Ozzy Osbourne - I Am Ozzy

All I ever knew was that I wanted another drink.

So I just gave Randy a blank look.

‘You’ll kill yourself, y’know?’ said Randy. ‘One of these days.’

‘Goodnight Randy,’ I said, draining my glass. ‘I’m off to bed.’

When I opened my eyes a few hours later, it was getting light. Sharon was lying next to me in her dressing-gown. My head felt like a pile of toxic shit.

I couldn’t understand why I’d woken up so early. The gin should have knocked me out until at least mid-afternoon.

Then I heard the noise.

It sounded like an engine at full revs. I thought we must have been overtaking a truck.

BBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRMMMM…

Whatever it was that was making the din seemed to move away from the bus, but then all of a sudden it came back, even louder than before

B B B B B B R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M B B B B B B R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R M M M M M M M M M…

‘Sharon?’ I said. ‘What the fuck is that noi—’

Then my head smashed into the bed frame as all the windows of the bus exploded.

I could smell fuel.

For a second, there was nothing but blackness.

Next thing I know I’m looking out of the porthole-shaped window next to my left arm. I can see black smoke and people with their heads in their hands, screaming. So I jump out of bed—stark bollock naked apart from a pair of greasy old underpants—and force open the bedroom door. There are tiny fragments of glass everywhere, and a fucking massive hole in the roof. Then I notice that the entire bus has been bent into a V-shape.

The first thing that comes into my head is that the driver must have lost control on the freeway. We must have crashed.

Then I’m coughing from the stench of the fuel and the smoke from the fire outside.

And I think: Fire and fuel. Oh, fuck.

‘EVERYONE GET OFF THE FUCKING BUS!’ I start to shout. ‘IT’S GONNA BLOW! IT’S GONNA BLOW!’

Panic.

Numb legs.

Sharon screaming.

I was still sozzled from the gin. My head was throbbing. My eyes were all crusty and raw. I looked for an emergency exit, but there wasn’t one. So I ran to the open door at the front of the bus instead, pulling Sharon along behind me. Then I looked around for the others, but all the bunks were empty. Where the fuck had everyone else gone? Where the hell was Randy?

I jumped out of the bus and landed on grass.

Grass?

At that point I thought I must have been dreaming.

Where was the road? Where were the cars? I’d expected to see twisted metal, blood, spinning hub-caps. But we were parked in the middle of a field, surrounded by a bunch of over-the-top, coke-dealer-style mansions. I saw a sign that said, ‘Flying Baron Estates’. Then, next to one of the houses, a gigantic fireball—like something from the set of a James Bond film. That’s where all the smoke was coming from. There was wreckage strewn around it. And what looked like…

Oh, Jesus Christ. I almost threw up when I saw that shit.

I had to turn away.

Aside from the smoke, it was a clear day—but it was early, so there was still a kind of muggy haze in the air.

‘Where are we? What’s happening?’ I kept saying, over and over. I’d never felt so totally fucking out-of-it in my life. It was worse than the worst acid trip I’d ever had. Then I noticed what looked like an air strip and a hangar. Next to the hangar, a woman in riding gear was walking next to a horse, like nothing had happened—like this was an everyday fucking occurrence. I was thinking, This is a nightmare, I’m dreaming, this can’t be real.

I stood there, in a trance, while our keyboard player, Don Airey, ran back to the bus, grabbed a miniature fire extinguisher from somewhere, jumped off the bus, then pointed it in the direction of the flames.

It spluttered and dribbled uselessly.

Meanwhile, Sharon was trying to do a head count, but people were scattered all over the field. They were just pointing at the flames and wailing and sobbing.

Now I could make out the remains of a garage around the flames. It looked as though there were two cars inside.

Something must have crashed into it.

And whatever it was must also have ripped the hole in our tour bus and taken out half the trees behind it.

Then Sharon went over to Don—‘El-Doom-O’, we used to call him, ’cos he was always expecting the worst—and screamed, ‘What happened? Tell me, what the fuck happened?’

But Don was crouched down in a ball and couldn’t talk. So Sharon turned to Jake Duncan, our Scottish tour manager. But he couldn’t say anything, either. Next thing I knew, Sharon took off her shoe and just started beating Jake around the head with it.

‘Where are Randy and Rachel? Where are Randy and Rachel?’

All Jake could do was point towards the flames.

‘I don’t understand,’ Sharon said. ‘I don’t understand.’

I didn’t understand, either. Nobody had said, ‘Oh, by the way, Ozzy, on the way to Orlando, we’re gonna stop off at a bus depot in Leesburg to fix the air conditioning.’ Nobody had said, ‘Oh, and by the way, Ozzy, the bus depot is part of this dodgy housing estate with an air strip.’ Nobody had said, ‘Oh, yeah, and your driver—who’s been up all night, out of his mind on cocaine—also happens to be pilot with an expired medical certificate who’s going to borrow some bloke’s plane without his permission and then, while you’re fast asleep, take your lead guitarist and your make-up artist on a sight-seeing trip above the tour bus, before dive-bombing into it.’

Nobody had said anything like that at all.

Then the house next to the garage catches fire, and without even thinking I’m running towards it—still half-pissed, still in my underpants—to make sure no one’s inside. When I get to the front door, I knock, wait for about two seconds, then barge in.

In the kitchen an old bloke is making coffee. He almost falls off his chair when he sees me.

‘Who the hell are you?’ he says. ‘Get out of my house!’

‘There’s a fire!’ I shout at him. ‘Get out! Get out!’

The guy was clearly insane, ’cos he just picked up a broom from the corner and tried to push me away with it. ‘Get out of my house, you little bastard! Go on, fuggarf!’

‘YOUR FUCKING HOUSE IS ON FUCKING FIRE!’

‘GEDDOUT! GEDDOUT, GODAMMIT!’

‘YOUR HOUSE IS—’

Then I realised he was stone deaf. He wouldn’t have heard if the entire fucking planet had exploded. He certainly couldn’t hear a word this long-haired, raving English loony in his underpants was telling him. I couldn’t think what to do, so I just ran to the other side of the kitchen, where there was a door which led to the garage. I opened it, and the fucking thing practically blew off its hinges from the force of the fire.

The old bloke didn’t tell me to get out of his house again after that.

We only learned the full story much later. The bus driver was called Andrew C. Aycock.

Six years earlier, he’d been involved in a fatal helicopter crash in the United Arab Emirates.

Then he’d got a job working for the Calhoun Twins, a Country & Western act who owned the company that was doing the transportation for our tour. When we stopped at the bus depot to fix the air conditioning, Aycock decided to try his luck at flying again. So, without asking, he took a plane belonging to a mate of his.

Don and Jake were the first to go up with him. Everything was fine: the take-off and landing went smoothly. Then it was Randy and Rachel’s turn. There’s a photograph of the two of them standing beside the plane, just before they got on. They’re both smiling. I saw it once, but I could never look at it again. I’m told that Rachel agreed to go up only after Aycock promised not to pull any stunts while they were in the air. If he promised her that, he was a fucking liar as well as a coked-up lunatic: everyone on the ground said he buzzed the tour bus two or three times before the wing clipped the roof a few inches from where me and Sharon were sleeping. But the most insane thing—and the one fact I still can’t get my head around, nearly thirty years later—is that the bloke was going through a heavy-duty divorce at the time, and his soon-to-be-ex missus was standing right next to the bus when he crashed the plane into it.