I Am Ozzy

by Ozzy Osbourne

  He was right: there’s no plausible medical reason why I should still be alive. There’s even less of a reason why I should be so healthy. Nowadays there’s pretty much fuck-all wrong with me – seriously.

  I mean, yes, my short-term memory hasn’t been too great since the quad bike accident – I have a memory therapist now, to help me with it – and I still have a mild stammer. But my heart’s in great shape, and my liver’s like brand new. After a million and one tests, the best the doc could come up with was that I had ‘a little bit of cholesterol’. But that’s hardly unusual for a sixty-year-old man brought up on lard sandwiches and chips.

  I can honestly say I never expected to last into my seventh decade – never mind still be viable. When I was a kid, if you’d put me up against a wall with the others from my street and asked me which one of us was going to make it to the year 2009, which one of us would end up with five kids and four grandkids and houses in Buckinghamshire and California, I’d never have put any money on me. I have to laugh every so often, ’cos I grew up with the entire system against me. I got thrown out of school at the age of fifteen without even being able to read a sentence properly.

  But I won in the end.

  We all did – me, Tony, Geezer and Bill.

  And I’m feeling great now. Better than ever.

  I mean, I still have my issues. I get very phobic about meeting new people, although it comes in waves. And I’m very superstitious. If I’m working out in the gym, I’ll always do more than thirteen repetitions. Always. And I won’t, under any circumstances, wear the colour green. It freaks me out, green does. I’ve no idea why – maybe it’s just because I had a green car once that was always breaking down. And I swear that being sober has made me a bit psychic, too. I’ll say to Sharon, ‘I wonder how so-and-so is’ – someone I haven’t seen for years – and the next day he’ll pop out of the wood-work.

  I had something similar when Princess Diana died, y’know.

  The week before the crash, I had a dream about it. It was so vivid I told Tony Dennis about it. Then, a few days later, she was gone.

  ‘Don’t have any fucking dreams about me,’ Tony said.

  People ask me if I’m really, truly clean now.

  I can’t give them the answer they want. All I can say is I’m clean today. That’s all I’ve got. That’s all I’ll ever have.

  But I’m certainly cleaner than I’ve been for the last forty years. One of the last times I got seriously fucked up was a few years ago now, after a gig in Prague. The beer was so good, man, I couldn’t help myself. And I was out with Zakk, my guitarist, who’s the most dangerous company in the world if you’re an alcoholic. The bloke can knock ’em back like you wouldn’t believe. He’s a machine. That was a memorable night, that was. After hitting the town big time, we went back to my suite on the ninth floor of this fancy high-rise hotel and got stuck into the minibar. Then, at about one in the morning, this thought came to me.

  ‘D’you know what I’ve never, ever done?’ I said to Zakk.

  ‘That must be a short fucking list, man,’ he replied.

  ‘Seriously, Zakk,’ I said. ‘There’s one rock ’n’ roll thing that I’ve never got around to doing, in all these years.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve never thrown a telly out of a hotel window.’

  ‘Shit, man,’ said Zakk. ‘We’d better do something about that.’

  So we pulled the telly out of the cabinet and hauled it over to the window, which we started to crank open. But they’d designed the window so you could open it only a few inches. Which meant we had to smash off the hinge by bashing it with a paperweight, until the thing finally opened wide enough to slide out this fifty-inch TV.

  Then we gave it a good old shove.

  Whoooooooossssssssssssssssh!

  Down it went, past the eighth floor, the seventh floor, the sixth floor, the fifth floor, the fourth floor…

  ‘Is that a bloke down there smoking a fag?’ I said to Zakk.

  The TV kept falling.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Zakk. ‘He’s miles away.’

  BANG!

  You shoulda seen that thing explode, man. Holy crap. It was like a bomb going off. The poor bloke having a smoke almost swallowed his cigarette, even though he was on the other side of the plaza.

  When we got bored of staring at the wreckage, I climbed into the cabinet where the TV had been and pretended to read the news. Then the phone rang. It was the hotel manager.

  ‘May I speak to Mr Osbourne?’ he said. ‘There’s been an… incident.’

  ‘He’s not here,’ said Zakk. ‘He’s on TV.’

