Lemmy Kilmister’s Last Words To Ozzy Osbourne Remembered

In addition to being one of the founding bands of heavy metal along with Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, Black Sabbath also laid the groundwork for the gothic look and provided the sound to match. In the span of barely two years, between 1970 and 1972, Ozzy Osbourne and his band triggered a seismic change in rock music by releasing four important albums.

Motorhead, a metal band that was formed in London, is considered to be one of the most influential and direct progenies of these titans of gothic metal. Motorhead, led by the flamboyant hedonist Lemmy Kilmister, took rock music in a veritably darker and heavier direction all while being a direct descendant of the aforementioned titans. By then, it was just a matter of time until Osbourne and Lemmy met paths; as mutually admired artists, they quickly forged a close bond.

Osbourne recalled his friend’s final remarks to him in a recent interview with Metal Hammer. Osbourne previously said that he thinks about Lemmy “all the fu**ing time.”

“I went down to South America and he was there on tour,” Osbourne said. “But he was so fucked he couldn’t speak to anyone. He was sitting at the front, skinny as a rake. He was riddled with cancer at the end. But mind you, he turned round to me and said ‘I’m probably going to die, I suppose. Never thought I’d make 70, so I did good.’ His exact words were, ‘I could have lived a lot longer and taken care of myself, but I lived my life the way I want to live and I ain’t got no regrets.’ Fair enough!”

Both Lemmy and Ozzy were together sporadically in the early 1990s and sometimes in the last decades of the twentieth century.