SAN DIEGO — Heavy metal godfather and two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Ozzy Osbourne, who died Tuesday at the age of 76, had no illusions about what the key focus would be in his obituaries.

“It’s gonna say: ‘Ozzy, the man who bit the head off a bat in Des Moines, Iowa, on such and such a day,’” the legendary singer, songwriter, band leader and ubiquitous pop-culture icon told me in a 2003 San Diego Union-Tribune interview.

Osbourne later updated his prediction, the better to also take into account that — a year before that notorious Iowa concert bat-biting escapade — he bit the head off a live dove during a 1981 meeting with some understandably shocked executives at his record company.

“I’ll be remembered as the guy who bit the heads off several creatures, but I suppose that’s what I have to expect,” he said in 2010. (All of the quotes in this article are from the eight Union-Tribune interviews Osbourne did with this writer between 1991 and 2018, when he announced a retirement tour that — because of his mounting health problems — never took place in full).

No doubt, there will also be a focus now on the numerous instances in which Osbourne’s jaw-dropping drug use and drinking nearly led to the death of this larger-than-life rock legend on multiple occasions.

Or as he memorably put it in 2007: “Am I surprised to be alive? Is the pope a Catholic? People ask me: ‘Ozzy, how have you lasted all these years?’ I’ll be (bleeped) if I know!’“

No cause of death has been disclosed yet for Osbourne. But while his public image was often that of a winkingly ghoulish heavy metal icon known as the Prince of Darkness — or of the lovably befuddled dad who starred in the hit MTV reality series “The Osbournes” — it is wrong and misleading to reduce him to a caricature.

Yes, some of his misadventures inspired shock and awe, be it the time he was arrested in 1989 for the attempted murder of his second wife and manager, Sharon Osbourne, or his 1982 arrest in Texas for urinating on the Alamo, while wearing a dress he took from his wife’s hotel room closet, or the time he removed all his clothes and dipped some of his private parts into a wine glass with executives at his German record label.

But Osbourne’s best songs, both as a solo artist and with Black Sabbath, should outlive even his most colorful exploits. And deservedly so.

He was, at heart, a crowd-pleasing entertainer who lived for the spotlight and for the opportunity to interact on concert stages with his multigenerational audience. He connected strongly with fans of all ages, as was demonstrated when I arrived a little before 9 a.m. at the 2003 edition of the Osbourne-led Ozzfest to hear the opening band, Unloco, perform .

The venue, Chula Vista’s Coors Amphitheater, is now known as North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre. Even though the festival’s headlining namesake was not scheduled to perform for another 11 hours, some of Osbourne’s devotees were already on-site.

“We got here at 3 a.m. and slept in our Jeep,” said San Marcos’ Liah Beason, who was accompanied by her daughter, Ashley, 16, and son, Chris, 10.

“We’re all really Ozzy fans,” said Chris, a fifth-grader at Palomar Elementary School.

“We’re here to see Ozzy,” his mother affirmed.

Such devotion was music to Osbourne’s ears.

“I want to be remembered as a working-class hero, not for biting the head off a f—ing bird, or whatever it was,” he said in 2010.

“Next year will be my 40th anniversary as a professional musician. I remember when the first Black Sabbath album came out (in 1970), and I thought: ‘Oh, this will be good for a few years; I’ll be to afford a few beers and a bit of dope.'”

Osbourne’s longevity, surprising though it was to him and others, reflects his tenacity and his ability to craft memorable music through good times and bad alike.

His sound, his look and his devil-may-care attitude helped forge an enduring template for heavy metal. The slew of intensely hard-rocking classics in Osbourne’s repertoire included songs he did with Black Sabbath (“War Pigs,” “Paranoid,” “Iron Man,” “Sweet Leaf,” “Children of the Grave”) and in his subsequent solo career (“Bark at the Moon,” “Mr. Crowley,” “Suicide Solution,” “Crazy Train,” “Over The Mountain,” “I Don’t Know”).

That some of his best-known songs were infused with Satanic imagery has long been a matter of fact. But Osbourne stressed that the occult was never a way of life for him.

“I never talk religion,” he said in 2017. “I don’t understand organized religion. But I strive to be good, although it feels good to be bad, sometimes. I’m not bad, like, evil bad. I’m bad, in that I’m a naughty boy. I’m not a guy that worships the (expletive) devil. When Black Sabbath started, we got invited to an (expletive) graveyard at midnight. We told them: ‘Our (dark) image is a joke.'”

Did he and his bandmates accept that graveyard invitation?

“No, we did not go,” he replied.

Osbourne initially excelled with dark, doom-and-gloom songs that fused often grim lyrics about angst, alienation and dread with crunching guitar riffs, thumping drum beats and his powerful singing. But he also had a keen ear for melody and a much better command of pop-rock songcraft than many gave him credit for possessing.

“Hearing Paul (McCartney) and his mates is what made me want to do what I do,” he said in 2007. “I love the Beatles; I’m not so much of a Stones fan. I also like Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, early Genesis and Bowie, some Elton John; a lot of Elton John. I haven’t sung only about Satan or suicide; I’ve done a fair share of ballads.”

Those ballads included 1972’s tender “Changes,” 1983’s arm-waving “So Tired,” 1988’s “Close My Eyes Forever” (his duet with Lita Ford), 1991’s “Mama, I’m Coming Home,” 1995’s “Old L.A. Tonight” and 2020’s Beatles-flavored “Ordinary Man” (his duet with Elton John).

