Last rites, p.1
Last Rites, page 1
Copyright © 2025 by Ozzy Osbourne
Jacket design by Hannah Wood. Jacket photos by Ross Halfin. Jacket copyright © 2025 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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Lyrics: here ‘Ordinary Man’ by Duff Rose McKagan, Ozzy Osbourne, Chad Gaylord Smith, Andrew Wotman and Billy Walsh. Copyright © EMI April Music Inc., Pimp Music, Avanails Publishing, Andrew Watt Music, Nyankingmusic, Wmmw Publishing.
Here ‘Mama, I’m Coming Home’ by Zakk Wylde and John Osbourne. Copyright © Monowise Ltd.
Typeset in Bembo by M Rules.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2025942523
ISBNs: 9781538775417 (hardcover), 9781538778067 (ebook)
E3-20250903-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1 The Demon Awakes
2 Clever Accident
3 Hand of Doom
4 Countdown
5 Lights Out
6 No Choice
7 Keeping my Head Up
8 A Positive on the S***
9 Dead by Christmas
10 Bang v. Whimper
11 I’ve Had a Few
12 Dr Fix It
13 Good as It Gets
Outro
Acknowledgements
Also by Ozzy Osbourne
People say to me, if you could do it all again, knowing what you know now, would you change anything? I’m like, f*** no. If I’d been clean and sober, I wouldn’t be Ozzy. If I’d done normal, sensible things, I wouldn’t be Ozzy.
I mean, yeah, it’s f***ed up, what happened.
But when you get to your seventies, you don’t just get a cold or a sprained ankle, do you? You get major s***. And if you’ve lived the kind of life I have, you’re gonna get major s*** squared.
Look, if it ends tomorrow, I can’t complain. I’ve been all around the world. Seen a lot of things. Met some phenomenal people – King Charles, Queen Elizabeth, presidents, actors, celebrities, some truly great fans. I’ve done good. Done bad.
But right now, I ain’t ready to go anywhere. I’ve lost a lot of things, but I’ve still got my marbles… or whatever marbles I ever had. It’s good being alive. I like it. I want to be here with my family. And more than anything else in the world, I’m just happy I made it back to where it all started – Aston, Birmingham.
In 2003, when I was more famous for being on the telly than I was for being a singer, I crashed my quad bike in the fields behind my house in Buckinghamshire, England.
The bike flipped over, then landed on top of me – breaking my neck, fracturing eight of my ribs, puncturing a lung and severing the arteries to my left arm.
I was in a coma for eight days.
It was the good old NHS that put me back together again – turning me from the bloke who sang ‘Iron Man’ into an actual iron man, my shoulder and spine held together with metal plates, rods and screws.
For the next sixteen years, whenever I set off an airport metal detector, I couldn’t help but smile… thinking of how I’d cheated Death once again.
But you never cheat Death, not really.
He’s always keeping score.
And sooner or later, he’s gonna call in his final debt.
This book tells the story of how he called in mine.
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Spoiler alert: I told him to f*** off.
I’m busy.
1
The Demon Awakes
Just before I turned seventy, a thought suddenly occurred to me.
I wonder when it is you start feeling old?
I mean, there I was, six years older than my own father when he left this world, and as far as I was concerned, I was still basically a young man.
Okay, so my hands and legs were a bit shaky thanks to my Parkinson’s. I was going deaf. My short-term memory had been on the blink since about 1992. But I could run around the stage at Donington Park for two hours, shooting a foam gun at the crowd. I could belt out ‘War Pigs’ and ‘Crazy Train’ without dropping a note. And although a part of me missed the wild times of waking up in the middle of a twelve-lane freeway or surfing on the roof of a Swiss cable car, I was happy just to chill out in my hotel room with my four-legged friends Wesley, Pickles, Elvis and Rocky (God rest his soul) after a show.
In many ways, I’d never been so physically fit. I’d catch a glimpse myself in a mirror and think, fucking hell, I look better now than I did in the video for ‘Bark at the Moon’… and that was forty years ago! Not that it’s hard to look better than a bloke who was knocking back four bottles of cognac a day.
The point being, getting old had turned out to be absolutely nothing like I’d expected.
When I was growing up in Aston, you were lucky if you made it to retirement age. More often than not, you’d just drop dead on the factory floor. When my dad passed away in his early sixties, none of us Osbourne kids batted an eyelid. As far as we were concerned, he was ancient. In those days, almost no one made it to seventy. The few who did were so craggy they made Gandalf from Lord of the Rings look like Timothée Chalamet. Bits would be falling off ’em as they shuffled off down the pub.
But that wasn’t even close to the case with me.
At the age of sixty-nine, I was still touring the world. Still making TV shows. Still lording it up with big houses in LA and Buckinghamshire. And every night, I’d stage-dive into bed like I’d done since I was a little kid living at 14 Lodge Road.
Whheeeeeeee…
THWUMP.
‘OZZY!!!’ my wife Sharon would scream. ‘Why can’t you step into bed like a normal person?’
