I Am Ozzy

  Which, as any drug addict will tell you, is the stupidest thing you can ever do. When Sharon came home, Jack ran up to her and shouted, ‘Mum! Mum! Dad’s stopped drinking! He’s stopped drinking!’ Then I crawled off to bed, feeling horrendous, but couldn’t sleep from the comedown. So I scoffed my face full of Excedrin PM, because I thought Excedrin PM didn’t count as a drug.

  Then I really did go numb.

  I couldn’t feel a thing.

  By the time I opened my eyes again, all I could see was Sharon leaning over me and going, ‘What’s my name? What’s my name?’ I couldn’t answer because I felt like I was under -water. Then she was going, ‘How many fingers am I holding up? How many fingers, Ozzy?’ But I couldn’t count. All I wanted to do was sleep. For the first time in years, all my pain had gone. Suddenly I knew what the phrase ‘out-of-body experience’ meant. It was the richest, warmest, most comforting feeling I’d ever had.

  I didn’t want it to end.

  It was beautiful, so beautiful.

  Then Sharon and Tony were dragging me on to the back seat of the car, and we were driving round and round, trying to find a doctor. Finally, I was on a bed with all these drips coming out of me, and in a muffled voice I could hear the doc saying to Sharon, ‘Your husband has gone into an alcoholic seizure. It’s very, very serious. We’ve put him on anti-seizure medication, but we’re going to have to keep monitoring him overnight. He might not come out of it.’

  Then, little by little, the feeling returned.

  Toes first. Then legs. Then chest. I felt like I was being lifted up from deep, deep under the sea. Then, all of a sudden, my ears popped and I could hear an EKG machine behind me.

  Bleep. Bleep. Bleep. Bleep.

  ‘How many fingers?’ Sharon was saying. ‘How many fingers, Ozzy?’

  Bleep. Bleep. Bleep. Bleep.

  ‘Ozzy, what’s my name? What’s my name?’

  Bleep. Bleep. Bleep. Bleep.

  ‘Your name’s Sharon. I’m so sorry, Sharon. I’m so fucking sorry for everything. I love you.’

  Clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp.

  The copper walks up to the bars of my cell holding a sheet of paper in his hand. I’m looking at him, sweating, breathing fast and shallow, fists balled, wanting to fucking die.

  He’s looking back at me.Then he clears his throat and starts to read:

  John Michael Osbourne, you are hereby charged with the attempted murder by strangulation of your wife,Sharon Osbourne, during a domestic disturbance that took place in the early hours of Sunday, September 3, 1989, at Beel House, Little Chalfont, in the county of Buckinghamshire.

  It was like someone had hit me over the head with a shovel. I staggered backwards, fell against the shit-smeared wall, then slumped on to the floor, head in my hands. I wanted to throw up, pass out and scream, all at the same time. Attempted murder? Sharon? This was my worst nightmare. I’m gonna wake up in a minute, I thought. This can’t be happening. ‘I love my wife!’ I wanted to tell the copper. ‘I love my wife, she’s my best friend in the world, she saved my life. Why the fuck would I want to kill my wife?’

  But I didn’t say anything.

  I couldn’t speak.

  I couldn’t do anything.

  ‘I hope you’re proud of yourself,’ said the copper.

  ‘Is she all right?’ I asked him, when I finally got my voice back.

  ‘Her husband just tried to kill her. How d’you think she is?’

  ‘But why would I do that? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Well, it says here that after returning home from a Chinese restaurant – you’d gone there after celebrating your daughter Aimee’s sixth birthday, during which time you became heavily intoxicated on Russian vodka – you walked into the bedroom naked and said, I quote, “We’ve had a little talk and it’s clear that you have to die.”’

  ‘I said what?’

  ‘Apparently, you’d spent the entire night complaining about being overworked, because you’d just come back from the Moscow Festival of Peace – fitting that, ain’t it? – and then you had to go to California. Sounds more like a holiday than work to me.’

  ‘It can’t be true,’ I said. ‘I’d never try to kill her.’

  But of course it could be true. Sharon had been saying for years that she never knew which version of me was going to walk through the front door: Bad Ozzy or Good Ozzy. Usually it was Bad Ozzy. Especially when I’d just come off the road, and I had that horrendous restless feeling. Only this time I’d decided to kill more than my chickens.

