I Am Ozzy

by Ozzy Osbourne

  Nah.

  Shit, it sounded like…

  Suddenly Bill threw himself through the open patio door, with this wild-eyed look on his face. At the same time, I heard doors slamming at the other end of the house and what sounded like three big blokes falling down the stairs. Then Tony, Geezer and one of the roadies – an American bloke called Frank – came puffing into the room. Everyone was half-dressed apart from Frank, who was still in his underwear.

  We all looked at each other.

  Then in unison, we shouted: ‘Sirens!’

  *

  It sounded like the entire fucking LAPD was coming up the driveway. We were being busted! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

  ‘GET THE COKE! GET THE COKE!’ I started to scream.

  So Frank dived towards the coffee table, grabbed the vials of coke, but then just ran around in circles, his hair standing on end, a fag still in his mouth, his briefs riding up into his arse crack.

  Then I remembered something else.

  ‘GET THE POT! GET THE POT!’

  Frank dived back towards the coffee table and grabbed the big bowl of pot, but when he did that he dropped the coke. So he ended up scrabbling around on the floor, trying to balance everything in his arms. Meanwhile, I couldn’t even move. Even before the sirens, my heart had been going at triple speed. Now it was beating so fast I thought it was gonna crack open my rib cage.

  B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-bum!

  B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-bum!

  B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-bum!

  By the time I pulled myself together, Bill, Geezer and Tony had all bolted. So it was just me and Frank, and enough coke to march the Bolivian army to the moon and back.

  ‘Frank! Frank!’ I shouted. ‘Over ’ere. The bog. Quick!’

  Somehow Frank managed to haul himself and all the drugs over to the bog, which was just off the hallway near the front door, and we dived inside and locked the door behind us.

  The sirens were fucking deafening now.

  Then I heard the brakes of the police cars squealing as they pulled up outside. Then a radio crackling. Then a knock at the door.

  BAM! BAM! BAM!

  ‘Open up!’ shouted one of the cops. ‘C’mon, open up!’ By now, me and Frank were kneeling on the floor. In our panic, we’d tried to get rid of the pot before the coke – first by washing it down the sink, then by flushing it down the bog. Big mistake. The sink and the bog couldn’t take it, and they’d started to overflow with all this brown, lumpy water. So we tried forcing some of the pot down the U-trap, using the end of the bog brush. But it wouldn’t go. The pipes were backed up.

  And we still had to get rid of all the coke.

  ‘There’s nothing else for it,’ I said to Frank. ‘We’re gonna have to snort all the coke.’

  ‘Are you fucking out of your mind?’ he said. ‘You’ll die!’

  ‘Have you ever been to prison, Frank?’ I said. ‘Well, I have, and I’m telling you right now, I ain’t going back.’

  So I started to break open the vials and tip the coke on to the floor. Then I got down on all fours, pressed my nose against the tiles, and started to vacuum up as much of the stuff as I could.

  BAM! BAM! BAM!

  ‘Open the door! We know you’re in there!’

  Frank was looking at me like I was insane.

  ‘Any second now,’ I told him, my face bright red, my legs tingling, my eyeballs throbbing, ‘they’re gonna break down that door, and we’ll be fucked.’

  ‘Oh, man,’ said Frank, joining me on all fours. ‘I can’t believe I’m about to do this.’

  We must have snorted about six or seven grams each before I heard the tapping noise outside the door.

  ‘SHHH! Listen,’ I said.

  There it was again: tap, tap, tap, tap…

  It sounded like footsteps…

  Then I heard the front door open and a woman’s voice. She was speaking in Spanish. The maid! The maid was letting in the cops. Fuck! I broke open another vial and put my nose to the floor again.

  A male voice: ‘Good morning, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I believe someone at this residence pressed the emergency call button?’

  I stopped, mid-sniff.

  Emergency call button?

  The maid said something in Spanish again, the man replied, then I heard two sets of footsteps in the hallway and the man’s voice getting louder. The cop was inside the house!

