Ozzy Osbourne - I Am Ozzy

‘Aaaarrgh!’ and feeling all this blood and innards dribbling down the back of my neck.

The crowd thought it was all part of the show and went fucking wild.

It became one of our trademarks, throwing butchers’ off-cuts into the audience. As well as the catapult, we used to get the midget to come on stage with buckets of innards and throw them into the audience before he was hung. It was our version of the custard-pie fights I used to love seeing on telly when I was a kid. But then the audience got involved, and the fans started to bring their own meat, and throw it at us. When we finished a gig, it looked like the Trail of fucking Tears. You’d never get that kind of shit past health and safety today.

And it was amazing how quickly it got out of control.

One time this cop came up to me after a show and said, ‘Have you any idea what you’re doing to the youth of America?’

Then he showed me this Polaroid photograph of a kid in the queue outside the gig with an ox’s head on his shoulders.

‘Holy crap,’ I said. ‘Where did he get that from?’

‘He killed it on his way to the gig.’

‘Well, I hope he was hungry.’

It was insane what the kids would bring. It started with just cuts of meat, but then it moved on to entire animals. We had dead cats, birds, lizards, all kinds of stuff. One time, someone threw this huge bullfrog on to the stage, and it landed on its back. The fucking thing was so big, I thought it was someone’s baby. I got a terrible fright. I started screaming, ‘WHAT’S THAT? WHAT’S THAT? WHAT’S THAT?’ Then it rolled over and hopped away.

With every gig, it just got crazier and crazier. Eventually people started to throw things on stage with nails and razor blades embedded in them—joke shop stuff, mainly, like rubber snakes and plastic spiders. Some of the crew started to get freaked out about it, especially after a real snake ended up on stage one night. It was well and truly pissed off about being on stage with Ozzy Osbourne, that snake was. One of the roadies caught it with one of those big nets on a stick you use to clean swimming pools.

Tony—who had a small walk-on part in the show—was the jumpiest when it came to the creepy-crawlies. Basically, all he had to do was put on this suit of armour and bring me a drink on stage during a break while the scenery was changed. But it took the poor bloke about half an hour to get the suit on and off, and he spent the whole time shitting himself about something being thrown at him. So one night, just to wind him up, I threw a rubber snake in his direction, and when he jumped backwards, one of the roadies dropped a piece of string down his back. Tony went mental. He had that suit of armour off in about three seconds, until he was standing there with nothing on but these grey tights. He was so freaked out I swear his voice went up by three octaves.

It brought the house down.

I’m telling you: something crazy happened on every night of that tour.

And then on January 20, 1982 we played the Veterans Auditorium in Des Moines, Iowa. I’ll never forget the name of that place, that’s for sure. Or how to pronounce it: ‘DEE-Moyn’.

The gig was going great. The God-like hand was working without any hitches. We’d already hung the midget.

Then, from out of the audience came this bat.

Obviously a toy, I thought.

So I held it up to the lights and bared my teeth while Randy played one of his solos. The crowd went mental.

Then I did what I always did when we got a rubber toy on stage.

CHOMP.

Immediately though, something felt wrong. Very wrong.

For a start, my mouth was instantly full of this warm, gloopy liquid, with the worst aftertaste you could ever imagine. I could feel it staining my teeth and running down my chin.

Then the head in my mouth twitched.

Oh, fuck me I thought. I didn’t just go and eat a fucking bat, did I?

So I spat out the head, looked over into the wings, and saw Sharon with her eyes bulging, waving her hands, screaming, ‘NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT’S REAL, OZZY, IT’S REAL!’

Next thing I knew I was in a wheelchair, being rushed into an emergency room. Meanwhile, a doctor was saying to Sharon, ‘Yes, Miss Arden, the bat was alive. It was probably stunned from being at a rock concert, but it was definitely alive. There’s a good chance Mr Osbourne now has rabies. Symptoms? Oh, y’know, malaise, headache, fever, violent twitches, uncontrollable excitement, depression, a pathological fear of liquids…’

‘Not much chance of that,’ muttered Sharon.

‘Mania is usually one of the final symptoms. Then the patient gets very lethargic, falls into a coma, and stops breathing.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘That’s why eating a bat is generally a bad idea, from a medical standpoint.’

‘Isn’t there a vaccine?’

‘It’s usually best administered beforehand, but, yes, we can give him a shot. A few shots, actually.’

Then the doctor went to get a syringe the size of a grenade launcher.

‘OK, Mr Osbourne,’ he said. ‘You’ll need to take off your pants and bend over.’

I did as he said.

‘This might sting a bit.’

That was the last thing I heard.

Every night for the rest of the tour I had to find a doctor and get more rabies shots: one in each arse cheek, one in each thigh, one in each arm. Every one hurt like a bastard. I had more holes in me than a lump of fucking Swiss cheese. But it was better than getting rabies, I suppose. Not that anyone would have noticed the difference if I’d gone insane. Meanwhile, the press were going nuts. The next morning, I was the ‘And finally…’ item on just about every news show on the planet. Everyone thought I’d bitten the head of a bat on purpose, instead of it being a simple misunderstanding. For a while, I was worried we might be closed down, and a couple of venues did go ahead and ban us. The fans didn’t help, either. After they heard about the bat, they started bringing even crazier stuff to the gigs. Going on stage was like being at a butchers’ convention.

And, of course, the animal rights people were going nuts. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals sent people to ‘monitor’ our gigs. The crew would fuck with them all the time. They’d say, ‘Oh, Ozzy’s going to throw eighteen puppies into the audience tonight, and he won’t sing a note until they’ve all been slaughtered.’

The ASPCA believed every word of it.

They even pulled over our tour bus in Boston. I remember all these do-gooders jumping on and seeing Sharon’s Yorkshire terrier—Mr Pook—and having a fit. One of the guys shouted, ‘OK, this bus isn’t going any further. I want that dog taken into protective custody.

Now!’

What did they think was going to happen? That we were going to start mowing down Yorkshire terriers with a machine-gun halfway through ‘You Lookin’ at Me Lookin’ at You’?

A few nights later, we were playing Madison Square Garden in New York. The whole place stank of shit. It turned out that they’d had a circus in there the week before, and the animals were still locked in their cages underneath the bleachers at the back. One of the venue managers came over and invited the crew to see them. But as soon as he saw me, he went, ‘I didn’t mean you.’

‘Why not?’ I said.

‘You can’t be trusted around animals.’

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

‘What the fuck do you think I’m going to do?’ I asked him. ‘Bite the head off an elephant?’

If you’d asked anyone on the Diary of a Madman crew which member of the band might not make it through the tour—me, Randy, Rudy or Tommy—they’d have put all their money on me.

Like the song said, the way I was boozing was a kind of suicide. It was only gonna be a matter of time.