‘You wouldn’t like me if I was normal.’
‘You’ll break the bloody thing, you idiot!’
Heh-heh-heh.
Ah, yeah… them were the days.
When death still seemed like something that only happened to other people.
Now, I obviously ain’t the best person to ask about dates or whatever. There are holes in my memory so big most of the eighties and nearly all of the nineties slipped through. But the chain of events in this book began at the end of 2018 – around October time, I believe – when I was halfway through what was supposed to be my farewell tour.
It was called No More Tours II, I should probably mention. The original No More Tours had been in the nineties, before I realised there’s only so much time you can spend in your back garden wearing wellies before you lose your mind. But this time, with my seventieth birthday approaching, I was serious about slowing down. Sharon was even talking about me taking up one of them golden-oldie residencies in Las Vegas when I got back. Not that I fancied the idea of becoming the next Barry Manilow.
Looking back now, of course, I should have known the schedule was on the ambitious side. I mean, sixty gigs on four continents is no joke for any singer, no matter what their age. But the way I looked at it, it was my last goodbye to fans in places I knew I wouldn’t be playing again.
To be honest with you, before the tour started I was worried if anyone would even turn up to the shows. It had been a few years since I’d last been on the road. For all I knew, I couldn’t fill a broom cupboard, never mind sixty major arenas. But in the end, No More Tours II turned out to be an absolute blinder. From Mexico City to Moscow, Toronto and São Paulo, every show was sold out. And the whole vibe of the thing, from the stage design to the mood of the crowds, was absolutely phenomenal.
Every night, before I made my entrance, images of my life flashed across this huge screen above the stage. An old black-and-white photograph of me as a kid, still in short trousers, scared of my own shadow. A colour picture of me in Black Sabbath, wearing a tasselled suede shirt with a necklace that was actually a tiny coke spoon. On stage with the great Randy Rhoads – God bless you Randy, wherever you are – to promote Blizzard of Ozz. All mixed in with flame effects and clips from the video for ‘No More Tears’, set to a choir chanting Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana.
DUH, DUH, DUH-DUH!!
DUH, DUH, DUH-DUH!!
DUH-DUH-DUDH DUUUUUUH DUUUUUH, DUH DUH!!!
Then out I’d run from the wings in a long purple cloak while Zakk Wylde ripped into the opening riff of ‘Bark at the Moon’, his hair down , legs astride, looking like a Viking about to set fire to a village. Believe me, there’s no drug on earth that comes close to that kind of high. I should know, I’ve taken ’em all.
Even the reviews were good, which freaked me out a bit. The critics had hated everything I’d ever done, so if they’d changed their minds now, maybe I was doing something wrong. But I didn’t care, I was having too much fun.
What made it even more special was the lack of any tension behind the scenes. I mean, Zakk ain’t just one of the best guitarists out there, he’s also one of the loveliest, most salt-of-the-earth guys you’ll ever meet. A lot of people in this business only want to know you when you’re riding high. Not Zakk. He’s always been there for me, no matter what, no questions asked. Up on the drum riser, meanwhile, was Tommy Clufetos, a guy whose idea of a good time is a trip to the gym and an early night. He’s been keeping me out of trouble for years, has Tommy. On bass was Rob ‘Blasko’ Nicholson, who’s been by my side as long as Tommy. And on keyboards, Adam Wakeman, whose dad Rick I’ve known since he played on Black Sabbath’s ‘Sabbra Cadabra’ – for a fee of two pints of Directors bitter. I don’t think I’d be giving away any national secrets if I said Rick was a bit of a pisshead back then. It’s why we got on so well.
What I’m trying to say is that No More Tours II was like being with family. And the fans seemed to be having as much fun as we were. Every night, I’d hear tens of thousands of ’em singing back the lyrics to everything from ‘Fairies Wear Boots’ to ‘Crazy Train’. Absolutely fucking magic, man.
But as always with me, the devil was only a few steps behind.
I’d been sober about five years at this point. I ain’t pulling that number out of my arse, I’ve got an app on my phone that tells me exactly how long it’s been. The chains had been broken, as far as I was concerned. But that’s what all addicts tell themselves. Then the voice of your addiction starts talking to you, and it sounds just like you, and you can’t tell the difference. It’s weird, having a disease that keeps telling you you don’t have a disease. Next thing you know, it’s talked you into having a little sip of this, or a little toot of that. Then you’re in prison, or broke, or dead, or your wife’s left you… or all of those things at the same time.
Being an addict’s like carrying around an unexploded bomb that you can never put down. Look at the Friends guy, Matthew Perry. He used to come to our house for AA meetings, or so my wife tells me. The funniest, most talented bloke. And he was trying so hard to stay on the right path. Then one day he listened to his addiction telling him it was okay to get loaded, and that was it – game over. I felt so sad when they said he’d been found in his hot tub, unresponsive, with ketamine in his system. He’d given everything he had to stay clean. But it wasn’t enough.
