Ozzy Osbourne has seen it all, and a lot of it has been... surprisingly awful, actually.
Although Ozzy has been a both a world-famous vocalist and a reality show dad, that doesn't
mean his life was ever easy.
Here's the tragic real-life story of Ozzy Osbourne.
In 2002, Osbourne revealed in an interview with London's Daily Mirror that he was abused
when he was a child.
According to the singer, when he was an 11-year-old schoolboy in Birmingham, two bullies would
frequently intercept him on the way home from school and subject him to all sorts of harm.
They routinely forced him to drop his pants and do other things Osbourne has refrained
from describing in detail, only summing the treatment up as being, quote, "terrible."
The effect the abuse had on Osbourne's family life as a child was even worse.
As he recalled, the first time the bullies hit him took place in front of his sister,
and he was too afraid to tell his parents what had happened.
The stressful situation didn't do any favors for his mental health, and Ozzy has been open
about how damaging the experience was.
Because of these past traumas, he says he's made a point of telling his own children to
never be afraid to speak up about pain or abuse they may be going through.
The rest of Ozzy's childhood wasn't easy either.
At one point, he felt so desperate that he even considered ending his own life.
According to the Osbourne biography Ozzy Unauthorized, the future Black Sabbath vocalist attempted
to hang himself at the age of 14.
Luckily, this wasn't the end of his story, as Osbourne's father caught him in the act
and intervened.
Less fortunately, the elder Osbourne then reportedly proceeded to beat his son up for
the trouble.
Not exactly the kind of support system most kids need.
As far as marriages go, Ozzy is mostly known for his relationship with Sharon and that's
rarely looked like an exactly functional relationship.
But while Ozzy's behavior towards Sharon has occasionally caused some serious concern,
his treatment of first wife Thelma Riley might actually have been worse.
According to the Birmingham Mail, Osbourne is still ashamed, saying,
"I put that woman through hell.
I should have never married her.
She didn't deserve it.
She wasn't a bad person, and she wasn't a bad wife.
But I was a f---ing nightmare."
Osbourne married Riley in 1971, and spent the vast majority of their time together living
like what he called a "married bachelor."
He was often absent and routinely neglected and cheated on Riley.
Osbourne has recalled one particular incident in California when he got off the phone with
her and then proceeded to go to bed with three groupies.
"You know, when I first started playing rock music, I encountered this big country, America,
and it was like, the availability was there.
We all went and did the groupies thing."
He's also noted that discovering cocaine during their marriage didn't help matters.
Overall, he feels that the way he treated Riley is one of his few true regrets.
No one likes getting fired from their dream job, and Ozzy Osbourne was no exception.
The summer of 1978 was a chaotic time for Black Sabbath.
They were fueled by alcohol and cocaine, and the bad reviews of 1976's Technical Ecstasy
and 1978's Never Say Die! were apparently getting to them.
It didn't help that the young, energetic band they were touring with, Van Halen, was frequently
outperforming them.
Something needed to change.
With his collection of childhood traumas and abuse, Osbourne's self-worth was intertwined
with the success of the band.
A couple years of poor reviews were enough to destroy his confidence.
He dove into a pit of drags and booze and kept making excuses to his bandmates.
The others kept trying to get their lead singer back on track, but ultimately they had no
choice but to fire him in 1979.
They have since reunited, but Osbourne still considers it an act of betrayal.
Though he admits that he was wasted, he feels it was hypocritical to fire him, since according
to him, the others were all almost as out of it as he was.
Few people expected Osbourne to bounce back as quickly as he did.
As Rolling Stone reports, by 1982 he was an established performer with two successful
solo albums under his belt.
A huge part of his solo success was his new musical partner, guitar virtuoso Randy Rhoads.
The guitarist's flashy style helped Osbourne express his own ideas, and the two became
fast friends.
Their partnership was cut tragically short on March 19, 1982, when the 25-year-old Rhoads
died in a plane crash in Leesburg, Florida.
Reportedly, Rhoads went on a joyride in a small Beechcraft Bonanza with the band's bus
driver, Andrew Aycock, who commandeered the plane without permission.
The plane buzzed the band's tour bus, and on the third pass, the plane clipped the vehicle
and spun out of control.
All three passengers died in a fiery crash.
The explosion rattled Osbourne awake, and he clambered out to see the flaming wreck.
The singer has said that he sometimes feels as though he's still standing on that field,
staring at the burning crash site.
In one frightening incident in 1989, Ozzy allegedly walked up to his wife Sharon in
a drunken stupor and tried to strangle her.
Fortunately, they weren't alone.
The attempt was stopped, the cops were called, and Ozzy did not succeed in his bizarre and
violent mission.
"He just said, 'We've made a decision,' and I'm like, 'We've?'
'Yes, and you've got to die.'"
In a 2007 interview with the Evening Standard, Ozzy recounted the horror of waking up in
a small cell, walls smeared with human feces, having no recollection of the previous night.
He faced his worst nightmare when an officer informed him he had been locked up for attempting
his wife.
A court-mandated separation and rehab stint helped the couple end up staying together,
but neither has forgotten just how terrifyingly wrong things could have gone.
