It's hard to overstate Ozzy Osbourne's role in rock history.
Ozzy made waves as the vocalist of Black Sabbath but he also changed the music world when he
struck out on his own.
The Prince of Darkness has many sides.
Here's the untold truth of Ozzy Osbourne.
Everyone who watched The Osbournes remembers that the pioneering reality show tackled some
pretty hard issues.
During the course of the show, Ozzy's wife, Sharon, fought cancer and their children wrestled
with addiction.
As for the singer himself, at times he seemed like a nervous wreck balancing on the edge
of a breakdown...and that's exactly what was going on.
"I love you all.
I love you more than life itself, but you're all f---ing mad."
Osbourne fully admits that the show was financially good for him but he underestimated the psychological
effects of constantly having cameras following him around.
The inability to relax left him breaking apart, and despite the fact that the "official" Ozzy
Osbourne was a fairly clean-living, recovering alcoholic who regularly worked out, he secretly
dealt with the pressure by getting high and drinking a case of beer every night.
Both the singer and his wife estimate that Osbourne was stoned out of his mind for roughly
100 percent of the show's duration.
As a result, the rock star still can't watch any episodes because his on-camera behavior
absolutely gives away how wasted he was.
"Rock and roll!
Rock and Roll."
Comedy legend Robin Williams and heavy metal legend Ozzy Osbourne might not be the most
obvious pair, but Osbourne held Williams in extremely high regard.
When Sharon was fighting colon cancer in 2002, Osbourne decided to contact Williams because
of his film Patch Adams.
In the movie, Williams plays a doctor who helps his patients by using comedy.
The singer figured Williams might be able to pull the same stunt for his wife...and
Williams dropped everything to do just that.
When Williams knocked on Mrs. Osbourne's door, she was caught so off guard that she thought
she was hallucinating from all the medication pumped into her.
Unsure what to say, she asked Williams: "Does Ozzy know you're here?"
The actor said that Ozzy didn't know a thing and jumped into bed with Sharon.
She immediately forgot all her troubles and started laughing hysterically.
Williams ended up staying with Sharon for two hours, and according to Kelly Osbourne,
this may actually have saved her life.
She had been avoiding treatment and losing her will to fight, but after Williams' visit,
she went back to chemotherapy and survived.
The Osbournes were thoroughly moved by the actor's kindness.
After Williams died, the Prince of Darkness gave this quote straight out of a Valentine's
Day card: "Forever and a day, I will love that man."
When it comes to celebrities who have wrestled criminals into submission, you might not immediately
think of Ozzy Osbourne.
Even so, at least one hapless thief can attest that he is among the last rockers you want
to tangle with...because Osbourne will tackle you, and if you're really unfortunate, he'll
do it in the nude.
As the Guardian describes, this exact scenario played out in 2004, when Osbourne woke up
in the middle of the night and discovered a man in a ski mask stealing jewelry from
his home.
Osbourne's natural instincts kicked into overdrive and he immediately charged at the thief.
The burglar eventually managed to escape by jumping from a first-floor window.
Osbourne would only later realize how risky the situation had been, since he had no way
of knowing whether the criminal had a weapon.
Regardless of how dangerous the situation was, if Robin Williams knew that Osbourne
needed help, we're sure he would raced to the scene to lend him a hand, Ozzy style.
Strangely, one of Ozzy Osbourne's closest calls has very little to do with overdoses
and drunken debauchery.
In fact, it involved probably the last thing you'd ever associate with the singer: a quad.
According to Ultimate Classic Rock, the 55-year-old Osbourne had intended to take a casual joyride
on his vast estate outside London in 2003, but the afternoon ended in disaster.
Osbourne lost control of his quad and broke six of his ribs and a neck vertebra.
In Ireland's Sunday Independent, Kelly Osbourne said her father actually flatlined during
the incident, however, first responders managed to resuscitate him.
When Osbourne woke up, he was in full rock star mode...by immediately threatening to
kill the medics if they messed up his tattoos.
Even before he was famous, Ozzy Osbourne had a rebellious streak and a tendency to end
up in strange situations.
In an interview with Big Issue, Osbourne looks back at his youth as a rebellious kid who
was unable to hold down a job, hated commitment, and whose mother was constantly getting on
his case about not bringing any money home.
In his quest to find things he might be good at, Osbourne took up burglary.
However, he soon found out that it was decidedly not one of his specialties.
In a criminal career that lasted all of three weeks, he didn't pull off a single big score
before he was caught.
According to Louder, Osbourne only dabbled with petty crime because he thought it would
get him accepted into a local gang.
Instead, he received a harsh life lesson from his father, who refused to pay his son's fine,
so young Osbourne had to spend about a month behind bars.
Still, don't think Osbourne's father didn't care about him.
When he realized his son was interested in music, he bought the 18-year-old Osbourne
a Vox PA system and a microphone.
Without this simple gesture of support from his father, we might be living in a world
where nobody ever heard of Ozzy Osbourne.
"What?
What's going on there?
Who?
What?
Who's there?
What?
Osbourne!"
As Louder describes, Ozzy Osbourne is the first man to tell you that as a kid growing
up in the tough industrial town of Birmingham, England, he was both bullied and a bully at
school.
In the same interview, he also addresses the fact that he first met future Black Sabbath
guitarist Tony Iommi at school with a surprisingly evasive statement:
"People say that he used to beat me up.
He never did."
Whether or not Iommi ever laid a finger on young Osbourne, there was definitely some
tension between the two when Black Sabbath first started out.
At least, that's how their bass player, Geezer Butler remembers things.
