For more than four decades, as lead singer of the band Black Sabbath, and latterly as a solo artist, Ozzy Osbourne — who has died aged 76 — ­pioneered the outrageous heavy metal lifestyle: drink, drugs,

Ozzy Osbourne was the greatest singer heavy metal ever knew, his voice a keening wail that seemed to float above the heaviest of riffs, from his earliest days of laying the foundation for what metal would eventually become at the helm of Black Sabbath to a solo career that somehow held its own against the weight of his own legacy.