‘Paranoid’ when he was 21 years old. So he had a 55-year career where everything was grandiose and at the highest level. And he’s one of the smartest people I have ever met, and a history buff, and a genius, a literal genius. His persona was [just] persona. He was incredibly brilliant, incredibly sharp. His ears were reactive. You could think he wasn’t listening and he heard every single thing. There’d be times we’d be in the studio listening to something and he’s just drawing and I’m like, “Oh, he is not listening.” And then he’d just give me this one line that cuts so deep, in a positive way.
He would always say to me, “Listen to Led Zeppelin and tell me what the loudest thing is.” And me, having my confidence, I’d be like, “It’s the drums. John Bonham.” He said, “Nope, not the drums.” He said, “It’s the bass.”
He pointed out the bass is the most important thing in a rock song. You have to make sure the bass is there and pumping and cutting through and providing that sense of rhythm, because it’s the bridge between the drums and the guitars. It makes the song heavy, because the guitars can poke through if you have them mixed in the right way. The bass is a hard thing to really get cutting, but also representing the bottom. He was very bass-focused, mix-wise, and making sure the bass came through. And if you listen to the records that we made together, there’s a lot of bass on those records. “Under the Graveyard” [from Ordinary Man] has so much low end, if you check that out. He was involved in every detail of every single mix-down, too. That’s how much he cared.
Watt’s Looks Back on the Back to the Beginning Concert
Naturally, Watt was at Black Sabbath’s Back to the Beginning final concert and celebration (which took place on July 5, 2025).
“The experience at the show was unbelievable, and at this current moment, it feels like a dream sequence,” he told Rolling Stone. “The whole last month of his life feels like a dream. I had been in London working on a project, and going to the show and getting to Birmingham was amazing. And I got there and there was this big photo shoot, everyone was there.”
Watt expounded:
It was this amazing thing because [guitarist] Jake E. Lee was there, who hadn’t seen Ozzy in 30 years. And all these people were there from all walks of his life, bands that he loved. Musicians that he loved. There’s this really great photo shoot that Ross Halfin was conducting and Ozzy was telling him to fuck off the whole time, and he was telling Ozzy to fuck off back.
It was just this great, fun thing. It felt like a heavy metal summer camp. That’s the best way to describe it. And then we were all together every day, and getting to be with Sharon and Jack and Kelly and everyone… I remember the night before the big show, I went out with Sharon to have a curry, ’cause that’s what you eat in Birmingham. And we brought one back to the hotel for Ozzy. Hung out with him for a long time and talked. We had a couple hours together in his room the night before the show. [Pauses.] This is hard to talk about.
Other Ozzy Osbourne News
As noted above, Judas Priest recently put out a cover of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” that features Ozzy’s vocals! As reported by Loudwire earlier this month:
Judas Priest had a scheduling conflict that left them unable to attend and perform at Ozzy and Black Sabbath’s Back to the Beginning concert farewell. But having such close ties to Ozzy and understanding what this moment meant in metal history, the band found a way to still be involved by recording and releasing a cover of “War Pigs” to coincide with the celebration.
After seeing what the band did with the song, nonother than Sharon Osbourne “asked if there was a way to get Ozzy included on the track.”
So, both parties made it happen, with Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford enthusiastically telling Full Metal Jackie earlier this month: “It’s the first ever time in my entire life that I’ve been able to do a duet with Ozzy and I’m so eternally grateful and blessed that I was able to do that. When you hear Priest’s ‘War Pigs’ with Ozzy singing on that track, it’s just going to a really special place.”
It’s worth mentioning, too, that all profits “from Sony Music Entertainment U.K. and Epic Records in the U.K. from audio streams, downloads and physical sales of this specific version of “War Pigs” will be donated to the Glenn Tipton Parkinson’s Foundation and Cure Parkinson’s” [via Loudwire].
Outside of that, fellow Back to the Beginning performer and Ozzy friend Yungblud recently joined Loudwire Nights’ Chuck Armstrong to discuss the concert; his new EP with Aerosmith (which’ll be the legendary band’s first studio release in 13 years); and much more.
Oh, and the BBC delayed the release of the Ozzy Osbourne: Coming Home documentary to this October. Plus, the trailer for another documentary – Ozzy: No Escape From Now – arrived earlier this month.
Rockers We’ve Lost in 2025
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Gallery Credit: Chad Childers, Loudwire