  ‘It’s usually located right next to the AC thermostat,’ he said. ‘Yep, here it is – right on the wall. If you press this button, ma’am, it sounds an alarm down at the Bel Air station and we dispatch some officers to make sure everything is OK. Looks as though someone might have pressed it by accident when they were adjusting the thermostat. Happens more often than you’d think. Let me just reset the system – there we go – and we’ll be on our way. Any problems, just give us a call. Here’s our number. Or hit the button again. We have someone on call twenty-four hours a day.’

  ‘Gracias,’ said the maid.

  I heard the front door close and the maid walk back towards the kitchen. All of the air came out of my lungs. Holy shit: that had been a close one. Then I looked over at Frank: his face was a mask of white powder and snot, and his left nostril was bleeding.

  ‘You mean…?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah.’ I nodded. ‘Someone needs to teach Bill how to use that fucking thing.’

  The constant fear of getting busted wasn’t the only downside to coke. It got to the point where practically every word out of my mouth was coked-up bollocks. For fifteen hours straight, I’d tell the lads how much I loved them more than anything else in the world. Even me and Tony – who never had conversations – would have nights when we’d be up for hours, hugging each other and saying, ‘No, really, I love you, man – I really love you.’

  Then I’d go to bed, wait for my heart to stop beating at eight times its usual speed, then fall into this fucking horrific withdrawal. The comedowns were so bad that I used to pray. I’d say, ‘God, please let me sleep, and I promise I’ll never do cocaine again, as long as I live.’

  Then I’d wake up with my jaw aching from spouting so much bullshit the previous night.

  And I’d do another line.

  It was amazing how quickly it took over our lives. It got to the point where we couldn’t do anything without it. Then it got to the point where we couldn’t do anything with it, either.

  When I finally realised the pot wasn’t enough to calm me down from all the coke, I started getting into Valium. Then eventually I moved on to heroin, but thank God I didn’t like that stuff. Geezer tried it, too. He thought it was fucking brilliant, but he was sensible. He didn’t want to get involved. Frank, the roadie, wasn’t so lucky – heroin ruined him in the end. I haven’t heard from Frank in years now, and I’d be amazed if he survived, to be honest with you. I hope he did, I really do, but when heroin gets hold of you, it’s usually The End.

  During the making of Vol. 4, we all had moments when we were so fucked up that we just couldn’t function. With Bill, it was when he was recording ‘Under the Sun’. By the time he got the drums right on that song, we’d renamed it ‘Everywhere Under the Fucking Sun’. Then the poor bloke came down with hepatitis and almost died. Meanwhile, Geezer ended up in hospital with kidney problems. Even Tony burned out. Just after we’d finished the album, we did a gig at the Hollywood Bowl. Tony had been doing coke literally for days – we all had, but Tony had gone over the edge. I mean, that stuff just twists your whole idea of reality. You start seeing things that aren’t there. And Tony was gone. Near the end of the gig he walked off stage and collapsed.

  ‘Severe exhaustion,’ the doctor said.

  That was one way of putting it.

  At the same time, the coke was fucking up my voice, good and proper. When you’re taking heavy-duty amounts of cocaine, this white gunk starts to trickle down the back of your throat, and you find yourself doing that phlegm-clearing thing all the time – like a sniff, but deeper and gunkier. And that puts a l
ot of stress on that little titty thing that hangs down at the back of your throat – the epiglottis, or the ‘clack’, as I’ve always called it. Anyway, I was taking so much coke that I was clearing away the phlegm every couple of minutes, until eventually I tore my clack in half. I was lying in bed at the time in the Sunset Marquis hotel, and I just felt it flop down inside the back of my throat. It was horrific. Then the fucking thing swelled up to the size of a golf ball. I thought: Right, this is it – I’m gonna die now.

  So I went to see a doctor on Sunset Boulevard.

  He asked, ‘What’s the problem, Mr Osbourne?’

  ‘I’ve sucked my clack,’ I croaked.

  ‘You’ve what?’

  ‘My clack.’

  I pointed at my throat.

  ‘Let’s have a look,’ he said, getting out his lollipop stick and his little flashlight. ‘Open wide. Say “ ahh” for me now.’

  So I opened my mouth and closed my eyes.

  ‘Holy mother of Christ!’ he said. ‘How in God’s name did you do that?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Mr Osbourne, your epiglottis is the size of a small light bulb, and it’s glowing almost as brightly. I don’t even need to use my flashlight.’

