Ozzy Osbourne Gets Star on Hometown Walk of Fame

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Later today, Ozzy Osbourne will become the first artist to receive a star on the Walk of Fame in his native Birmingham, England. "We feel it's an honor and it's representing Birmingham," Bill Bohanna, one of the project's organizers, told the BBC. "He's a Birmingham lad and he's done rather well for himself." Osbourne, who earned his Hollywood Walk of Fame star, which sits just outside Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum, in 2002 (he was memorably inducted by Marilyn Manson), released over a dozen albums with Black Sabbath, put out his ninth solo album earlier this year, starred in three seasons of The Osbournes, bit the head off a bat, will embark on the 11th installment of the summer festival that bears his name this year and can boast having the best episode of Behind the Music ever made. "Ozzy will be emotional," his wife, Sharon, told a Birmingham newspaper. "He's come an awful long way from Ashton as a kid with no money and a lot of dreams."

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Song Stories

“Everyday People”

Sly and the Family Stone | 1968

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.

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