  In the end, the manager just moved me to another room – the window was in a pretty bad state – and when I checked out they added a ‘miscellaneous item’ to my bill: $38,000! They justified it by saying the room couldn’t be used for a month. Which was bullshit. Zakk was billed another $10,000. And they charged us $1000 for the booze from the minibar.

  But it was worth it, in a way.

  When I paid that bill, I realised I didn’t want to be that person any more. It reached the point where I just thought, What are you gonna do, Ozzy? Are you gonna carry on being that one-foot-in-the-grave, one-foot-out-of-the-grave type of person, until you end up like so many other tragic rock ’n’ roll cases? Or are you gonna climb out of the hole for good?

  I’d hit rock bottom, in other words. It had taken me four decades to get there, but I’d finally arrived. I disliked everything about myself. I was terrified of living, but I was afraid to die.

  Which is no kind of existence, take it from me.

  So I cleaned myself up.

  First I quit the cigarettes. People ask, ‘How the fuck did you do that?’ but I was just so fed up with buying patches, taking them off, smoking a fag, putting them back on, that I thought, Fuck it, and went cold turkey. I simply did not want to do it any more.

  Then I did the same with the booze. After I’d been sober for a while, I asked Sharon, ‘Can I have a drink now?’

  All she said to me was, ‘You’re old enough to make up your own mind.’

  ‘But I’ve never been any good with choices,’ I said. ‘I always make the wrong ones.’

  ‘Well, do you want a drink, Ozzy?’ she said.

  For the first time in my life, the honest answer was ‘no’. In the old days, whenever I stopped boozing, I always used to think about the good times I was missing. Now, all I think about is how the good times always – and I mean fucking always – turned bad.

  I couldn’t tell you how much a pint of beer costs now, and I don’t want to know. Which is amazing, considering how much my life used to revolve around the pub. I just ain’t interested any more. The other week, I was in the Beverly Hills Hotel and I ran into Ronnie Wood from the Rolling Stones. He looked like he’d had a few. And I just thought, Fucking hell, he’s still going. I also bumped into Keith Richards recently, at an awards show. ‘How are you doing, Keith?’ I asked him. He replied, ‘Oh, not bad for a living legend.’ I almost said, ‘Living? Keith, you and me are the walking fucking dead.’

  A lot of my old drinking buddies are still going, actually. But they’re getting to the age where they just can’t handle the damage any more. One of them died not long ago from cirrhosis of the liver. And everyone went to the pub after the funeral. They were all standing there at the bar with their black armbands, drinking rum and black. ‘Are you trying to catch up with him or something?’ I said to them.

  But that’s just what people do in England – they go to the pub to celebrate the life of someone who’s just killed themselves by going to the pub too much. It’s an alcoholics’ culture. When I was younger, I used to think the whole world was drunk. Then I moved to America and realised it’s just England that’s drunk.

  I got off the drugs, too, eventually. Apart from the stuff I take for my tremor and my anti-depressants, I’m a narco-free zone. When I go to a doctor now, the first thing I say is, ‘Look, I’m an addict, I�
�m an alcoholic, so please don’t listen to a word of my bullshit.’ Tony comes with me to all of my appointments, too, as a kind of insurance policy.

  The drugs I’m taking now don’t have many side-effects – unlike the ones I got from some of those other docs I used to go to. Although the anti-depressants have played havoc with my sex drive. I can get a boner, but no fireworks. So I end up pumping away on top of Sharon like a road drill all night, with nothing happening. I tried Viagra, but by the time it kicked in, Sharon was fast asleep. So it was just me and this tent pole in front of me, with nothing to do but watch the History Channel.

  When I asked the doctor about it, he said, ‘Oh, you don’t still do that, do you?’

  ‘It’s the only fucking pleasure I have left!’ I told him.

  Mind you, I’ve never felt the temptation to run off with a younger chick, like some guys my age do. I mean, what do you fucking talk about with a twenty-year-old? The real estate market? The situation in Afghanistan? It would be like talking to a child.

  I must have been clean for at least four or five years now. I don’t keep count. I don’t know the exact date when I stopped. It’s not a fucking race. I just get out of bed every morning and don’t drink, and don’t take drugs. I still avoid those AA meetings, though. To me, it feels too much like substituting an addiction to booze with an addiction to the programme. I ain’t saying it’s unhelpful, ’cos it can be very helpful. But the change had to come from me.