  ‘Can you fix it?’

  ‘I think so,’ he said, writing out a prescription. ‘But whatever it is you’ve been doing, stop doing it.’

  That wasn’t the end of our medical problems, though. When it was time to go back to England, we were all terrified of taking home an STD from one of the groupies and giving it to our other half. Catching some exotic disease was always a big worry when we were in America. I remember one time during a particularly wild night at a hotel somewhere, Tony came running out of his room, going, ‘Aargh! My knob! My knob!’ I asked him what was wrong, and he told me that he’d been messing around with this groupie when he looked down and saw all this yellow pus coming out of her. He thought he was about to die.

  ‘Did the pus smell funny?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, white in the face. ‘I almost puked.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘What d’you mean, “ah”?’

  ‘Was it the blonde chick?’ I asked. ‘The one with the tattoo?’

  ‘Yeah. And?’

  ‘Well, that probably explains it then.’

  ‘Ozzy,’ said Tony, getting visibly angry. ‘Stop fucking around, this is serious. What are you talking about?’

  ‘Look, I ain’t a doctor,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think the yellow stuff was pus.’

  ‘Well what was it then?’

  ‘Probably the banana I stuck up there earlier.’

  I don’t think Tony knew whether to be relieved or even more worried after that.

  Of course, one failsafe way to make sure you never gave anything dodgy to your missus was to get a shot of penicillin. I’d learned that after getting the clap one time. But in those days we didn’t know any dodgy doctors, which meant the only way to get a ‘safety shot’ was to check yourself into the emergency room of the nearest hospital.

  So that’s what we did after making Vol. 4.

  By then we’d left Bel Air and were on the road in small-town America somewhere, doing a few shows before our flight back home. I’ll never forget the scene: me, Tony, Geezer, and pretty much the entire road crew – I don’t know what Bill was up to that day – checking ourselves into this hospital one night. And of course no one had the bottle to tell the good-looking chick on the front desk why we were there, so they were all going, ‘Go on, Ozzy, you tell her, you don’t care, you’re fucking crazy, you are.’ But even I couldn’t bring myself to say, ‘Oh, hello there, my name’s Ozzy Osbourne, and I’ve been bonking groupies for a couple of months, and I think my knob might be about to fall off, would you mind terribly giving me a shot of penicillin to make sure my missus doesn’t get whatever I’ve got?’

  But it was too late to turn around and walk away.

  So when the girl asked me what the problem was, I just turned bright red and blurted, ‘I think I broke my ribs.’

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Here’s a ticket. See this number? They’ll call it out when the doctor’s ready to see you.’

  Then it was Geezer’s turn to go up.

  ‘I’ve got whatever he’s got,’ he said, pointing at me.

  Eventually the doctors twigged. I don’t know who came clean with them, ’cos I certainly didn’t. I just remember this bloke in a white suit coming up to me and going, ‘Are you with the others?’ and me nodding. Then he showed me into this room with Tony, Geezer and about half a dozen other hairy English blokes all bent over with their trousers down, their lily-white arses ready for their penicillin jabs.

  ‘Join the line,’ he said.

  It was September when we got back to England.

  By that time the deal to buy Bulrush Cottage had gone through, and Thelma, Elliot and the baby were already settled in. It always made me smile, going home to Bulrush Cottage – mainly because it was on a little country road called Butt Lane. ‘Welcome to Butt Lane,’ I used to say to visitors, ‘the arsehole of Britain.’

  It wasn’t just me and Thelma and the baby who got a new place to live around that time. I also sorted out a bigger house for my mum and dad. As always, Patrick Meehan’s office took care of the dough side of things, although when the land behind Bulrush Cottage was put up for sale we bought it with our own money – or rather, money we made by selling the Rolls-Royce that Patrick Meehan had given Tony, which Tony had then given to us. I think that was the first time we’d bought anything with our own money. To this day, I don’t know why we did it. Maybe it’s ’cos Thelma dealt with all the paperwork. I made her do it because the farmer who sold us the land was a cross-dresser, and I didn’t want to go anywhere near him. Fucking hell, man, the first time I saw that bloke, I thought I was hallucinating. He had this big bushy beard and he’d drive his tractor down Butt Lane while wearing a frock and curlers in his hair. Other times you’d see him by the side of the road, his frock hitched up, taking a slash. And the funny thing is, no one would bat an eyelid.