  ‘Another thing,’ said the copper. ‘Your wife told us that if she’d had access to a gun at the time of the assault, she would have used it. Although I see she had a pretty good go at scratching your eyes out. She’s quite a fighter, your missus, isn’t she?’

  I didn’t know what to say. So I just tried to make light of it, and said, ‘Well, at least it’ll give the press something to write about.’

  The copper didn’t like that.

  ‘Given the severity of the charges,’ he said, ‘I don’t think this is very fucking funny, do you? You’re up for attempted murder, you piss-head. Your wife could very well be dead if others in the house hadn’t heard her screaming. They’re gonna put you away for a long time, mark my words.’

  ‘Sharon knows I love her,’ I said, trying not to think of Winson Green and Bradley the child molester.

  ‘We’ll see about that, won’t we?’

  It would be fair to say that the coppers in Amersham jail didn’t take much of a shine to me. My little dance, my little ego, it didn’t do me any favours in there. I wasn’t the bat-biting, Alamo-pissing, ‘Crazy Train’-singing rock ’n’ roll hero. All that celebrity shit counts for nothing with the Thames Valley Police.

  Especially when they’ve locked you up for attempted murder.

  They kept me in the cell for about thirty-six hours in the end. The only thing I had for company was the shit up the walls. Apparently Don Arden tried to call me when I was in there. So did Tony Iommi. But they didn’t get through – and I wouldn’t have spoken to them, anyway. A few reporters called, too. The coppers told me they wanted to know if it was true that Sharon was having an affair, or if it was true that I was going back to Jet Records to re-form Black Sabbath. Fuck knows where they’d heard all that bullshit from.

  All I wanted was to keep my family.

  Then I had to go to Beaconsfield Magistrates’ Court. They let me out of the cell to clean myself up a bit first, but whoever had pebble-dashed the walls of the cell had done the same thing to the shower, so I didn’t want to get in. Then Tony Dennis came over with a tuxedo jacket, a black shirt and a pair of earrings. I put it all on and tried to feel smart and respectable, but I was going into severe withdrawal. I looked terrible. I felt terrible. I smelled terrible. When the time came to leave, the cops walked me through the jail and out of the back door – away from all the press – and bundled me into the back of a cop car. Tony followed close behind in the Range Rover.

  The courtroom was a zoo. It was the ‘Suicide Solution’ press conference all over again. Only this time it was really serious. I was shitting blue cobblers, as my old man used to say. Don Arden had sent one of his heavies to sit at the back and listen. My accountant Colin Newman was there. The funny thing is I can’t remember if Sharon was there – which probably meant she wasn’t. Thankfully, all the lawyer-talk and gavel-bashing didn’t go on for very long. ‘John Michael Osbourne,’ said the judge, at the end, ‘I’m granting you bail on three conditions: that you immediately enter a certified rehabilitation programme of your choosing; that you do not attempt to make contact with your wife; and that you do not attempt to go back to Beel House. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, Your Honour. Thank you, Your Honour.’

  ‘Ozzy!’ went the press. ‘Is it true that Sharon wants a divorce? Is it true about the affair? Ozzy! Ozzy!’

  Tony had already booked me into a rehab place: Huntercombe Manor, about twenty minutes away. On the way we passe
d a newsagent’s. ‘DEATH THREAT OZZY SENT TO BOOZE CLINIC,’ said the sandwich board outside. It feels strange, y’know, when you see the most private moments of your life put on display like that. Very strange.

  Huntercombe Manor was all right. I mean, it wasn’t exactly Palm Springs, but it wasn’t a dump, either. The rate was steep enough: about five hundred quid a night in today’s dough.

  After I checked in, I just sat there alone in my room, smoking fags, drinking Coke, feeling very sorry for myself. I wanted to hit the bottle so badly, man – so badly, it physically hurt.

  I must have been in that joint for a couple of months in the end.

  The other people in there were the usual chronic boozers and junkies. There was a gay bloke who’d been involved in the Profumo Affair; there was an aristocrat, Lord Henry; and there was a young Asian woman whose name I can’t remember. Rehab wasn’t as advanced in England in those days as it is now. There was still a lot of shame attached to it.

  Eventually, Sharon came to visit. I told her how sorry I was, how much I loved her, how much I loved the kids, how much I wanted to keep our family together. But I knew it was useless.

