This.
Most people in 1985 would be shocked to find out that Ozzy Osbourne (and for that matter Keith Richards) are still alive.
I don’t think most people in 1985 would know who Ozzy Osbourne was. Apart from among genre specific music fans he wasn’t all that well known until his reality TV show.
I’ve never been a big follower of pop/rock/whatever, but even I heard of Ozzie Osborne by 1985. He supposedly bit the head off a live chicken onstage, or something. I heard multiple reference to that.
Mind you, I can’t say I’ve ever heard one of his records, AFAIK. Or maybe I have and don’t know who is singing.
Not really true. Ozzy was extremely notorious already in the 80’s, and you didn’t have to be a heavy rock fan to know him and his bat-biting, bird-decapitating, drugs-infested ways. I knew exactly who he was, and I was an eight year old kid back in 1985.
This is an example of selection bias. 1985 was nearly 40 years ago. A high proportion of those still around would, like yourself, have been quite young. A large percentage of the population then are no longer around to sample.
Another data point. I was as far as you can imagine from a heavy metal / hard rock fan in the 1980s (I was a teenager in the early-mid 80s) and I knew who Ozzie Osborne was.
The person who told me about Ozzie in the 80s is now in his 70s. He would have been in his late 20s/early 30s back then. Wasn’t Black Sabbath’s heyday more in the 70s?
Selection bias, or the fact that everyone I knew (apart from my grandma, I guess) also knew who Ozzy was.
That’s pretty much exactly the selection bias being spoken of . Everyone I knew knew of Ozzie in the eighties - except my grandparents, their siblings , and my much younger cousins. That was a small number of the people I knew - maybe 1% but people under 10 and over say 50 were a much higher percentage of the population.
Ozzie was fired from Black Sabbath in 1979 and started a long and successful solo career with the release of Blizzard of Ozz in 1981. He also gained international attention for biting the head off a bat during a concert in 1982.
Sure, there are always people who don’t follow pop music and wouldn’t know who Ozzie was in 1985. But I think it’s reasonable to assume if you went back in time to 1985 and mentioned his name, people would know him as well as they know any musician of that time.
Ozzy drew the ire of the morality police in the 80s. Practically enemy #1 for the satanic panic, so yes, everybody and their mother knew who he was.
I doubt very much that my mom (or dad) had any idea or cared about Ozzy and the bat incident in 85, let alone knew who he was. If you mentioned Ozzy they would have thought about Ozzie and Harriet.
I remember people being excited when Ozzy reunited with Black Sabbath for Live Aid in 1985.
Oh, he was VERY well known in 1985, thanks in part to MTV.
My church had anti-rock programming. That’s where I learned about all the cool music I should be listening to including Sabbath and Ozzy. Thank you Satan!
Yeah - people were certainly writing a lot about him by then (and that’s probably a lagging indication)
Don’t forget Kids/Knights In Satan’s Service (KISS).
Or anti christ/ devils child, ac/dc
It really was just opening our eyes to cool music. We learned about how Led Zeppelin was talking to us through backwards messages, Rush had anti-government messages, and David Bowie dressed ambiguously.
Had forgotten that one.
And our version was Anti Christ / Death Cult.