  Tony and Geezer also bought houses when they got back. Tony got a place in Acton Trussell, on the other side of the M6; and Geezer bought somewhere down in Worcestershire. It took Bill a bit longer to find his rock ’n’ roll retreat, so in the meantime he rented a place called Fields Farm, out near Evesham. In less than three years, we’d gone from piss-poor backstreet kids to millionaire country gents. It was unbelievable.

  And I loved living in the country.

  For starters, I suddenly had enough room to get even more toys sent over from Patrick Meehan’s office. Like a seven-foot-tall stuffed grizzly bear. And a gypsy caravan with a little fireplace inside. And a myna bird called Fred, who lived in the laundry room. He could do a wicked impression of a washing machine, could Fred. Or at least he could until I put a shotgun in his face and told him to shut the fuck up.

  I have to say I really pigged out on the calls to Patrick Meehan’s office after we moved into Bulrush Cottage. Everything I’d ever wanted as a kid, I had them deliver. I ended up with a whole shed full of Scalextric cars, jukeboxes, table football games, trampolines, pool tables, shotguns, crossbows, catapults, swords, arcade games, toy soldiers, fruit machines… Every single thing you could ever think to ask for, I asked for it. The guns were most fun. The most powerful one I had was this Benelli five-shot semi-automatic. I tried it out on the stuffed bear one time. Its head just exploded – you should have fucking seen it, man. Another thing I’d do is get these mannequins and tie them to this tree trunk in the garden and execute them at dawn. I’m telling you, it’s really terrifying what booze and drugs will do to your mind if you take them for long enough. I was out of control.

  Obviously, the most important thing I needed to sort out after moving to the country was a ready supply of drugs. So I called up one of my American dealers and got him to start sending me cocaine via air mail, on the understanding that I’d pay him the next time I was over
there on tour. It worked a treat, although I ended up waiting for the postman all day like a dog. Thelma must have thought I was buying dirty magazines or something.

  Then I found a local dope dealer who said he could get me some really strong hash from Afghanistan. He wasn’t wrong, either. The first time I smoked that stuff it almost knocked my fucking head off. It came in massive slabs of black resin, which would last even me for weeks. There was nothing I loved more than when someone came over to Bulrush Cottage and said, ‘Dope? Nah, I don’t smoke that stuff. Never has any effect on me.’

  If you said that, you were mine.

  The first person who claimed to be immune to dope was our local fruit ’n’ veg man, Charlie Clapham. He was a right old character, Charlie was, and he became a good friend. One night, after we’d been to the pub, I got out the tin of Afghan hash and said, ‘Try this.’

  ‘Nah, never works on me, that stuff.’

  ‘Go on, Charlie, try it, just once. For me.’

  So he grabbed the brick out of my hands and before I could say anything he bit off a huge chunk of it. He must have eaten at least half an ounce. Then he burped in my face and said, ‘Urgh, that tasted ’orrible.’

  Five minutes later, he said, ‘See? Nothing,’ and went home.

  It must have been about one o’clock in the morning when he left, and the poor fucker was meant to be at his market stall by four. But I knew there was no way he’d be doing a normal day’s work.

  Sure enough, when I saw him a few days later, he grabbed me by the collar and said, ‘What the fuck was that shit you gave me the other night? By the time I got to the market I was hallucinating. I couldn’t get out of the van. I was just lying in the back with the carrots, a coat over my head, screaming. I thought the Martians had landed!’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Charlie,’ I told him.

  ‘Can I come over tomorrow night and have some more?’ he said.

  I rarely slept in my own bed at Bulrush Cottage. I was so loaded every night, I could never make it up the stairs. So I’d sleep in the car, in my caravan, under the piano in the living room, in the studio or outside in a bale of hay. When I slept outside in winter, it wasn’t unusual for me to wake up blue in the face with icicles on my nose. In those days, there was no such thing as hypothermia.