  ‘Ozzy,’ she said, in this low, quiet voice, ‘I’ve got some important news that I think you’ll want to hear.’

  That’s it, I thought. It’s over. She’s found someone else. She wants a divorce. ‘Sharon,’ I said, ‘it’s OK. I underst—’

  ‘I’m going to drop the charges.’

  I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard.

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘I don’t believe you’re capable of attempted murder, Ozzy. It’s not in you. You’re a sweet, gentle man. But when you get drunk, Ozzy Osbourne disappears and someone else takes over. I want that other person to go away, Ozzy. I don’t want to see him again. Ever.’

  ‘I’m gonna stop,’ I said. ‘I promise, I’m gonna stop.’

  Meanwhile, the press was going nuts. They had photo-graphers hiding in the bushes, hanging from the treetops. The story wasn’t over, as far as they were concerned. And even though Sharon dropped the charges, the Crown Prosecution Service said it was determined to put me away on the lesser charge of assault. I still wasn’t allowed to go back to Beel House, either. But then – on Hallowe’en – they dropped the case.

  It was finally over.

  The press didn’t fucking care, though. One of the newspapers sent a reporter to my mum’s house in Walsall, and then printed some exaggerated bullshit about what a terrible parent she was, and what a shitty upbringing she’d given me. It was horrendous. Then my mum got into a slagging match with them, which just kept the story going. It got to the point where my kids had to stop going to school, because they were being hounded at the gate. So I called up my mum and said, ‘Look, I know it ain’t true what they said, but you can’t win a slagging match with the tabloids. And if you keep making a fuss, they’re going to keep making my kids’ lives hell. Why don’t I go on the BBC this week and put the record straight. Then we can put it all behind us, eh?’

  My mum agreed, so I went on the Tommy Vance show on Radio 1 and said my bit – that my parents had been great, that the press were telling lies, the whole lot.

  Settled. Over. Done. No more.

  The next thing I know, my mum’s demanding a retraction from one of the papers, and the whole thing blows up again. So it drags on for another three months, the kids have to keep staying away from school.

  Finally, she called me and said, ‘You’ll be glad to know I got that retraction.’

  ‘Are you happy now?’ I said, still pissed off with her.

  ‘Yes, very happy. They’re just working on the settlement.’

  ‘Settlement?’

  ‘I asked them for fifty thousand, and they’ve just come back with forty-five thousand.’

  ‘So it was all about money? I would have given you the fucking money, Mum. I was trying to protect my kids!’

  Looking back now, I can’t blame my mum for acting the way she did. She’d grown up poor, so fifty grand was a massive amount of dough. But I still found it very depressing. Was it just all about money? Was that the meaning of life? I mean, friends said to me at the time, ‘It’s all right for you, ’cos you’ve got money,’ and there’s some truth in that. But what killed me was the fact that if one of my kids ever said, ‘Look, Dad, please stop doing this because it’s hurting my family,’ I’d stop doing it immediately. And it’s not like my mum was broke – I gave her an allowance every week. But for some reason she couldn’t understand that the more she bugged the press and complained, the more the press wanted to be on my back. It really hurt my relationship with her, in the end. We were always falling out about one thing or another, and we always made up, but I didn’t go and see her much after she got the retraction. It just seemed that we always ended up talking about money, and I’ve never liked that topic of conversation.

  I went on a big mission to clean myself up after rehab. I lost a lot of weight. Then I went to a plastic surgeon to get forty-four of my forty-five chins removed. All he did was cut a hole, stick a vacuum cleaner in there, and suck out all the blubber. It was magic. Mind you, part of the reason I did it was just to get shot up with Demerol, which I thought was the best drug ever.

  While I was in there, I had some fat taken off my hips, too. I’ve got no problem with cosmetic surgery, me. If something bothers you, and you can get it fixed, then fix it, that’s what I say. Sharon’s had a shitload of it done – she’ll draw you a map if you ask her. And she looks great. Mind you, it’s like anything in life: you get what you pay for.

  I felt a lot better after dropping forty pounds. And I managed to stay off the booze for quite a while, even though I hardly ever went to the AA meetings. I’ve just never felt comfortable in those places. It’s my worst zone. I’ll get up and sing my heart out in front of two hundred thousand people at a rock festival, but when I’ve got to talk about the way I feel to people I’ve never met before, I can’t do it. There’s nothing to hide behind.

