2023-12-03 12:30:14
He bit off a bat's head, peed on the stage, was clinically dead – AND was allowed to perform for the Queen's (†96) golden jubilee in 2002… “Black Sabbath” icon Ozzy Osbourne (five Grammys, $220 million fortune) belongs to today one of the most controversial cult figures in the rock circus.
On December 3rd, the “Prince of Darkness” (including global hit “Paranoid”) celebrates his 75th birthday – and THAT, after more than 25 years in America, back home in England!
A few days ago, wife Sharon Osbourne (71) revealed on the “Woman's Hour” podcast that she was hoping for “some privacy” for the singer, who suffers from Parkinson's, by moving to a “small town”. He is in Los Angeles, where the Osbournes are 18 million dollar estate (6 bedrooms, 11 bathrooms, over 1000 square meters) in the Hancock Park villa district recently felt “uncomfortable”.
The Osbournes own Welders House in Buckinghamshire, 44 kilometers northwest of London
Foto: David Goddard/Getty Images
Ozzy will toast here
Since 1993, Ozzy has owned the mega-palace “Welders House” in Buckinghamshire (140 hectares, 44 kilometers northwest of London). After fire damage and flooding, the property was recently extensively renovated (including a recording studio, pool, air conditioning).
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Sharon: “Where we live in the country there are no prying eyes. We have a lot of land so Ozzy can run around and pursue his hobbies without being disturbed.”
The only downer? The couple loses their close connection to their children Jack (38, 4 daughters), Kelly (39, 1 son) and Aimée (40), who are happy and remain in America. Sharon Osbourne: “My family will still be there, so we'll be flying back and forth. But our main residence is no longer LA, but England.”
So will Ozzy's entire clan celebrate him in “Welders House”? Uncertain.
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But for the “Prince of Darkness” his 75th is definitely a ray of hope: “I should have been dead a thousand times,” he explained at the end of November. “I had my stomach pumped God knows how many times. Sometimes I look in the mirror and think, 'Why the hell did you do it?'”
BECAUSE: Behind the scandalous musician lie decades of alcohol and drug drama, over 14 withdrawals (including in the “Betty Ford” clinic), an almost fatal quad bike accident (2003), as well as a Parkinson's diagnosis (2005) and four spinal surgeries (after a fall in 2019) from which he never recovered.
In November 2019, Ozzy Osbourne performed at the American Music Awards in LA – after literally breaking his neck in a fall in the bathroom at night in February: “I hit the floor like a fucking ton of bricks”
Foto: Getty Images for dcp
“The second operation, everything went wrong and I was basically crippled,” Osbourne said in the music magazine “Rolling Stone”: “The last operation, they stuck a damn rod in my spine. They found a tumor in one of the vertebrae, so they had to take that all out too.” His balance? “Totally fucked!”
Every step is a feat of strength for the former stage dervish. Ozzy literally walks with a cane, describing it in his podcast: “My feet feel like there are bricks attached to them when I run. I think it’s nerves.”
Intoxicated by music – and usually other substances too… Ozzy Osbourne at a concert in Chicago in 1986. By the way, the crazy rock star only got his driver's license when he was 61 (2010) – after failing 19 exams!
Foto: Paul Natkin/Getty Images
The musician still dreams of returning to the stage – to say goodbye to his fans properly: “That's one of the things that annoyed me the most: I never had the opportunity to say goodbye or thank you.” , he told Rolling Stone. “My fans are truly my extended family. They write to me, they know everything about my dogs. And they enable us to have the lifestyle that we have.”
But he doesn't want a comeback at any price… “I'm not going to go on stage and play a half-hearted Ozzy to arouse pity. What is that supposed to help? I'm not going up there in a wheelchair. I recently saw Phil Collins perform. He has practically the same problems as me. He comes in a wheelchair – but I couldn’t do it.”
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Ozzy Osbourne fights for his quality of life, but he is not afraid of death: “It's been pretty dark in the Osbourne house over the last few years. I'm not afraid of going to hell – I've been walking between hell and earth for five years.” When Sharon scolded him for smoking a joint, he replied: “'How long do you want me to live?' At best I have another ten years and as you get older time speeds up.”
His greatest horror? “A long, painful and miserable life.” And: a burial in a celebrity cemetery in Los Angeles. “I don’t want to be buried on the damn Forest Lawn,” Ozzy announced over a year ago.
“I’m English – I don’t want to die in America!”
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His iconic clan
Ozzy Osbourne has been married to his manager Sharon for the second time since 1982 – the couple exchanged vows in Hawaii.
