I Am Ozzy

  ‘You should have seen yourself,’ said Sharon.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘I mean you should have seen yourself.’

  ‘I don’t understand, Sharon. I was a bit tipsy, yes, but it was a birthday party. Everyone was a bit tipsy.’

  ‘No, honestly, Ozzy, you should have seen yourself. Actually, would you like to see yourself? I have a video.’

  Oh crap, I thought.

  Sharon had filmed the whole thing. She put the tape in the machine, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. In my mind, I’d been the fun dad that everyone wants to have around. Then I saw the reality. Jack was terrified and in tears. Kelly and Aimee were hiding in the shed, also in tears. All the other parents were leaving and muttering under their breath. The clown had a bloody nose. And there was me, in the middle of it all, fat, pissed, cake all over my face, dripping wet from something or other, raving, screaming drunk.

  I was a beast. Absolutely terrifying.

  After I’d come out of the Betty Ford Center, I’d started to say to myself, ‘Well, I might be an alcoholic, but I have the perfect job for an alcoholic, so maybe it’s kind of all right that I’m an alcoholic.’

  In a way, it was true. I mean, what other occupation rewards you for being out of your brains all the time? The more loaded I was when I got on stage, the more the audience knew it was gonna be a good night. The trouble was the booze was making me so ill that I couldn’t function without taking pills or cocaine on top of it. Then I couldn’t sleep – or I had panic attacks, or I went into these paranoid delusions – so I turned to sedatives, which I’d get from doctors on the road. Whenever I overdosed, which I did all the time, I’d just blame it on my dyslexia: ‘Sorry, Doc, I thought it said six every one hour, not one every six hours.’

  I had a different doctor in every town – ‘gig doctors’ I called them – and played them off against each other. When you’re a drug addict, half the thrill is the chase, not the fix. When I discovered Vicodin, for example, I used to keep an old bottle and put a couple of pills in it, then I’d say, ‘Oh, Doc, I’ve got these Vicodins, but I’m running low.’ He’d look at the date and the two pills left in the jar, then whack me up another fifty. So I’d get fifty pills before every gig. I was doing twenty-five a day at one point.

  Mind you, in America, if you’re a celebrity, you don’t have to try very hard to get doctors to give you whatever you want. One gig doctor would drive out to see me in his pick-up. In the back he had one of those tool cabinets full of little drawers, and in each drawer he had a different kind of drug. All the heavy shit you could ever want. Eventually Sharon found out what was going on and put her foot down. She grabbed the doc by the scruff of the neck and said, ‘Do not give my husband any drugs under any circumstances or you’re going to jail.’

  Deep down, I knew that all the booze and drugs had turned sour on me; that I’d stopped being funny and zany and had started to become sad. I’d run miles to get a drink. I’d do anything for a drink. I used to keep a fridge full of beer in the kitchen, and I’d get up, first thing in the morning, knock off a Corona, and by twelve o’clock I was fucking blasted. And when I was doing Vicodin and all that other shit, I was always playing with my fucking nose. You can see how bad I was on Penelope Spheeris’s documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II. Everyone thought it was hysterical, me trying to fry an egg at seven o’clock in the morning after I’d been out on the piss all night, drinking bottle after bottle of vino.

  Booze does terrible things to you when you drink as much as I did. For example, I started to shit myself on a regular basis. At first I made a joke out of it, but then it just stopped being funny. One time, I was in a hotel somewhere in England, and I was walking down the corridor to my room, but suddenly I felt this turd rumbling down the pipe. I had to go. Right then. It was either do it on the carpet or do it in my pants, and I’d had enough of doing it in my pants. So I squatted down, dropped my trousers, and took a dump right there in the corridor.

  At that exact moment, a bellboy came out of the elevator, looked at me, and shouted, ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  I couldn’t even begin to think how to explain. So I just held up my room key and said, ‘It’s all right, I’m staying here.’

  ‘No you’re fucking not,’ he said.