  Mind you, in LA, those meetings are like rock star conventions. One time, at this clinic in LA, I was sitting in a room with a bunch of other sorry-looking alcoholics, and I looked over and saw Eric Clapton. It was terrible moment, actually, ’cos at the time I was convinced that Clapton hated me. We’d met at an awards show about ten years earlier, and someone had wanted a photograph of me and him and Grace Jones, so we posed for this picture, but I was off my nut on booze and coke, and ended up making all these crazy faces. I got the impression Clapton was either scared of me or just didn’t like me, and for some reason I became convinced he’d personally called up the photographer and had the picture destroyed.

  So when I saw him at that meeting, I fucked off as fast as I could out of a back door. Then I saw him there again a few days later, and again I tried to avoid him, but this time Clapton went after me.

  ‘Ozzy!’ he shouted, as I was about to cross the street to my car.

  ‘Oh, er, hello, Eric,’ I went.

  ‘You living over here now?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How are you finding it?’

  And it went on from there. We had a really nice chat, actually. And then a fortnight later I was browsing through a magazine and there was the picture of me and Eric Clapton and Grace Jones, with me pulling a stupid face and Eric smiling. I’d been imagining the whole thing.

  I still hated those AA meetings, though. Eventually I stopped going completely. Whenever I fell off the wagon, I’d just get someone to come over and do one of those home detox things to get me back on the right track again. I was really into all that stuff for a while. Potions, massages, organic herbal fruit baths – any bollocks you can imagine, I did it. Then, one day, this bloke came over and gave me a bottle of colon-cleansing solution.

  ‘Flush yourself out with this stuff every morning,’ he said, ‘and you’ll feel absolutely amazing, I promise.’

  I didn’t get around to using it for a long time – I didn’t f
ancy the thought of it, to be honest with you – but then finally, one morning, I said to myself, ‘Fuck it, I bought the stuff, I might as well give it a go.’ The solution was made from seed husks, and the instructions said you just had to pour yourself a glass of it and down in it one, before it had a chance to expand in your throat. So that’s what I did. It tasted fucking horrendous – like wet sawdust, but worse. Then I went out with Sharon to look at houses, which was actually a rarity for me, because as far as I’m concerned there’s nothing fucking worse than house-hunting. But on this occasion Sharon really wanted me to see a place that was owned by Roger Whittaker, the easy-listening guy, because it had a recording studio in the basement. I had nothing else going on, so I couldn’t say no.

  When we get to the house, the estate agent is waiting for us outside. She’s a posh chick in her late thirties, green Barbour jacket, pearls, the whole deal. Then she gets out this big chain of keys and lets us in through the front door. But as soon as I step foot inside the hallway, I begin to feel this apocalyptic rumbling in my arse. I’m thinking, Aye-aye, here we go, the colon cleanser’s kicking in. So I ask the chick where the nearest bog is, shuffle over there as fast as I can without looking conspicuous, slam the door behind me, sit down, and set free this massive torrent of liquid shit. It goes on for so long, it feels like I’m giving birth to the Mississippi River. When it’s finally over, I start looking around for some shit roll. But there isn’t any. I stand up and think, Fuck it, I’ll just have to go unwiped until we get home. Then I realise the shit’s gone all over the back of my legs, so I don’t have any choice – I’ve got to wipe myself down with something. But there isn’t even a flannel.

  So I end up just standing there, trousers down, paralysed, trying to work out what to do.

  Then Sharon knocks on the door.

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  ‘Ozzy? Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m, er, fine, thank you, darling,’ I say.

  ‘You’re taking an awfully long time.’

  ‘Won’t be long, darling.’

  ‘Hurry up.’

  Finally, it comes to me: the curtains. I’ll wipe my arse with the curtains! So I rip ’em down and do what needs to be done. But then I’ve got another problem on my hands: what the fuck am I supposed to do with a pair of Roger Whittaker’s shitty curtains? I can hardly bring them out of the bog with me and ask the estate agent for directions to the nearest toxic dump. Then I think, Well, maybe I should leave a note. But what would it say? ‘Dear Roger, sorry for shitting on your curtains. Love the whistling! Cheers, Ozzy.’