Our lord and saviour OZZY OSBOURNE is saying farewell. But is this really The End?
As Ozzy embarks on his farewell tour, we sit down with the Prince Of Darkness to reflect on five decades of insanity. But is this really the end, or just the beginning of the end?
“Im not fucking retiring!”
Oh dear. Ozzy Osbourne is pissed off. As we speak to him in anticipation of February’s UK tour, he is determined to set the record straight about whether not his career is about to come to an end. In fairness, he’s done this to himself. The tour has been billed as No More Tours 2 – a knowing reference to the first supposed farewell tour that Ozzy did in 1992 – and has been widely declared to be the legendary Brummie’s final round-the-world jaunt. But Ozzy is not having any of it.
“You know what? I want to get one thing fucking straight. People are getting this whole thing fucking wrong, because I’m not retiring!” he rages. “This is not my farewell tour! What I’m doing is that I’m not going to leave the house in January and come home in December anymore. I’m slowing it all down, so when I’m on the road I’m not doing the whole fucking world. I’m doing England or Europe or Australia or wherever. I’m not staying on the road anymore. People keep saying, ‘Oh how many more times are you going to retire?’ I’m not fucking retiring, you know? Over here [in the US] they’ve gone mad. ‘Oh you’re retiring!’ No, I’m fucking not.”
Far be it from us to disagree with the Prince Of Darkness, but even if Ozzy does do more shows after this final world tour has finished, this still feels very much like the beginning of the end, if not the end itself. We speak to him a few days before his 70th birthday and, in reality, he’s on excellent form and clearly relishing the next few weeks of hitting the boards with Zakk Wylde and the rest of his band. He just doesn’t want us to think that he’s retiring. Because he fucking isn’t.
“The thing is, I don’t make these fucking announcements,” he shrugs. “My wife and my agent are supposed to do it all. People go, ‘What are you going to do when you retire?’ Retire from what? How can you retire from this fucking thing? I’m not getting up in the morning and joining a queue of people getting on a fucking bus. This has been a great life, you know? And I’ve really enjoyed this tour so far.”
If you’ve had the good fortune to catch Ozzy on any part of the tour thus far, you will have noticed that he seems to be both having a brilliant time and singing with far more conviction than he has for some years. As much as his fans are always willing to give him the benefit of the doubt – because he’s Ozzy fucking Osbourne – there have been plenty of moments over the last few years, particularly during Black Sabbath’s lengthy winding down, when he has intermittently sung horribly off-key and seemed less than his usual ebullient self. At Download last summer, he was a metal icon transformed, delivering a set that surprised many, not least due to the renewed power of Ozzy’s voice. The man himself attributes this renaissance to – whisper it – a healthy lifestyle.
“Well, I don’t drink anymore, I don’t smoke fags anymore, I don’t do drugs anymore, and you know what? I like it!” he chuckles. “I never thought I’d see the day when Ozzy Osbourne says he prefers being clean and sober, but so far, so good! When I first tried being sober I did think, ‘I’m better than I was before!’ but that’s because before I was lying on some bathroom floor covered in piss! I just got fed up with being fed up with myself. It was fun for a while but in the end, with all the chemicals, I’d nearly kill myself on a daily basis. I know what to do if I fancy a drink. I know how to get one of those. But right now I don’t want one.”
This could be a false dawn, of course. Ozzy’s on-off relationship with alcoholic and chemical excess is well documented and, in truth, an absolutely integral part of the great man’s mythology. But today he sounds genuinely happy to watch that life of insanity recede in the rear-view mirror.
“I’m definitely singing better than I have been. When I was hungover all the fucking time, it was really bad, you know?” he says. “To be honest with you, it’d be nice to say it wasn’t my fault, but it was. No one ever said, ‘Ozzy, drink as much as you fucking can, you’ve got a gig tomorrow!’ On these last few gigs, I’ve had a couple of rough ones along the way but most of them were great. I’ve been thinking, ‘Why now? I’m nearly fucking 70!’ I keep pinching myself.”
This has been a sobering few years in the rock and metal worlds, with numerous high-profile figures passing away and the new experience of watching the genre’s biggest icons start to join the ranks of the officially elderly. The irony of one of metal’s most notorious wild men reaching his 70th birthday in a relatively impressive state of health
“Before I was soBer, I was lyIng on some Bathroom floor covered In pIss”
is not lost on Ozzy. He runs through a list of the greats that he has somehow outlived, citing John Bonham and Bon Scott as men with similarly legendary thirsts that, tragically, weren’t able to stay the course. He also mentions the triple blow of losses in 2015 and 2016: Bowie, Prince and, in particular, Lemmy; a close friend for decades and one of the few that could ever have matched Ozzy, drink for drink.
“They’ve been dropping in fours and fives, when it used to be once in a blue moon, but I’m still here,” he notes, incredulously. “Turning 70 doesn’t bother me. Whether I feel happy, sad or mad, it’s happening. I consider myself very lucky. There but for the grace of God go I, you know? I tried to do everything to the absolute fucking max when I was doing it. I’d be looking around for crumbs of coke on the floor when everyone went home, you know? I’m not proud of that, but I’m a survivor, I suppose. Lemmy died a while ago. Before he died, he said to me, ‘Well, I could have 10 more years if I did all the proper things, but I did things my way…’ He knew what he was doing. It’s sad and I miss him being around.”