  A lot of alcoholics shit themselves. I mean, think about it: a gallon of Guinness makes enough tarmac to pave ten miles of the M6. And when you come round the following day, your body wants to get rid of everything: it just wants to expel all the toxic crap you forced into it the night before. I tried to stop it by switching from Guinness to Hennessy. But I was fruiting it up with orange juice or Coca-Cola the whole time, which made it just as bad. And I was drinking four bottles of Hennessy a day, plus the cocaine and the pills and the beer. At first, I would barely get hangovers, but as time went on they started to get worse and worse, until I couldn’t handle them any more.

  So I went back to rehab. I was just so sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. If you drink a liquid that makes you feel better, then that’s one thing. But if you drink a liquid that makes you feel worse than you did originally, then what’s the point? And I felt like I was dying.

  I couldn’t face Betty Ford again, so I went to the Hazelden Clinic in Center City, Minnesota. It was winter, freezing cold. I spent the whole time shivering, throwing up and feeling sorry for myself.

  On the first day, the therapist got a bunch of us together and said, ‘When you go back to your rooms tonight, I want you to write down how much you think drink and drugs have cost you since you started doing them. Just add it all up and come back to me.’

  So that night I got out a calculator and started to do some sums. I kind of wanted to get a big number, so I grossly exaggerated a lot of things, like how many pints I had each day – I put twenty-five – and how much each of them cost. In the end I came up with this obscene number. Just a huge, ridiculous number. Something like a million quid. Then I tried to get some sleep, but I couldn’t.

  The next day, I showed my calculations to the bloke, and he said, ‘Oh, very interesting.’

  I was surprised, ’cos I thought he was gonna say, ‘Oh, come off it, Ozzy, give me some real numbers.’

  Then he said, ‘So is this just from drinking?’

  ‘And drugs,’ I said.

  ‘Hmm. And you’re sure this is everything?’ he asked me.

  ‘It’s a million quid!’ I said. ‘How much more could it be?’

  ‘Well, have you ever been fined because of drinking?’

  ‘A few times, yeah.’

  ‘Have you ever missed any gigs or been banned from any venues because of drinking?’

  ‘A few times, yeah.’

  ‘Had to pay lawyers to get you out of trouble because of your drinking?’

  ‘A few times, yeah.’

  ‘Medical fees?’

  ‘Big time.’

  ‘And d’you think you might have lost record sales because your work was affected by drinking?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Probably?’

  ‘OK, definitely.’

  ‘Final question: have you ever lost property or other assets in a divorce caused by your drinking?’

  ‘Yeah, I lost everything.’

  ‘Well, Ozzy, I did some research and some calculations of my own last night, and d’you want to know what I think your addictions have cost you?’

  ‘Go on then.’

  He told me. I almost threw up.

  10

  Blackout

  I woke up groaning.

  Fuck me, I thought, as my eyes began to focus: must have been another good one last night. I was lying on a bare concrete floor in a square room. It had bars on the window, a bucket in the corner, and human shit up the walls. For a second I thought I was in a public toilet. But no: the bars on the window were the giveaway.

  One of these days, I thought, I really need to stop waking up in jail cells.

 
I touched my face. Argh! Shit, that hurt.

  For some reason, all I was wearing one of my smelly old T-shirts – the kind I used to sleep in – and a pair of shiny black tuxedo trousers. At least it’s better than waking up in one of Sharon’s frocks again, I thought.

  I wondered what time it was. Seven in the morning? Nine? Ten? My watch was gone. So was my wallet. The coppers must have bagged my stuff when they booked me. The only thing left in my pockets was a scrunched-up receipt from my local Chinese restaurant, the Dynasty. I pictured the inside of the place – red, like hell – and saw myself sitting in one of the leather booths, arguing with Sharon, and crushing powder and pills in one of those… what d’you call them? A pestle and mortar. What the fuck had I been doing last night? Coke? Sleeping pills? Amphetamines? All that and more, knowing me.

  I felt disgusting. My whole body ached – especially my face, and my teeth, and my nose.

  I needed a bag of ice.