Three years earlier, the singer had been kicked out of the successful band “Black Sabbath” because of his drug problems, had taken refuge in his addiction for months in the “Le Parc” Hotel (Los Angeles) and licked his wounds. But then Sharon (daughter of former “Black Sabbath” manager Don Arden, †81) came along and inspired him to try his hand at becoming a solo artist.
WITH SUCCESS!
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Daughter Aimée Rachel was born in September 1983, followed by Kelly Lee in October 1984 and finally Jack Joseph in November 1985. A life between a global career, family happiness, drug relapses and marital crises…
In 1988, Ozzy was arrested (and sent to rehab) after choking Sharon while he was drunk. In 1989 she filed for divorce, followed by several phases of reconciliation and despair. The couple last briefly separated in 2016 – Ozzy had an affair with his former hair colorist.
In his 2010 autobiography “I Am Ozzy,” he wrote: “Sharon saved my life, Sharon is my life and I love her. I was terrified of losing her. But as much as I wanted everything to be normal and right, I was terribly sick, physically and mentally.”
1984: His tour stop in Memphis ended in the sobering cell! The police found Ozzy drunk in the Beale Street entertainment district around 12:30 a.m. and arrested him for public drunkenness
Photo: Police
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The singer became a cult figure off stage between 2002 and 2005 with his (Emmy-winning) reality TV show “The Osbournes”, which documented the crazy family life in his house in Beverly Hills:
Bullying teenagers with too much money, time and hairspray, few housetrained dogs, an eternally confused Ozzy… While Kelly and Jack became mini-stars almost overnight, Aimée (then 16) moved out because she wanted to protect her privacy didn't want to be filmed. Today, her relationship with her parents is considered good, but she has little contact with her siblings (both of whom struggled with addiction problems for a long time).
A terribly shrill family! Starting in 2002, Ozzy and Sharon had their everyday lives filmed with their offspring Jack (front) and Kelly (right).
Photo: AP Photo/MTV/Michael Yarish
From the slaughterhouse to the show stage
John Michael “Ozzy” Osbourne was born into humble circumstances in Aston, Birmingham, the fourth of six children. Father Jack was a toolmaker, mother Lillian assembled circuits in a car factory. At school, where he received his nickname Ozzy, today's superstar was tormented by his reading and spelling difficulties.
He tried alcohol for the first time when he was eight years old, and over the course of his career it was “four bottles of Hennessy a day, plus cocaine, amphetamine, morphine and heroin, which I only tried twice.” At 15, Ozzy dropped out of school and took odd jobs, including as a plumber (abandoned his apprenticeship), in a slaughterhouse and in a morgue! Because there was never enough money, he also became a burglar and thief – and of course got caught. During his month and a half in prison, he tattooed his “trademark” Ozzy across his fingers using graphite and a needle.
From the mid-1960s he devoted himself to his music career, and in 1969 his band formed under the name “Black Sabbath”. The rest is history!
“Black Sabbath” in the 70s: Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi, Bill Ward and Ozzy Osbourne (from left)
Foto: Chris Walter/WireImage/Getty Images
Animalically weird
When Ozzy Osbourne visited the CBS record label in LA shortly after starting his solo career in 1980, he had two pigeons with him. Supposedly as a symbol of peace because the music managers were not very fond of the crazy rocker.
But only one bird actually did the flutter! The singer grabbed the other one in a frenzy – and bit his head off. He is said to have then spat it into the lap of an employee. Negotiation skills? Not exactly Ozzy's strength…
1982: This guy has a bird! In the hot tub of his Beverly Hills villa, Ozzy courageously bites into a rubber chicken. It's not without reason that he called his second studio album in 1981 “Diary of a Madman”…
Foto: Getty Images
Osbourne's 1982 concert in Des Moines is also legendary: a fan threw a bat onto the stage, which the singer promptly bit off the head of. A trip to the hospital followed – for rabies prevention. Ozzy, who supposedly thought it was a rubber dummy, later said in an interview: “Immediately something felt wrong, very wrong. My mouth was full of this warm, sticky liquid with the worst aftertaste you could ever imagine. I could feel it staining my teeth and running down my chin.”
By the way: A species of tree frog discovered in the Amazon that makes bat-like shrill sounds was named “Dendropsophus ozzyi” in 2014 in reference to Ozzy's bat faux pas…
Water march! At his concerts, Ozzy fans regularly got a party shower – and the “Prince of Darkness” also got wet… In an interview with “People” he revealed: “When I was on stage, I always, “Oh shit” and just peed because I was wet anyway from splashing water.”
Foto: Getty Images
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