Do you have any theories as to why you’ve survived when Lemmy and many others haven’t?
“I said to my wife the other day, ‘Why have I survived?’ and she said, ‘Don’t complain!’” he laughs. “If it wasn’t for Sharon, I would’ve been gone a long time ago. She used to bollock me all the time about it. I did have a conscience and I realised, ‘Do I really want to be remembered as a junkie and an alcoholic nutcase?’ But if you’d said to me years ago, ‘How long do you think you’ll last?’ I would’ve said ‘I’ll be dead by 40!’ Luck has shadowed me all the way. If you’d read a news story that said ‘Ozzy Osbourne has been found dead in his hotel room!’ you wouldn’t go, ‘Oh, really?’ would you? You’d say, ‘Well, obviously!’”
One of the many reasons why we all love Ozzy so much is that, unlike many other rock stars, he really has seen and done it all, particularly when it comes to hardcore misbehaviour. There is no need to varnish the truth here. But with those days of drunken debauchery and drug-fuelled risk-taking firmly behind him, he now looks back at those many brushes with death with a sense of mild bemusement.
“I’ve fallen out of lift shafts and windows. I broke my neck on a quad bike. There was one time when I died twice on the way to the hospital. I was drowning in my own blood. I’d crushed my ribs and stabbed my lungs. My heart stopped twice on the way to the hospital but they got me going again. I might be unsinkable! Ha ha! I’m not proud of it, but I’m grateful. I’m still here and a lot of people who did much less than me have gone. I don’t question it anymore.”
Having lost a few friends along the way – not to mention wife Sharon and Black Sabbath bandmate Tony Iommi’s cancer battles – Ozzy could be forgiven for becoming a little morose as his life edges into its closing scenes. He admits that he has contemplated his own mortality from time to time, but not being prone to navel-gazing, he sees the impending end of the road as an incentive to make sure that not a moment is wasted.
“Yeah, I do think about it. It’s getting close to the fucking end now!” he grins. “But turning 70 really makes you aware of the phenomenal change in the world. It’s crazy what’s going on. Everything’s sped up to a ridiculous level now. You can do more in one hour than you could do in a week before.
I do think that mankind is moving way too fast. I still can’t work a fucking computer, ha ha! But getting older makes you realise how valuable time is, too. I hate being late for anything. If you say to me, ‘Be there at eight!’
I’ll be there at seven thirty. I hate being fucking late. It’s a cause of arguments in this fucking house all the time. My wife has never been early in her life!”
Even as you attempt to get your head around the notion that Ozzy Osbourne is a stickler for punctuality, another pressing question rears its head: will there ever be another Ozzy album? Eight-and-a-half years have passed since the release of his last studio effort, Scream, and while Black Sabbath duties undoubtedly kept him busy for most of the intervening years, it must surely be time for a follow-up, even if it ends up being the last Ozzy album of all. Meanwhile, with Zakk Wylde reinstalled as chief guitarist, following Gus G’s well-received tenure and contributions to Scream, Ozzy’s live band have rarely sounded so ferocious. It all bodes well for that hypothetical next record, even if Ozzy remains noticeably vague about the whole thing.
“I’d love to make an album but it costs so much to make a record,” he
“I was drownIng In my own Blood. my heart stopped twIce. ha ha!”
posits. “I built a studio in my house but that cost a lot of money. Then you make an album and kids go, ‘Okay, I’ll steal that track…’ and that’s it. But I do want to make one. I’ve got 10 ideas for songs, and now Zakk’s back… well, I don’t want to sound like the singer for fucking Black Label Society, but Zakk really works. He’s such a great player. Fucking hell, you can’t stop him. He’s got so fucking good. He’s faster than fuck now!”
Do you still feel ambitious about making new music? Have you got another great album in you?
“The thing is, I have to like it. When I make music, if I don’t like what I’m doing then that’s it, it’s not happening. I’m not in a situation where I’m just a product. I’ll never go into a studio and go, ‘Right, I’ve had a great run, now I’m going to make a shit record!’ Sometimes you do make a bad record or you just ain’t the flavour of the month or whatever, but it’s a crap shoot. I remember when we made No More Tears. We were in pre-production, Mike Inez [Alice In Chains/ex-Ozzy bassist] came out with that bass riff, and before we knew where we were, we’d written No More Tears and we had a title for the album. You just need that one song and sometimes you pull it off and sometimes you don’t.”