  I needed a shower.

  I needed a doctor.

  ‘HELLO?’ I shouted through the bars. ‘ANYBODY THERE?’

  No reply.

  I tried to think what my drunk, coked-up evil-twin brother could have done to put me behind bars. But my brain was empty. Blank. Just that image of me in the Dynasty, then static. I’d probably been caught pissing in the street again, I thought. But if that was the case, why was I wearing my pyjama T-shirt? Had I been arrested at my house? Whatever I’d got up to, it had given me the mother of all headaches. I hoped I hadn’t already used up my telephone call, ’cos I needed to tell Sharon that I was in jail, so she could come and get me. Or maybe she’d gone to America. She was always fucking off to America to get out of my way, especially after a big argument. In which case I’d need to call Tony Dennis.

  Good old Tony.

  He’d sort me out.

  It was September 3, 1989.

  By then, we’d moved back to England full time. We’d bought a place called Beel House, in Little Chalfont, Bucking hamshire. The house dated back to the seventeenth century, or so Sharon told me. Dirk Bogarde once lived there. It was a real house, not the fake, movie-set bullshit you get out in California. But my favourite thing about it was our next-door neighbour, George, who lived in what used to be the gatehouse. George was a chemist, and he made his own wine. Every day I’d knock on his door and say, ‘Gimme a bottle of your super stuff, George.’ It was like rocket fuel, that wine of his. People would come over from America, take one swig, their eyes would widen, and they’d go, ‘What the fuck is this stuff?’ A few glasses of Chateau d’George was enough to put you under for good. The funny thing was George didn’t even drink. He was a teetotaller. He’d say, ‘Oh, Mr Osbourne, I saw that you set fire to the kitchen last night. That must have been a good one. Remind me, was it the elder-berry or the tea leaf?’

  But Sharon was on my back, big time, so I couldn’t drink George’s brews in front of her. And I couldn’t hide the bottles in the oven any more, either. So I started to bury the stuff in the garden. Trouble was, I would always hide the booze when I was pissed, so the next night I could never remember where the fuck I’d put it. I’d be out there with a shovel until two o’clock in the morning, digging holes all over the place. Then Sharon would come down for breakfast and look out of the window, and there’d be all these trenches everywhere. ‘Fuck me, Sharon,’ I’d say to her, ‘them moles have been busy, haven’t they?’

  In the end, I had floodlights installed to help me find the booze. Cost me an arm and a leg.

  Then Sharon twigged, and that was the end of that.

  ‘I should have known better than to think you would develop a sudden interest in horticulture,’ she said.

  It was probably good that I got caught, ’cos my body could hardly take the hard stuff any more. I was forty, and my system had started to give up. I knew something was badly wrong when I went to the pub one time and woke up five days later. People would come up to me and say, ‘Hello, Ozzy,’ and I’d ask, ‘Do I know you?’ And they’d go, ‘I spent three months living at your house over the summer. Don’t you remember?’

  I’d been warned about blackouts when I went to the Betty Ford Center that time after Kelly was born. The doc told me that my tolerance would eventually hit zero, and then my body and brain would shut down. But I thought it was just bullshit to frighten me. ‘You know what my real drinking problem is?’ I said to him. ‘I can’t find a fucking bar in this place.’

  But then the blackouts started, just like he said they would. They didn’t stop me drinking, though. They just made me worry, which made me drink even more. After what had happened with Vince Neil and the car crash, my biggest fear was waking up in a courtroom one day with someone pointing at me and saying, ‘That’s him! He’s the one who ran my husband down!’ Or, ‘That’s him! The one who killed my baby!’

  ‘But I had a blackout, Your Honour’ would be my last words before they locked me up and threw away the key.

  ‘HELLO?’ I shouted again. ‘ANYBODY THERE?’

  I was getting nervous now – which meant all the booze and the coke from the night before must have been wearing off. As soon as I get out of this shithole, I told myself, I’m gonna have a nice drink to calm myself down.

  Silence.

  I waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  Where the fuck was everybody?

