Mountain View Mortuary & Cemetery is a historic cemetery and mausoleum complex at 2400 North Fair Oaks Avenue in Altadena, California. Established as Mountain View Cemetery in 1882, it is one of the older cemeteries in the Los Angeles area and contains the graves of figures including physicist Richard Feynman, actor George Reeves and writer Octavia E. Butler. For heavy metal fans, the location is particularly notable for its connection with Ozzy Osbourne, who filmed substantial parts of the music video for “Life Won’t Wait” at the cemetery and adjoining Mountain View Mausoleum in 2010.
“Life Won’t Wait” was released as the second single from Osbourne’s album Scream. Directed by his son Jack Osbourne, the video makes extensive use of the cemetery and mausoleum as part of its funeral imagery. It opens with a coffin positioned above an open grave, while later scenes show Ozzy among the headstones and inside the mausoleum. The long marble corridors, staircases and ornate interiors of Mountain View Mausoleum provide much of the video’s gothic atmosphere and make the location easily recognisable throughout the clip.
Mountain View Cemetery was founded by Pasadena pioneer Levi W. Giddings after the sale of land where members of the local community had previously been buried. The mortuary was added in 1959. The neighbouring Mountain View Mausoleum dates from 1923 and was designed by architect Cecil E. Bryan, a specialist in large community mausoleums who regarded the Altadena building as his finest work. Its interior contains more than 60 varieties of Italian marble, stained-glass windows by Judson Studios and the 180-foot Great Gallery, whose vaulted ceiling features an extensive painted work by artist Martin Syvertsen. The mausoleum became part of the Mountain View property in 1971.
The mausoleum later gained another connection to heavy music when Ghost used it for their Live from the Ministry performance in 2022, tied to the release of Impera. The band performed “Kaisarion”, “Call Me Little Sunshine”, “Hunter’s Moon” and “Spillways” inside the building, while a separate performance of “Call Me Little Sunshine” was broadcast on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. The marble galleries, stained glass and cathedral-like interiors provided a fitting backdrop for Ghost’s ecclesiastical visual style.
The Altadena cemetery should not be confused with the similarly named Mt. View Mortuary & Cemetery in San Bernardino, where guitarist Randy Rhoads is buried. Rhoads, who played on Osbourne’s Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman before his death in 1982, is interred in the Rhoads family mausoleum at 570 East Highland Avenue, around 60 miles east of Altadena. Mountain View in Altadena is therefore connected with Ozzy Osbourne through the filming of “Life Won’t Wait”, while Randy Rhoads’ grave is located at the separate San Bernardino cemetery.
ADDRESS:
2300 N Marengo Ave, Altadena, CA 91001, USA
Back to Altadena.