{‘People screamed. Sobbed. Vomited’: 10 Extraordinary Wisdom from Ozzy Osbourne’s Latest Autobiography

“Listen up, man,” ponders the recently departed Ozzy Osbourne in his recently released memoir. “Why would anybody want guidance from me?”

Yes, he delivered War Pigs and so many other metal classics. But, by his own admission, Osbourne was also a criminal, a cheat and an substance abuser, who often risked his and others’ lives and bit the head off a bat. (To explain, he says, he thought it was a toy.)

For all his mistakes and misdemeanours, however, Osbourne comes off well in Last Rites: self-aware, rational and savagely funny, and not just by celebrity standards.

Osbourne died in July aged 76, less than three weeks after taking the stage with the founding Black Sabbath. As if a message from beyond the grave, Last Rites documents his struggles behind the scenes with Parkinson’s disease, high-stakes spinal surgery in 2019 and ongoing complications.

But it wasn’t entirely negative, Osbourne adds, typically self-effacing: he also provided the voice for King Thrash in Trolls World Tour, and recorded a song with Post Malone.

Reflecting on his golden rule as the “Prince of Darkness”, he writes: “I had 70 great years, which is a lot longer than I ever expected or likely deserved.” Below are 10 takeaways.

One. Persistence pays off

Osbourne credits his career to his dad, who bought him a 50-watt PA system on hire purchase for £250 – £2,000-3,000 in today’s money, and an “huge sum” for a factory-worker parent in Birmingham.

Ozzy’s greatest regret was that he failed to express gratitude: “Without that PA system, I’d would still be in Aston.”

At nineteen, and fresh out of prison (for burglary), Osbourne formed his first band: the Polka Tulk Blues Band, named after his mum’s favorite brand of talcum powder. But they were always metal, in spirit if not yet in name.

Tony Iommi, the guitarist and “de facto head” of Black Sabbath, lost the tips of two fingers in an workplace mishap. Undaunted, “He just invented himself a set of new fingertips using an old Fairy Liquid bottle, then retrained himself how to play,” Osbourne writes.

Later Ozzy showed the same determination and resourcefulness to get high, befriending every crooked medical professional who’d write him a prescription. “At one point I had a larger circle who were dental anaesthesiologists than the average dental anaesthesiologist did.”

Two. Any habit can spiral

As a “top-tier” drug addict and alcoholic, Osbourne’s habits had a tendency to escalate. One pint of Guinness resulted in nine more, then cocaine, then pills; an effort to quit smoking ended with him smoking 30 cigars a day.

His only saving grace, Osbourne writes, was that he had “never, ever wanted to shoot up … Needles just freak me out, man.” Virtually everything else was acceptable, narcotic or no.

Ozzy describes being addicted to all manner of drugs, of course, but also sex, fame, fast cars, Yorkshire Tea, English sweets, doodling, wordsearch books, “texting funny shit” to his mates and Peter Gabriel’s album So, which he played so much upon its release that his security guard was compelled to take stress leave.

At one point, Osbourne was eating so much ice-cream (vanilla and chocolate only, “sometimes strawberry”), he decided it would be more cost-effective to hire a chef to make it for him. “Big mistake … After a few weeks, I became pre-diabetic.”

Even his healthier habits spiralled out of control. In Los Angeles, Osbourne got addicted to apples, and “none of that granny smith bullshit”: they had to be pink ladies, carefully chosen from the high-end LA grocer Erewhon. At his peak, Osbourne was eating 12 a night. “I guess I’m a former apple-a-holic now.”

Three. You can buy the Ferrari(s). It doesn’t mean you can drive

Osbourne’s last bender was in 2012. “The first sign of trouble,” he writes, was when he bought a Ferrari 458 Italia, then a second Ferrari 458 Italia, then an Audi R8 – despite not knowing how to drive.

He took the exam in LA: a “easy task”, Osbourne writes. “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.”

But once back in Buckinghamshire, the Californian driving licence made him overconfident. He started driving under the influence to High Wycombe to buy coke. “To this day, I have absolutely no memory of ever going to High Wycombe.”

Sharon – still in LA, making her TV Show The Talk – eventually got wind, sold all of his cars and got him into AA. “That one bender set me back north of half a million quid.”

Four. Don’t attempt dangerous acts

In 2018, Ozzy was clean for half a decade, a few months off turning 70 and getting ready for his farewell tour, No More Tours II. (The first No More Tours tour, in the 90s, had been billed as his farewell “before I realised there’s only so much time you can spend in your back garden wearing wellies”.)