Whether belting out apocalyptic lyrics in overdrive or crooning heartfelt odes to love, Osbourne sang with unmistakable feeling and conviction. While he had an alarming propensity for digging increasingly larger holes to fall into with his drug- and alcohol-fueled debauchery, he came to realize that being alive to enjoy the love of his family trumped everything else.

“I wasn’t alive — I was the living (expletive) dead for 20 years,” he said in 1997. “If it wasn’t for my wife and family, I’d have been dead long ago…. It used to be fun getting drunk and stoned. It (drugs and alcohol) was my best friend, but then it became my worst enemy. I was miserable ….”

He expounded on this in 2007, saying: “I don’t drink or use drugs today. I don’t even smoke cigarettes. I reckon nicotine is the hardest to give up; I’ve been in rehab with junkies who can get off of the smack, but they can’t put the cigarettes down.

“Somebody asked me, ‘What would you have done if you couldn’t have done the new album without alcohol or drugs?’ I suppose then it would be time for me to call it quits. But this person on my recovery program team said: ‘Ozzy’s got a lot more years in him. It’s not a sin to ask for help.’ Even if I don’t drink, the disease of addiction is still going on; everyday I have my (12-step recovery) book in front of me.

“Even straight people aren’t happy all the time. Even straight people have a bad day or an argument. But what I am getting sick and tired of is, well, I’ve been sober for a couple of years now and I want people to take me seriously. Because I used to be a piece of (expletive) flesh and drool on the floor. And now that I’ve got my (expletive) head out of the bottle and the bag and whatever (stuff) I was doing, I want people to take me seriously.

“I have a therapist, and he says: ‘Look, do the math. How many years were you getting loaded?’ I answer: ‘Most of my life.’ Then he asks: ‘How long have you been clean?’ People don’t change because they got clean; you have to work at it.”

In our 2010 interview, I asked Osbourne if he ever wondered how, and why, he had managed to survive for so long.

“I don’t know. Luck,” he replied. “I suppose that I didn’t die and that my number didn’t get called up. I was a friend of (Led Zeppelin drummer) John Bonham. I used to go drinking with him and I wasn’t any worse than him and he wasn’t any worse than me.

“It happens a lot, where people die every night in this country, in any country. It’s not just rock ‘n’ rollers and swashbuckling rock stars, and it happens every single day. It’s just one of those things, where every action has a reaction. At the end of the day, I just didn’t want to be that person anymore.”

I interviewed Osbourne eight times over a period of nearly 30 years.

In some instances, his speech was slurred, his thoughts jumbled and his ability to concentrate was impaired. In other instances — that is, after he got clean and sober — he was focused, thoughtful, witty and refreshingly candid.

“I love my work,” he said in 2017. “It took me making a few stupid decisions to realize how important my work is. You learn more from your bad things than your good things.”

The son of a factory worker, John Michael “Ozzy” Osbourne grew up poor in the grimy English industrial city of Birmingham. In the 1960s Birmingham was a launching pad for a number of notable musicians, including the Steve Winwood-fronted Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, the Move, Chicken Shack and Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and John Bonham.

“I was a big fan of Stevie Winwood and Traffic, and of Robert Plant,” Osbourne said in 2010. “These are the guys who made it just before I did. Stevie was a great inspiration for me. I love his voice.”

Osbourne was an undiagnosed dyslexic in school who couldn’t hold down a job and spent a stint in jail when he was 17, following a botched burglary attempt.

“I’d get a job for a few days and then walk out,” he said in 2010. “It was a way of surviving. Where I come from, you had to get a job and pay your way. By the time I was 20 (and in Black Sabbath), I could buy my own house and car, and cigarettes and alcohol. That was real success. I’m not saying I’m ashamed of where I came from. At the same time, I don’t particularly want to go back to it, because I like the life I have today.”

Rock ‘n’ roll provided Osbourne’s salvation.

“What I’m really proud of is the fact I’m 54 and still in demand,” he said in 2004. “I’ve been doing it 36 years now, so to have little kids come up and get a kick out of meeting me. … I mean, my son said to me once, because he’s not into this (‘Osbournes’ TV series): ‘Do you mind if people laugh with you or at you?’ I said: ‘As long as they’re laughing I don’t give a (bleep)….’

“I’m one hell of a lucky SOB. People say I’m blessed, and I am.”

For all his outrageous behavior and near-fatal travails, much of Osbourne’s appeal stemmed from his everyman persona as a working-class-hero-turned-multimillionaire who couldn’t believe his good luck. He also had a knack for nurturing talented young musicians in his band, including guitarists Randy Rhoads, Zakk Wylde and the San Diego-bred Jake E. Lee.

Speaking of San Diego, Osbourne came close to moving here at one point.

“I know La Jolla. I nearly bought a house there — a brand new estate —- many years ago, but it was too far away (from Los Angeles),” he said in 2010. “Mind you, my wife finds another house she wants to buy every other week. How many do we have? Seven.”

Osbourne’s death comes five years after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and just 17 days after his farewell performance in his native Birmingham, where he performed songs from his solo career and with the reunited Black Sabbath. That concert also featured a slew of bands that cite him and Black Sabbath as profound inspirations on their own music, including Metallica, Slayer, Tool, Anthrax, Mastodon and Guns N’ Roses.

If anyone who performed at that July 5 show knew that its star was so close to his death, they kept quiet about it. Osbourne leaves behind his family, millions of fans, a proposed Broadway musical, “Rasputin,” that has yet to be produced, and a legacy that should endure for years to come.

“I’d like to be remembered as a guy who gave people a lot of smiles …” he said in 2010. “And at least I haven’t killed anybody. I haven’t started a war.”

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