In an interview with Metal Hammer, Butler said the bad blood made the group's first
steps pretty interesting.
When Osbourne placed a "singer wants a band" ad, it included an important bit of information...he
owned his own PA.
With this in mind, both Butler and Iommi rushed to recruit him for their bands.
Since Iommi and Osbourne had a fiery history, Osbourne initially ended up going with Butler.
In fact, Butler says the reason Iommi eventually ended up playing with Osbourne was that they
tried to recruit drummer Bill Ward for their group but he wouldn't join unless Iommi could
come along as well.
Ozzy Osbourne has been "Ozzy" for so many decades that it's easy to forget that his
real name is John Michael Osbourne.
According to Ultimate Classic Rock, the name he became known for was not originally intended
as a compliment.
Instead, it originated in primary school, where young John Michael's fellow students
started calling him "Ozzy" as a taunt.
However, Osbourne refused to treat the name as an insult.
Instead, he embraced it so much that he had the name tattooed across his knuckles when
he was only 16 years old.
Incidentally, the singer insists this is the only tattoo he ever got when he was sober.
Not everyone in Osbourne's close circles enjoyed the name as much as he did, though.
His first wife really disliked the name "Ozzy" and always called him "John."
Still, fans of "John" were ultimately in the minority, and as Osbourne states in his book
I Am Ozzy, it's been years since anyone called him anything other than "Ozzy."
"Ozzy!
Ozzy!
Ozzy!'
A traumatic childhood can affect a person's life in many ways and few people know this
better than Ozzy Osbourne.
Entertainment Weekly reports the singer is all too aware of the pitfalls of his difficult
formative years...especially one terrifying aspect of them.
He was repeatedly abused by bullies.
When he was 11, two boys used to wait for him after school and they regularly forced
Osbourne to drop his pants so they could grope him.
The rock star describes the experience as a terrible thing that seemed to go on forever
and notes that the bullies even abused him in plain view of his sister.
The young Osbourne didn't tell any adults about the situation because, back then, people
simply didn't talk about those things.
Besides, he was already dealing with the stress of growing up in a poor family of eight.
It wasn't until many years later that he reached some inner peace when Sharon helped him to
calm down.
Talking to a therapist was also instrumental in helping him deal with years of pent-up
terrors.
When Ozzy Osbourne was fired from Black Sabbath in 1979, he had no way of knowing that the
Blizzard of Ozz album would start his path to solo superstardom the very next year.
He took the firing hard, so hard, in fact, that he decided to pursue an alternative career
in pub management.
According to Birmingham Live, he had already bought a bar in Newport, U.K., for his first
wife, Thelma.
As Louder describes, Osbourne himself started running the place during his transition from
Sabbath member to solo artist.
Fortunately for music, the singer soon found that he wasn't much of a pub landlord.
Osbourne was angry that there weren't more customers...and he had a tendency to drink
away all the profits.
After a month, Thelma politely asked him to leave the running of the pub to the professionals,
and he eventually ended up selling the place after owning it for only two years.
Plus, working in a bar couldn't have helped him strive for a life of sobriety.
"Sobriety f---ing sucks."
In 1982, Texas got an Ozzy Osbourne-shaped chip on its shoulder when the singer was visiting
San Antonio.
As Loudwire describes, Osbourne got drunk and his clothes had been hidden to prevent
him from hitting the streets.
Buzzed out of his mind, he solved the problem by slipping on one of Sharon's dresses before
he left the hotel.
Eventually, nature called, and Osbourne relieved himself in the worst possible place: the Alamo
Square.
Fortunately, he didn't urinate on the Alamo itself.
Unfortunately, he did it on a 60-foot monument built to honor the dead defenders of the Alamo.
The singer was promptly arrested.
He spent part of an afternoon in jail, was released on a bond of $40, and got banned
by the city after performing the evening's concert.
Osbourne revisited the Alamo in 2016 to shoot Ozzy & Jack's World Detour and he was immediately
surrounded by fans.
Osbourne told Rolling Stone magazine, "There was a f---ing riot when we got there.
[A crowd showed up] and started going nuts.
It was scary."
While he was in town, Osbourne had a meeting with a friendly city councilman and it seems
like he learned his lesson.
"Can I use your boys room first?"
"Yeah, absolutely!"
"Yeah, you are definitely using the restroom."
"Let's get you going."
As Rolling Stone attests, One of Ozzy Osbourne's most infamous escapades is the onstage incident
in 1982 where he bit the head off a bat.
"Ozzy!
Bite his freakin' head off."
Although this seems like a typical breakfast for a man who had already done the same thing
to a dove during a meeting with a record company, Osbourne never intended to hurt the animal.
In fact, he says he didn't even realized it was an animal.
When the bat was thrown to him from the audience, he thought it was a rubber toy.
In his I Am Ozzy autobiography, Osbourne writes that he immediately realized something was
wrong when he bit into it.
"And I thought it was one of those rubber bats.
I picked it up and it was a real bat."
"Was it alive?"
"Well, it was 'til I bit the head off it, yeah."
Though the experience was unpleasant and the singer had to get a rabies shot, he has since
made peace with the incident.
In 2019, he even released a plush bat with a detachable head to commemorate the event's
37th anniversary.
Strangely, this wasn't the last time Osbourne found himself in a face-off with bats.
According to Loudwire, the flying mammals finally got their revenge in 2014, when a
colony of bats took up roost at the singer's home in Buckinghamshire.
Osbourne had to legally remove and rehome the bats.
The whole thing ended up costing him about $27,000.
"What a load of bollocks."
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