  I was sweating and shivering now. And I really needed to take a shit.

  Finally this copper showed up: big bloke, my age – maybe older – with a right old pissed-off look on his face.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said to him. ‘Will someone please tell me what I’m doing in this place?’

  He just stood there, looking at me like I was a cockroach in his dinner. ‘You really want to know?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  He came up to the bars, took an even better look at me, and said, ‘Normally I don’t believe people when they have a convenient loss of memory while they’re breaking the law. But in your case, after seeing the state of you last night, I might make an exception.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You should have seen yourself.’

  ‘Look, are you gonna tell me why I’m in here or not?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said the copper. ‘Why don’t I just go and get your file? Then I can read you the charges.’

  Read me the charges?

  I almost crapped my pants when he said that.

  What the fuck had I done? Killed someone? I began to think about the documentary I’d watched a few weeks before on American telly, about a murderer in New York. He was on trial, this bloke, and he knew he was going to get for ever in jail, so he got some peanut butter and smeared it up his arse crack, then, just before the jury went out to consider its verdict, he put his hand down his trousers, scraped it up, and started to eat it out of his hand.

  And he got off for being insane.

  Trouble was, I didn’t have any peanut butter. So if I wanted to look like I was eating my own shit, I’d have to eat my own shit.

  Y’know, even after Sharon played me the video of Kelly’s birthday party – the one where I made all the kids cry – I never really thought of myself as a frightening drunk. I couldn’t see why I was doing any harm. I thought I was just going out, having a few beers, going home, shitting myself, then wetting the bed. Everyone did that, didn’t they? It was just a bit of a laugh, par for the course, what you did. But in rehab they said, ‘Look, what you’ve got to do is reverse the role. How would you feel if you went home and it was Sharon who was lying on the floor in a puddle of her own shit and piss, and she was out of her mind, and the kitchen was on fire, and she couldn’t look after the kids? How long would you stay with her? How would you feel about your marriage?’

  When they put it like that, I could see their point.

  But it’s taken me until now to realise how scary and wrong it all was. I was just an excessive fucking pig. I would drink a bottle of cognac, pass out, wake up
, then drink another. I’m not exaggerating when I say I was drinking four bottles of Hennessy a day.

  Even now, I have a lot of trouble understanding why Sharon stayed – or why she married me in the first place, come to think of it.

  I mean, she was actually afraid of me half the time.

  And the truth was I was afraid of me, too. Afraid of what I’d do to myself or, even worse, to someone else.

  A lot of the time, Sharon would just leave the country when I went on a bender. ‘See ya, I’m off to America,’ she’d say. It was around then that she’d started to manage other acts, because I was so fucking volatile, she didn’t want to be totally dependent on me. But that made me worry that she was gonna run off with some young fucking hot shot. I mean, I wouldn’t have blamed her – I wasn’t exactly much fun to be around. Being with me was like falling into an abyss.

  One night, when Sharon was away, I paid George the chemist fifty quid for this extra-super-strong bottle of wine, and got well and truly shitfaced with my old keyboard player, John Sinclair. It so happened that I’d been to see a doctor that day, so I had this scoopful of pills: sleeping pills, pain meds, temazepam, you name it. Doctors would give me jars and jars of that shit, all the time. So while I was getting pissed, I was also popping these things, one after the other, until eventually I blacked out.

  When I woke up the next morning, I was in bed with Johnny, and we were all tangled up with each other. But when I reached down to check my dick, to make sure nothing had happened, I realised I couldn’t feel anything. I was numb. Totally numb.

  So I was lying there, and I started to scream, ‘Fuck! Fuck! I can’t feel my legs!’

  Then I hear this grunt next to me.

  ‘That’s because they’re my legs,’ said Johnny.

  I had to take three showers after that. It makes me shudder just to think about it. In fact, I felt like such a fucking mess, I said, ‘Right, that’s it. No more booze, no more pills, no more nothing. This is ridiculous. Sharon’s gonna leave me at this rate.’

  I went cold turkey.