  Therapy’s helped a lot, mind you, even though I didn’t understand it at first. I made the same mistake as I had with rehab – thinking it would cure me. But it’s just a way of relieving a problem by talking about it. It helps because if you ain’t talking about something it stays in your head and eventually you get whacked out on it.

  I have a sponsor, too: Billy Morrison, the guitarist from Camp Freddy. I met him through AA. If I ever get the feeling that I should have a joint, ’cos it would help me write a song or whatever, I pick up the phone to Billy. And that defuses the thought. He’ll say, ‘A joint might feel good for the first two minutes, but by the end of the day you’ll be throwing bottles of Scotch down your neck.’ It’s a good system because it’s the secrets and the lies that get you drunk again.

  I couldn’t be a sponsor, though. I have too much of a problem trusting people, and, like I said, I don’t go to the meetings, so I’ve never worked my way through the twelve steps, like you’re supposed to. It’s not the God thing that puts me off, because you don’t have to believe in God to do the programme. You just have to accept that there’s a higher power – it could be the lamp in the corner of the room, for all they care. Some people use nature, the ocean, their dick – whatever comes to mind.

  The thing about being clean is, if I fell off the wagon now there’s a good chance I’d die. Your tolerance falls off a cliff when you quit. A couple of drinks, and I’d be fucked. So I don’t go out much when I’m not on the road. I don’t need to: I’ve got my wife, I’ve got my friends, I’ve got my dogs – all seventeen of them – and I’ve got my land. And you should see our new house up in Hidden Hills. Talk about a rock-star mansion. When I’m lying in bed, all I have to do is press a button and this giant flat-screen TV rises out of the floor and dangles above my head. And the bogs – fucking hell, man, I wish my old man could have lived long enough to try out one of my bogs. I grew up having to piss in a bucket ’cos there was no indoor shitter, and now I have these computerised Japanese super-loo things that have heated seats and wash and blow-dry your arse at the touch of a button. Give it a couple of years and I’ll have a bog with a robot arm that pulls out my turds, so I don’t have to strain.

  It ain’t a bad life, put it that way.

  And I keep myself busy. For example, I’m going to take my driving test again. I mean, I’ve been driving for the best part of forty years – but never legally and usually drunk. So I might as well do it properly before I pop my clogs. Mind you, my driving instructor wants me to learn in a car with two steering wheels. Bollocks to that. I said to the guy, ‘We’re doing it in my Range Rover or we’re not doing it at all.’ But after the last lesson we had, I wouldn’t be surprised if he turns up next week in a crash helmet. He thinks I’m crazy, that bloke. Every time I go around a corner, he flinches like I’m gonna play chicken with an eighteen-wheeler.

  I suppose it’s understandable, given the crazy things they’ve said about me over the years. ‘He bit the head off a bat.’ OK. ‘He bit the head off a dove.’ Fair enough. But I ain’t a puppy-killer, or a Devil-worshipper, or someone who wants his fans to blow their heads off. It haunts me, all that crazy stuff. People embellish the stories, y’know? It’s like kids in a schoolyard: one of them says, ‘Johnny’s cut his finger,’ but by the time it’s reached the other side of the playground, Johnny’s cut his fucking head off.

  Nowadays, when I’m at home, I draw pictures while listening to old Beatles albums on my headphones. They’re just doodles, really. I ain’t good at it. I just do patterns and fuck around and make crazy shapes in bright colours – like sixties Pop Art. It keeps me out of trouble. Oh, and I collect Nazi memorabilia. I’ve got flags, SS daggers, leather overcoats, everything – but I don’t get many chances to put up the swastikas, not with a half Jewish missus. Most of the stuff I buy eventually finds its way to Lemmy, who’s even more into it than I am.

  You should see his house, man. It’s like a museum.

  These days, I spend much more time with my family than I ever did when I was drinking. Aimee, Kelly and Jack are doing great. And I see Jess and Louis all the time now, too. They both got Thelma’s brains: Jess is a surveyor and Louis got a law degree. Between them, they’ve given me four grandchildren, which is a crazy thought. And I still talk to my older sister Jean every Sunday. ‘Anything to report?’ I always ask her. ‘Everyone doing OK?’

