Larry Schwartz
HE’S BITTEN THE HEAD off a bat, chewed a dove and spent time in jail for urinating in public. Ozzy Osbourne’s outrageous behavior is legendary. But after decades cultivating the image of a wild man of rock, he wants it known he’s not so wild after all.
In his 50th year and five years or more since he trumpeted his retirement from rock’n’roll (it lasted four days), he worries about posterity. “I don’t do that on a daily basis. It was when I was a raging alcoholic … I used to do crazy shit. We all do when we get drunk…”
I’d asked about the impact on his career of some of his antics. “Well, I guarantee any Friday night in Melbourne, you’ll go inside any bar and you’ll see crazier f…… things than I’ve ever got up to.”
Then again, maybe not. Osbourne’s contract is said to have once specified an amount of raw meat to be thrown at audiences. Shows featured the simulated hanging of a dwarf. Then there’s the infamous early ’80s episode when he bit the head off a bat thrown onstage; another when he
chomped a dove.
A biography on the Internet quotes an alleged eyewitness at a music industry meeting. “They sat him down on the arm of a chair and he pulled a dove out of his pocket. I looked at it and thought, Gee how cute! … and suddenly he bites its head off. There was blood on the floor. I think he
ate the head. He started spitting some feathers out. I was in shock …”
Urinating at the Alamo? Apparently, the former Black Sabbath frontman was imprisoned for relieving himself on the landmark. On another occasion, he is said to have urinated from a window, “unknowingly” on to a waiting audience.
“I knew in my heart that I was not guilty,” Osbourne says to a question about (unsuccessful) legal action by an American couple who attributed their teenage son’s decision to take his own life to the lyrics of one of his songs, Suicide Solution. “They sue you for the f…… weather changing over
here in America.”
Nor is he deterred by controversy in the Bible belt from the likes of the fallen evangelist, Jimmy Swaggart. “If it wasn’t for the likes of Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath and now Marilyn Manson these f…… idiots wouldn’t have anything to wave their f…… banners about.”
Spicing his observations with obscenity, the Birmingham-born performer rattles away like some Midlands stand-up comedian. Except that for him, it’s no joke.
A reluctant “godfather of dark metal”, Osbourne has five children from two marriages. He’s a family man who listens to old Beatles albums, watches TV documentaries and doesn’t take his rock’n’roll persona too seriously. “Basically, I like to have a lot of fun in my music and an awful lot of
it is tongue in cheek … I don’t believe everything that I write. It’s just an angle. It’s just an interesting story, you know.”
He says he’s given up booze, doesn’t use drugs and is in better shape now than when he was 19. “People come to my house sometimes and I open the door and they expect to see this f….. vampire come out the door, I’m sure. When they come in, they see how normal it is … if I ever get out
of hand, my wife puts her toe right up my arse.”
He wonders how many in the crowds at his concerts were born when his first records with Black Sabbath appeared. From Marilyn Manson to Metallica, younger performers hail him as an influence.
“To be honest with you, I like people recognising me,” says the reformed burglar who once spent three months in Birmingham’s Winson Green Prison. There he tattooed his nickname on the knuckles of his left hand and “happy faces” on his knees with a sewing needle and graphite slab.
“And I’m really honored that people like my previous work. It’s great to be liked. But it’s kind of become the in thing to do now, to say Black Sabbath, you know. It could be worse. I could be a f…… joke. I could be like Poison or some f…… band.”
Osbourne is the fourth of six children. His father worked nights in a steel plant, his mother days in a car assembly factory. John Michael ‘Ozzy’ Osbourne tried his hand as a plumber’s assistant, toolmaker’s apprentice, automechanic, housepainter. He spent a fortnight working in a mortuary
and two years in a slaughterhouse.
That and theft. “I was a very bad burglar,” he says. “I was like a f…… joke. I mean, the most I ever got away with was about f…… $200 or something.”
The late music writer, Robert Palmer, has described Osbourne’s vocal style as an “inimitable demonspew”. Black Sabbath took its name from the title of a 1930s horror movie. It has been hyped as “arguably the band that invented heavy metal”. Osbourne is not fond of the term. “I’ve always
had a bee up my rear end about it,” he says. “Metal is so stigmatising … if people were to take time and listen to my lyrics, not only Ozzy Osbourne solo but even with Black Sabbath, we sung a lot of things that people are now getting on the bandwagon about. Environmental issues, wars and
there was some of it about the darker side of life. But it was just a different angle.
“At the time of Black Sabbath everyone was singing how wonderful the f…… world was. If you go to San Francisco, be sure to wear a flower in your hair and all that.
“For us guys living in an industrial town in Birmingham, it wasn’t f…… sunshine. The only flower you’d ever seen was on a coffin going to the f…… graveyard, you know.”
He co-founded Sabbath with schoolmate guitarist Tommy Iommi after playing in bands called The Black Panthers, Music Machine, Rare Breed, The Polka Tulk Blues Band and Earth.
Allegedly fired by Black Sabbath in 1978, his success as a solo artist eclipsed his work with the British metal pioneers. He has reportedly sold more than 35 million albums since.
“I mean, I sometimes forget who I am, you know and I forget what I’m used to having. When I look back at when I was a kid, I literally had my arse hanging out my pants. My mother was always crying that she never had enough food to feed us. I mean, when you have it on a daily basis it
becomes like second nature. Then all of a sudden, you think ‘f… me, I could lose all this’.”
Unforeseen events, including his mother’s illness, have forced him to cancel plans for an Australian tour for more than 20 years. His interest had been renewed by the reception from fans during a brief visit late last year to promote a compilation album. His children’s Australia-born nanny
was “driving me nuts to go there”.
He cautions audiences to take care on the way home from Festival Hall because he doesn’t want anyone to get hurt. (He says he’s facing legal action in the US over injury to a fan at one of his shows.)
Osbourne says he’ll keep playing as long as there is a demand for his music. “I don’t need to f….. gig. I mean, I’m financially pretty well sorted out. But it’s beyond a job. It’s a passion, you know.”
The Sunday Age, 25th of January 1998
Larry Schwartz Writer 