Ozzy Osbourne - I Am Ozzy

Sharon was convinced something bad would happen. So whenever I’d been drinking in the hotel, she’d steal all my clothes, so there was no way I could leave and get into any trouble—unless I was prepared to walk down to the lobby stark bollock naked.

It worked, most of the time.

But then we got to San Antonio, Texas. As usual, I got shit-faced in the hotel. And, as usual, Sharon nicked my clothes. But she made the mistake of leaving one of her evening gowns in the room. It was this dark green frilly thing, and with a bit of ripping and tearing at the seams I got it on. Then I found some running shoes, and I was off.

So there I was in Sharon’s evening dress, on the loose, slinging this bottle of Courvoisier around the streets of San Antonio, looking for trouble. I think we might have had a photo shoot going on that day, but I can’t remember for sure. I do know that I was blasted. Then I got this sudden urge to take a piss, as you do when you’re blasted. Actually, it was more than an urge: my bladder felt like a hot cannon ball. I had to go, right there, right then. But I was in the middle of this strange town in Texas, and I didn’t have a clue where the public bogs were.

So I looked around, found a quiet corner, and started taking a slash against this crumbly old wall.

Ahhhh. That’s better.

Then I heard this voice behind me.

‘You disgust me.’

‘What?’ I turned around to see this old timer in a cowboy hat, staring at me like I’d just molested his gran.

‘You’re a disgrace, d’ya know that?’

‘My girlfriend nicked my clothes,’ I explained. ‘What else was I supposed to fucking wear?’

‘It ain’t the dress, you limey faggot piece o’ dirt. That wall you’re relieving yourself on is the Alamo!’

‘The Aalawot?’

Before he could answer, two fat Texan coppers came puffing around the corner, radios crackling.

‘That’s the one,’ said the old bloke. ‘Him… in the dress.’

BAM!

I was face down in the dirt, being handcuffed.

It took a moment for it all to click. I’d definitely heard of the Alamo—I’d seen the John Wayne movie a few times. So I knew it was this big-deal place where lots of Americans had been killed while they were fighting the Mexicans. But I hadn’t made the connection between the old wall I was pissing on and the ruins of a sacred national monument.

‘You’re a Brit, ain’tcha?’ one of the cops said to me.

‘So?’

‘Well, how would you feel if I urinated on Buckingham Palace, huh?’

I gave it some thought. Then I said to him, ‘I’ve no idea. I don’t fucking live there, do I?’

That went down a treat, that did.

Ten minutes later, I was sharing a jail cell with a 280 lb Mexican bloke who’d just murdered his wife with a brick, or some crazy shit. He must have thought he was hallucinating when he saw me show up in a green frock. I was thinking, Christ, he’s going to think I’m the ghost of his missus, and then he’s going to try to give her one last dick up the arse.

But all he did was grunt and stare.

I was in the cage for about three hours. Some of the cops and their friends came over to look at me. Maybe some of them had bought Blizzard of Ozz, I don’t know. But they gave me a pretty easy ride. They did me for public intoxication, instead of the more heavy-duty desecration of a venerated object, which would have meant a year in the slammer. And they let me out in time for the gig. Although the chief came down personally to tell me that, as soon as the show was over, I had to leave town and never show my ugly mug again.

That one piss cost me a fortune in lost San Antonio gigs over the years. And rightly so; I suppose: pissing on the Alamo wasn’t the cleverest thing I’d ever done. It wasn’t so much like pissing on Buckingham Palace as pissing on one of the monuments at a Normandy beach.

Unforgivable. A few years later, I apologised in person to the Mayor, promised never to do it again, and donated ten grand to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. He let me play in the town again after that, although it took more than a decade for it to happen.

When I finally went back, I remember this scrawny Mexican kid coming up to me after the show.

‘Ozzy, is it true you got busted for pissing on the Alamo?’ he asked me.

‘Yeah,’ I told him. ‘It’s true.’

‘Shit, man,’ he said. ‘We piss on it every night on our way home.’

We were in the tour bus, on our way from Tennessee to

Florida, when Randy broke the news.

‘I don’t think I want to be a rock ’n’ roller any more,’ he said.

I waited for him to crack a smile. But he didn’t.

We were sitting at a little picnic table in the kitchen area of the bus, which was like a five-star hotel on wheels. It had TVs hanging from the ceiling, shag-pile carpets, air-conditioning, limo-style windows, a flash gold and white paint job, and—of course—a fully stocked bar.

I’d been drinking gin all night. After that bad scene at the Alamo, I’d gone easy on the Courvoisier for a while.

Randy was smoking fags and sipping from a can of Coke. He hardly touched the booze.

He only liked that horrible aniseed shit. What’s it called? Anisette. Like a thick, milky liqueur thing. Didn’t do drugs, either. Mind you, he made up for it with the fags. He could have won a gold medal in the Lung Cancer Olympics, could Randy Rhoads.

‘Are you joking with me?’ I said, trying not to choke on my drink.

‘No, Ozzy, I’m serious.’

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

It was long after midnight—maybe three or four in the morning—and me and Randy were the only ones still awake. Sharon was in the bedroom at the back. Rudy and Tommy were sprawled out on the bunks, along with some of the crew members who travelled with us, like Rachel Youngblood, an older black lady who did all our wardrobe, hair and make-up.

I was amazed they could sleep, ’cos the bus was rattling and shaking and groaning like it was gonna fall to pieces. It was a seven-hundred-mile journey from Knoxville to Orlando, and the driver was going like the clappers. I remember looking out of the window at all the headlamps of the cars and trucks flying past in the other direction and thinking, Any minute now, the wheels are gonna come off this thing. I had no idea that the driver had a nose full of coke.

I only found that out later from the coroner’s report.

Mind you, I had no idea about anything, me. I was out of my skull with all the booze and the coke and the fuck-knows-what-else I was shoving down my throat, twenty-four hours a day.

But I knew I didn’t want Randy to leave.

‘How could you quit now?’ I said to him. ‘We’ve only just broken through, man. Sharon says Diary of a Madman might sell even more copies than Blizzard. It’s going fucking gangbusters all over the world. Tomorrow night we’re playing with Foreigner!’

Randy just shrugged and said, ‘I want to go to university. Get a degree.’

‘Are you mad?’ I said. ‘Keep this up for a couple of years and you can buy your own fucking university.’

At least that made him smile.

‘Look,’ I went on. ‘You’re just knackered. Why don’t you get some rest, give yourself a bit of a break, y’know?’

‘I could say the same thing to you, Ozzy.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘That’s your fourth bottle of gin in twenty-four hours.’

‘Keeps me happy.’

‘Ozzy, why do you drink so much? What’s the point?’

The right answer to that question was: because I’m an alcoholic; because I have an addictive personality; because whatever I do, I do it addictively. But I didn’t know any of that back then.