  Things are OK with Black Sabbath, but at the moment there’s an issue over who owns the name. My position is that we should all own it equally. We’ll see what happens, but I hope it gets resolved, ’cos I have the greatest respect for Tony Iommi. I haven’t spoken to Geezer for a while – he’s still always got his nose in a book – but I’ve kept in touch with Bill. He’s been clean and sober for twenty-five years now. And if you’d known him a quarter of a century ago, you’d know that’s nothing short of a miracle.

  As for me, I just want to spend the rest of my days being a rock ’n’ roller. I certainly don’t want to do any more telly, except for a few ads here and there, as long as they’re funny. Y’know, I used to get upset by people not understanding me, but I’ve made a career out of it now. I even ham it up a bit, ’cos it’s what people expect of me.

  I suppose the one ambition I have left is to get a number one album in America. But if it doesn’t happen, I can’t really complain. I’ve managed to do just about everything else. I mean, I’m so grateful that I’m me, that I’m here, that I can still enjoy the life that I have.

  If I don’t live a day longer, I’ll have had more than my fair share. The only thing I ask is that if I end up brain-dead in a hospital somewhere, just pull the plug, please. But I doubt it’ll get to that. Knowing me, I’ll go out in some stupid way. I’ll trip on the doorstep and break my neck. Or I’ll choke on a throat lozenge. Or a bird will shit on me and give me some weird virus from another planet. Look what happened with the quad bike: I’d been taking lethal combinations of booze and drugs for decades but it was riding over a pothole in my back garden at two miles an hour that nearly killed me.

  Don’t get me wrong: I don’t worry about that kind of heavy-duty stuff on a daily basis. I’ve come to believe that everything in life is worked out in advance. So whenever bad shit happens, there ain’t nothing you can do about it. You’ve just gotta ride it out. And eventually death will come, like it comes to everyone.

  I’ve said to Sharon: ‘Don’t cremate me, whatever you do.’ I want to be put in the ground, in a nice garden somewhere, with a tree planted over my head. A crabapple tree, preferab
ly, so the kids can make wine out of me and get pissed out of their heads.

  As for what they’ll put on my headstone, I ain’t under any illusions.

  If I close my eyes, I can already see it:

  Ozzy Osbourne, born 1948.

  Died, whenever.

  He bit the head off a bat.

  Acknowledgements

  My darling wife Sharon, who has always been there for me – I love you.

  My wonderful children: Aimee, Kelly, Jack, Jessica and Louis.

  My amazing grandchildren: Isy, Harry, Mia and Elijah.

  Colin and Mette Newman; I couldn’t have done it without you.

  To my brothers and sisters: Paul, Tony, Iris and Gillian, and not forgetting my big, wonderful sister Jean – who has always been like my other mum and not my big sister – and of course my brothers-in-law, Norman Russell and Tom and my nephew Terry.

  My dear Mum and Dad, who made it all possible.

  Gina and Dean Mazlin and their children, Oliver and Amelia.

  My great friends Billy and Jen Morrison – who helped me to find my way back.

  My lifetime friends in Black Sabbath: Bill Ward, who has always given me support. God bless you always. Tony Ionni and Terence ‘Geezer’ Butler.

  To my extended family, my staff: Michael Guarracino and wife Denny and son Jesse; John Fenton and wife Sandee; Kevin Thomson; Silvana Arena; Lynn Seager; Claire Smith; David and Sharon Godman; Jude Alcala; Bob Troy; Saba; Dari; Trino; Steve and Melinda Varga, Lukey and Scarley girl (who said that?).

  Very special thanks to my best friend Tony Dennis (way’ye son, cumin’ have a pint, his dad’s got a boat and his mam’s got a bike).

  My dear friends, Mrs Delores Rhoads; Pete Mertens, his wife Danielle, and daughter Phoebe; Gloria Butler; and my friend and co-producer Kevin Churk.

  Antonia Hodgson, who has driven me mad to write this book.

  Chris Ayres, my co-author on this book. Thank you for organising my life stories into book form. I couldn’t have done it without you.