When you consider that Ozzy has only released three studio albums in the 21st century (2005’s somewhat questionable Under Cover covers album not included), it’s difficult to deny that his status as a mainstream celebrity has inevitably overshadowed his artistic efforts over the last 18 years. This, of course, is primarily due to The Osbournes: the all-conquering MTV reality show that premiered in the spring of 2002 and swiftly turned Ozzy’s family into global superstars, while also paving the way for countless likeminded (but generally dreadful) TV shows, many of which are still plaguing us to this day. During that brief but manic period of small-screen notoriety, Ozzy never quite managed to fully alienate his fans in the metal world, but the common perception persisted that this heavy metal legend was, in fact, a hapless buffoon, prone to falling off chairs and losing his rag with the TV remote. Metalheads knew better, of course, but it at least seemed that The Osbournes had distracted Ozzy from making music to such a degree that Black Rain’s release in 2007 came as a major surprise. As far as he is concerned, however, it was all just a smart idea that spiralled out of control.
“All I can say to you is this: number one, if someone offers you a shitload of dough to be on television, you’d have
to be a mug to turn it down,” says Ozzy. “I thought it was gonna be a piece of cake, but you have a camera crew living in your house for three years and see how you feel at the end of it. You feel like a fucking laboratory rat. It got to the point where I was falling apart emotionally, because you can’t fucking relax. It doesn’t matter where you go for a piss, you’re paranoid there’s a camera in there. Would I do it again? The world’s changed, man. It’s now Kardashianville. But I did it. I’m not ashamed of it and it was a big hit. It was like an experiment that went fucking nuts. We didn’t plan it, it just happened.”
As you reach 70 and head off on your final world tour, is there anything that you do regret?
“The way I answer that is that we all have regrets. I wouldn’t change any of it because it was all my destiny. When you get to the crossroads, you go to the good, the bad or the ugly. When things are meant to happen, you can’t fuck around with it. I believe in fate. I often think, ‘Fucking hell, I remember not knowing what I wanted to do with my life…’ It’s an interesting thing. One day you’re down on your luck and the next day you’re flying high. If I hadn’t done things the way I did, it would’ve been a different story.”
There are many reasons why we all love Ozzy so much, but principal among them is the fact that, five decades into a wildly successful but admirably haphazard career, he still speaks exactly like a man from Birmingham who grabbed an opportunity, became a global megastar and, even after all this time, simply can’t believe his fucking luck. You won’t get any arrogance or smugness from Ozzy – he knows he’s made some classic records, sung some timeless songs and become an icon along the way, but he remains endearingly bewildered by the course his life has taken and genuinely doesn’t seem to mind that when he does reach the end of the mortal line, he will probably be remembered both as a hugely influential and important rock musician and that daft sod off the telly with the history of alcoholic excess and Olympic-standard dicking about.
“Everybody loves a loony, you know? A lot of people would like to be a loony for the weekend, wouldn’t they?” he notes. “But I’ve had my fair share of heartbreaks, too. It hasn’t always been carefree. I do care about certain people – my wife and my family. My son got married, he’s gone through a divorce now and he’s got three kids, and that fucks me up. When you get divorced, you may hate your ex-partner but the
kids are there, too, and it’s not their fault. So I do get sad about that. My two granddaughters are fucking great fun!”
Are you looking forward to being a more hands-on grandad?
“Well, no. The thought is nice, but
I’m not having shitty diapers on my fucking knee! When it comes to that department, I don’t go there. I don’t like my own shit, let alone anyone else’s, ha ha!”
Annoyingly, Ozzy won’t be drawn on the setlist for his forthcoming UK dates, although he does say that he’ll play “all the classics” (which probably means the same set as usual, to be fair) and speaks excitedly of the stage production and lighting that wife Sharon has put together for the European run. He may have made the decision to slow down and stop touring the world, but Ozzy Osbourne is – as he notes with a derisive cackle – “high on life” at the moment and determined to make this (sort of) last hurrah a truly special one for everyone involved. And then, he’s really looking forward to getting home and putting his feet up for a bit.
“Well, I’ll be able to smell the fucking roses, if you like,” he says. “I’ll probably exchange them for fucking marijuana plants, ha ha ha! But no, I just can’t keep that pace up. I say a little prayer every time I go onstage, basically saying, ‘For fuck’s sake, let me give them a good show!’ I’ve been doing it for 50 fucking years now! It’s a long time. If you’d been doing something for 50 years, wouldn’t you want to slow it down? The thing is, I did all my drugs and alcohol and now I’m left with fucking Yorkshire Gold!”
Clean and sober and cheerfully turning 70: Ozzy Osbourne may be nearing the end of his musical career, but he still sounds like a man on a mission to rinse every last drop of fun from every situation. As he readies himself for one final, full-blown trek around the UK, performing to the fans who loved him first and arguably best, The Double-O is just happy to be here. He’s Ozzy fucking Osbourne and he’s not finished yet.
“This tour has been great and we’re having a fucking blast,” he concludes. “You know what? I like the fact that my education was basically fucking nil but I’ve given people a good time over the years. If listening to my music or watching a show has given someone a better day, that’s a great feeling. And I made it to 70! If I can fucking do it, everyone’s got a chance.”
OZZY’S NO MORE TOURS 2 UK TOUR, SUPPORTED BY JUDAS PRIEST, STARTS IN FEBRUARY. HEAD TO PAGE 190 FOR ALL THE DATES
“I WAS FALLING APART EMOTIONALLY. I FELT LIKE A FUCKING LABORATORY RAT”