Life was good, as evinced by his hi-tech bed. Osbourne describes it as having “a “bigger brain than ChatGPT”, with two remotes for him and Sharon to each adjust their separate sides and “motors, wires and gear wheels”.

Ever since he was a boy – and through his marriage, much to Sharon’s displeasure – Osbourne had always leapt into bed with a running jump. One night in 2018, he got up to relieve himself before returning to bed with his usual stage-dive. This time, however, he landed on the floor, hard.

“To this day, I don’t understand how the fuck I could have missed it … It’s like having a Sherman tank parked in the middle of the room.”

Five. Always get a second opinion … and read the small print

In 2003, while filming The Osbournes, Ozzy had crashed his quad bike, broken his neck and spent eight days in a medically induced coma. The failed stage-dive into bed, 15 years later, shifted the metal holding his shoulders and spine together, requiring intrusive surgery.

Though Osbourne was recommended to get a second opinion about having surgery, he wound up going ahead with a specialist he dubbed “Dr No Socks … ’cos he didn’t wear any”. For years after the procedure, he had a difficult recovery and suffered major health issues such as sepsis and pneumonia.

Together with the Covid-19 pandemic, this forced the delay, then the cancellation, of No More Tours II, fueling online rumours of Osbourne’s death. At one point he was in intensive care. “I’d never taken so many drugs in my life, which was fucking saying something.”

Though Ozzy did not blame Dr No Socks, he regretted not getting a second opinion, he writes. “It’s hard to imagine it could have turned out any worse.”

Osbourne’s other major mistake was not checking the fine print of his first contract with Black Sabbath. Not understanding the term “in perpetuity” lost the band their publishing rights, which were transferred to “a bloke called David Platz, who died in the nineties”, and since then his children.

Once Osbourne asked his accountant how much that mistake had set him back. The accountant answered hesitantly, and only after being pressed, that it was roughly £100m. “I had to go and sit down.”

6. Be memorable

Ozzy is conflicted about Black Sabbath’s devilish reputation, and his own as the “Prince of Darkness” (“not that I knew who the fuck John Milton was”).

His first musical love was Cliff Richard; later, he was starstruck meeting Phil Collins. Of the teenage girls who used to flee of Sabbath gigs screaming, he writes: “You’ve gotta remember, a lot more people went to church back then.”

Nonetheless, when asked by Sharon to “stand out” at a big meeting with his American label in 1980, Osbourne’s response was to pull a live dove out of his jacket pocket, having stashed it there for a poorly planned stunt about peace – and bite its head off. “The place went completely insane. People shrieking. Weeping. Vomiting.”

Osbourne adds that he was 36 hours into a 72-hour bender. “The poor dove was innocent,” but it did help with the promotional campaign for his solo album, Blizzard of Ozz. “People thought I was an complete madman.”

Decades later, when Covid hit, Osbourne was shaken by the risks he’d run with the dove and then the bat in Des Moines (though, again – he thought it was a toy). “Of all the bullets I’ve ever avoided, not catching some deadly disease … has gotta be right up there.”

7. Choose your opening act carefully

For all its occultish stylings, Black Sabbath was “the kind of band that went on stage in our jeans and leather jackets”, Osbourne writes – “a male band … for male audiences”. They had difficulty when metal started to move toward spectacle.

Picking Kiss to open for their mid-70s tour was a mistake, Osbourne writes, remembering their Spandex jumpsuits, bared nipples, extravagant facepaint and “half a ton of explosives”. Sabbath bassist Geezer “almost had a heart attack” at Gene Simmons, 7ft tall in platforms, waggling his tongue.

Meanwhile, “The closest I got to a sexy album cover was me in a werewolf costume,” Osbourne writes. They thought they’d learned their lesson: “You wanted your support act to be good, but didn’t want to overshadow yourself. You wanted Status Quo, basically.”

Instead, for their 1978 tour, Sabbath ended up hiring a obscure LA outfit called Van Halen. After he watched 20,000 jaws drop at Eddie Van Halen’s futuristic performance of Eruption, Osbourne remembers “going back to our dressing room in silence and just sitting there, staring at the fucking wall”. Every night of the tour, Van Halen “just destroyed us”.

8. Choose a partner who embraces your true self

Osbourne met Sharon through her father, Don Arden, Black Sabbath’s original manager. When Paranoid came out, in 1970, she was about 18 and working as his receptionist.

Sharon’s first memory of Ozzy, he writes, was when he came into the office “with no shoes on”. His first memory of her was thinking, some time later, “Wow, what a good-looking chick.”

They eventually married (after Osbourne’s divorce)