For me, it was around the time of the Black Sabbath album 13 – 2012, I suppose – when I last fell off the wagon. Why it happened, I can’t tell you, other than I was riding high and my ego was running the show. Buying myself a Ferrari 458 Italia with a wrap that made it look like a stealth bomber was the first sign of trouble. Then I got another one, but this time one of them drop-top California models in gunmetal grey. Fabulous cars, both of ’em. The only problem being I didn’t have a licence and had never learned to drive. But with the help of my assistant at the time, I soon started to get the hang of it… although I think I gave him a bit of PTSD along the way.
I don’t know exactly when it happened, but at some point I decided I could handle a drink. Probably a pint of Guinness. I dream about Guinness almost every night. I fucking love the stuff, it’s like drinking a glass of pudding. The problem is, one’s too many, and ten’s not enough. And the first thing I want after a Guinness is to go looking for some coke. Cocaine’s the alcoholic’s best friend, ’cos you can drink around the clock with it. Otherwise the booze would drop you to your knees. But of course when the coke wears off, you get the comedown, and the only way to handle the comedown is with some pills. Well… either that or more coke. But there’s only so long you can do that ’til you’re taking a very long nap.
Next thing I knew, we’d moved back to Buckinghamshire and I’d bought another rocket on wheels, this time an Audi R8. By then I could legally drive, ’cos I’d managed to pass my test in LA, which is a piece of piss compared with the test in England. All you’ve gotta do is drive around the block at this place in Hollywood and not crash into anything. They don’t even make you park, never mind do a hill start. It’s an absolute joke. They wouldn’t even know what a hill start is in LA, the cars don’t have clutch pedals.
So there I was, back in England with my California driving licence, blasting around in the R8, while Sharon was in LA doing her TV thing. And of course I lost control, started womanising… the whole thing. It got really ugly, really fast.
Eventually Sharon gets suspicious, calls my dear friend Billy Morrison – he’s the guitarist in Billy Idol’s band, and my AA sponsor – and he takes the overnight flight from LA to Heathrow, drives up to Buckinghamshire and finds a note from a drug dealer in High Wycombe in the R8.
To this day, I have absolutely no memory of ever going to High Wycombe – although it’s a fitting name for a place to go and buy coke. That’s the thing about being an addict, you live in two worlds. The drunk world and the sober world. And what happens in one is like a half-remembered dream in the other.
I break into a cold sweat and shudder when I think of what I did in the drunk world. It’s like someone walking over my grave. Flat out around a blind corner on a country lane in a Jaguar XJ12, with just enough room for a car and a half to pass. Trying to strangle Sharon, the woman I love, thinking she was the devil. Setting myself on fire more times than I can remember. Popping Klonopin pills like they were sweeties. Hitting a bloke in the face with a pint glass. He went to hospital, apparently, but was okay in the end. It’s so fucking easy to kill somebody in the drunk world. You push someone, hit someone, you’ve no idea what medical shit they’ve got going on, how they’re gonna fall, what they’ll hit on the way down. You’re temporarily insane. And when you’re behind the wheel, all it takes for a tragedy is a tractor, a cyclist, someone walking their dog.
I’ve fallen through roofs. Fallen off roofs. Woken up in my Range Rover in my driveway, icicles on my nose, jeans soaked through with piss. I’d been at my local, the Hand & Cleaver, which was only a hundred yards from my house at the time, Bullrush Cottage in Ranton Green, near Stafford. One time someone had to come out and put a sleeping bag over me, ’cos they couldn’t drag me out of the car and my lips were turning blue.
If a cat has nine lives, I must have thirty-three.
I had some great times in the drunk world, of course. And my drunk world friends were the funniest group of guys you could ever meet. Dave Tangye, the welder turned roadie turned personal assistant. Charlie Clapham the fruit and veg guy. Dennis McCarten, Barry Dunnery, Don McKye, Bobby Thomson, Chris Sedgwick – all in the music game, in one way or another. You knew you were part of the gang when you’d woken up after a night of heavy drinking to find one of your eyebrows missing. That moment when you looked in the mirror and realised you looked like absolute shit, but you couldn’t for the life of you understand why… it was just absolutely priceless, man. It’s thanks to those guys I know exactly how long it takes to grow one eyebrow back after it’s been shaved off. Three weeks. Which is longer than it sounds, believe me. The funniest of all those guys was my old friend Pete Mertons. He had the driest, sharpest wit of anyone I’ve ever met.
He’s dead now, God rest his soul. They all are. Throat cancer. Liver failure. Heart attacks. You name it.
Why I’m still here, I don’t know.
I really thought I’d beaten that shit. After Sharon busted me and sold all my cars – that one bender cost me north of half a million quid – I did the ‘ninety meetings in ninety days’ thing at the AA log cabin in West Hollywood. That’s literally what it is, a log cabin that’s been there since 1930-something. It used to be home of the Boy Scouts of America, or so I’m told. Baden-Powell would turn in his grave if he knew I’d been in there.