Speaking about domestic violence in 2004, Sharon said the situation was so serious that
if she'd had a gun with her at the time of Ozzy's attack, she would have shot her husband
in self-defense.
According to People, Sharon Osbourne says she knows of six women her husband has cheated
with, from teenage fans to masseuses and even their own household staff.
Channel 24 describes one of the more recent incidents, where Osbourne accidentally sent
his wife a message that he meant for another woman.
Things got so bad that Sharon at one point dosed her husband with extra sleeping pills
to make him tell her the truth about his cheating.
Six months after Ozzy swore that things were over with that particular lover, Sharon discovered
both that this was a lie and that there were other women as well.
This reveal forced the musician to finally admit he had a problem, and he has since sought
treatment.
Although the two seem to have reconciled, their love life is still an issue.
"This is a bone of contention in our house."
"Really?"
"Oh, because he's got a problem.
He just, is like a rabbit."
Ozzy Osbourne has been alleged to, at various points in his life, abuse cocaine, heroin,
marijuana, Quaaludes, glue, cough syrup, Rohypnol, Klonopin, Vicodin, LSD, sleeping pills, and
more, often at the same time, and with massive amounts of alcohol.
How has he survived all that?
One possible reason may be his peculiar genetic makeup, which features a few minor mutations
in the way he processes, and also some Neanderthal DNA to mix things up.
Ironically, his genetic makeup also shows that the one substance that affects him particularly
strongly is caffeine, of all things.
But not even genetic freaks with a dash of caveman can keep up Ozzy Osbourne levels of
intake forever.
The singer has been a recovering addict since 2006, and has said that he deeply regrets
his worst blackout years.
"What would you give, the 21-year-old Ozzy.
What advice would you give you?"
"Don't do drags."
On December 8, 2003, Ozzy Osbourne suffered a terrifying injury at his home when he unintentionally
flipped his quad bike and it landed on him.
At the time of the accident, Ozzy was reported to have been under the influence of a heavy
dosage of prescriptions, which may have played a part in what happened.
Osbourne broke his collarbone, damaged a vertebrae in his neck, and fractured eight ribs, some
of which were left pinching major blood vessels.
Osbourne told People that the accident was so serious that he, quote, "died" twice, and
the only reason he survived was because his bodyguard managed to repeatedly revive him.
Osbourne spent eight days in a coma and was left with a piece of metal keeping his left
shoulder together.
He says he's extremely lucky not to be paralyzed and even luckier to be alive.
Ozzy isn't the only Osbourne with personal issues.
Sharon Osbourne has struggled with low self-esteem and body image concerns that have reportedly
led to bouts of bulimia.
She was also diagnosed with colon cancer in 2002, and although she was ultimately victorious
in beating the disease, her husband has expressed that at the time, he felt absolutely certain
that his wife was going to die.
The younger family members from the reality TV hit The Osbournes have also had their share
of difficulties.
According to People, Kelly Osbourne first encountered drags at the age of 13, and her
intake was so excessive that her mother once committed her to a mental institution for
three days in an attempt to scare her sober.
Her brother Jack Osbourne was also treated for painkiller addiction when he was only
17.
Thanks to the runaway success of The Osbournes, it's easy to forget that Ozzy has children
who weren't regulars on the show.
Some of them have had their own share of difficulties.
Osbourne's eldest son, Louis, who made the occasional appearance on the reality show,
is actually from the singer's first marriage with Thelma Riley.
According to the Birmingham Mail, he's a musician himself, but the son is less successful than
his global superstar father.
The struggling Louis was forced to declare bankruptcy in 2013 when a property crash hit
him hard.
Aimee Osbourne, the eldest daughter of Sharon and Ozzy, says she refused to take part in
the reality show.
19 years old when the show first aired, she moved out of the family's house to avoid being
filmed, which broke her mother's heart.
"I felt if I would have stayed with The Osbournes and done the whole Osbourne thing, I felt
as though maybe I'd have been typecasted right away before I had a chance to experience other
things."
Aimee spent the following years as the rarely-seen, so-called reclusive Osbourne, battling depression
and later dabbling in acting and music.
These days, she gets along with her parents quite well, but her relationship with her
siblings is reportedly still strained.
In 1984, 19-year-old Ozzy Osbourne fan John Daniel McCollum took his own life.
His parents promptly sued Osbourne, claiming one of his songs led to their son's death.
According to Ultimate Classic Rock, the parents described McCollum as a well-adjusted kid
who showed no signs of depression, but his life changed in just six hours.
He spent some of those hours listening to Osbourne's 1980 solo debut, Blizzard of Ozz,
which includes the song "Suicide Solution."
He was allegedly discovered still wearing his headphones.
While Osbourne has said that he understood the parents' grief, he disagreed with their
decision to blame him for their son's death, especially because "Suicide Solution" doesn't
actually tell listeners to take their own lives.
The word "solution" instead refers to a liquid, and the lyrics are about the dangers of alcoholism.
The case was dismissed in 1988 on the grounds that McCollum's death was not a foreseeable
result of the song.
Later that year, another family unsuccessfully sued Osbourne, claiming that subliminal messages
in the song had caused their son's death too.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).