Ozzy Osbourne - I Am Ozzy

‘It’s ENJOY life,’ I kept repeating. ‘ENJOY life.’

No one listened.

‘Ozzy,’ said another reporter. ‘Mr McCollum’s attorney says he went to one of your concerts, and that it was like being at Nuremberg, with the crowd chanting your name. Any comment?’

‘Nuremberg?’ I should have said, ‘I don’t think Hitler spent much of his time at Nuremberg making the peace sign and shouting “rock ’n’ roll”.’ But I didn’t. I couldn’t get my words out. I just froze.

Then they started asking about ‘Suicide Solution’. All I can remember is Howard Weisman shouting above the crowd, ‘The song is autobiographical. It’s about Mr Osbourne’s well-publicised battle with alcoholism, which he believes is a form of suicide, as evidenced by the tragic death of Mr Osbourne’s good friend Bon Scott, lead singer of the Australian band AC/DC.’

‘But Ozzy,’ shouted the reporters, ‘isn’t it true that…’

Finally, it was over and I went back to the hotel, shaking. I flopped down on the bed, flicked on the TV, and there was Don Arden, discussing the case. ‘To be perfectly honest, I would be doubtful as to whether Mr Osbourne knew the meaning of the lyrics—if there was any meaning—because his command of the English language is minimal,’ he said.

I suppose it was his way of showing support.

The press conference was very frightening, and it gave me a taste of what was to come. I became public enemy number one in America. I opened a newspaper one morning in New York and there was a picture of me with a gun pointed at my head. They must have cut and pasted it together ’cos I’d never posed for it, but it freaked me out. Then I started to get death threats wherever I went. The cops would use them to try to get me to cancel gigs. One time in Texas, the local police chief called up our tour manager and said, ‘There’s been some dynamite stolen from the local quarry, and we’ve had a letter from an anonymous source saying it’s going to be used to blow up Ozzy.’

I was scared for the kids, more than anything. I told the nannies never to stop for anyone on the street. It was 1986, just over five years since John Lennon had signed a copy of Double Fantasy for a fan and then been shot by the same bloke. And I was well aware that it was often the fans who could be the most psycho. One guy started to follow me around with this five-million-year-old mammoth tusk. Another bloke sent me a video of his house: he’d painted my name over every single thing, both outside and in. Then he sent me another video of this little girl wearing a pair of welly-boots and dancing to ‘Fairies Wear Boots’.

He was insane, that guy. He built a tomb so that me and him could spend the rest of eternity together. I could think of better fucking things to do with eternity, to be honest with you. It got to the point where the cops had to take him into custody every time I played a gig anywhere near where he lived. And if I did a signing at a record shop in the area, they’d make me wear a bullet-proof jacket, just to be safe.

I got well and truly pissed off with the crazy stuff after a while. I remember one time, me and my assistant Tony were on a flight from Tokyo to LA. There’d been a six-hour delay at the gate, and they’d handed out free drinks coupons, so everyone was pissed. But this one American chick wouldn’t leave me alone. She was sitting behind me, and every two seconds she’d tap me on the back of my head and go, ‘I know you.’

Tony kept saying to her, ‘Now, missus, please just go away. We don’t want to be bothered,’ but she wouldn’t listen.

In the end, she got out of her seat, came round, and wanted a photograph. So I let her take one. Then she went, ‘I got it! You’re Ozzy Bourne!’

I’d had enough. ‘FUCK OFF!’ I shouted.

A stewardess came over and told me not to be rude to the other passengers.

‘Well, keep that woman away from me then!’ I told her.

But she kept coming back. And back. And back.

Finally, I thought, Right, I’m gonna do something about this.

In those days, I used to carry around these things called Doom Dots. They’re basically chloral hydrate, and they come in little gel caps. All you do is stick a pin in the end and squirt the stuff into someone’s drink. When you hear about people being ‘slipped a Mickey’, that’s what they’re being given—a Doom Dot. Anyway, I waited for this chick to get up and go for a piss, then reached behind me, and squirted a Doom Dot into her glass of wine.

When she came back, I told Tony, ‘Keep looking behind me, and tell me what’s happening.’

He said, ‘Whey, she’s ahl-reet right now, but she’s leaning forward a bit. She’s lookin’ a bit dazed. Oh, hang on now—she’s goin’, she’s goin’, she’s—’

I felt a jolt in the back of my seat.

‘What happened?’ I asked Tony.

‘Face down on the tray. Fast asleep.’

‘Magic,’ I said.

‘Aye. It’s just a shame she didn’t get her soup oot the way first, lyke. Poor lass. She’s gonna be covered.’

But the Jesus freaks were the worst. While the ‘Suicide Solution’ case was going through the courts they followed me around everywhere. They would picket my shows with signs that read, ‘The Anti-Christ Is Here’. And they’d always be chanting: ‘Put Satan behind you! Put Jesus in front of you!’

One time, I made my own sign—a smiley face with the words ‘Have a Nice Day’—and went out and joined them. They didn’t even notice. Then, just as the gig was about to start, I put down the sign, said, ‘See ya, guys,’ and went back to my dressing room.

The most memorable Jesus-freak moment was in Tyler, Texas. By then, the death threats were coming in pretty much every day, so I had this security guy, a Vietnam vet called Chuck, who was with me at all times. Chuck was so hardcore he couldn’t even go into a Chinese restaurant. ‘If I see anyone who looks like a Gook, I’m gonna take ’em out,’ he’d say. He had to turn down a tour with me in Japan ’cos he couldn’t handle it. Whenever we stayed in a hotel, he’d spend the night crawling around on his belly through the undergrowth in the garden or doing push-ups in the corridor. Really intense guy.

Anyway, in Tyler, we did the gig, went out on the town, and got back to the hotel at about seven in the morning. I’d agreed to meet a doctor in the lobby at noon that day—my throat had been bothering me—so I went to bed, got a few hours’ sleep, then Chuck knocked on my door and off we went to see the quack. But the doctor was nowhere to be found, so I said to the chick on the front desk, ‘If a bloke in a white coat turns up, just tell him I’m in the coffee shop.’

But I didn’t have a clue that the local evangelist guy had been doing this TV campaign about me in the run-up to the gig, telling everyone that I was the Devil, that I was corrupting the youth of America, and that I was going to take everyone with me to hell. So half the town was out to get me, but I had no idea. There I was, sitting in this coffee shop, with Chuck twitching and muttering beside me. Thirty minutes went by. No doctor. Then another thirty minutes. Still no doctor. Then, finally, this guy comes in and says, ‘Are you Ozzy Osbourne?’

‘Yeah.’

‘PUT SATAN BEHIND YOU! PUT JESUS IN FRONT OF YOU! PUT SATAN BEHIND YOU! PUT JESUS IN FRONT OF YOU! PUT SATAN BEHIND YOU! PUT JESUS IN FRONT OF YOU!’

It was the preacher from the telly. And it turned out that the coffee shop was full of his disciples, so as soon as he started to do his nutty Jesus bullshit, all these other people joined in, until I was surrounded by forty or fifty Jesus freaks, all red in the face and spitting out the same words.

Then Chuck went fucking mental. The whole thing must have triggered some sort of ’Nam flashback, ’cos he just flipped. Stage-five psycho. The guy must have taken down about fifteen of the Jesus freaks in the first ten seconds. There were teeth and Bibles and glasses flying everything.