“I only hope they’re not as boring as last time I played with them,” Ozzy Osbourne chortles, "or the 20 minutes’ll seem like a lifetime!” He’s talking about the Black Sabbath Live Aid reunion, two days away as I write. He’s also talking about everything else from booze to bombs to Betty Ford to bodily emissions and Freddie Mercury’s plastic tits, but the Black Sabbath reunion is as good a place to start as any and saves you from one of my much-maligned intros.

“I can’t stop rock 7T roll. ”

Black Sabbath—Tony lommi, Bill Ward, Geezer Butler and Ozzy, the original cacophonous Heavy Metal doomlords, none of these Rainbow escapees and Purple pretenders and male models with doorknockers on their belts—are making a comeback for St. Bob Geldof’s African famine fund. (Not as strange as it might seem in light of the recent Weekly World News report of UFOs dropping in on Ethiopia and aliens from outer space doling out foodparcels to the starving millions!) Only for the St. Bob fund. There’s no reunion album or tour in the offing, “not as far as I know,’’ not even if offered $2 million apiece, Deep Purple-style, to beat their chests and stride across continents just like yesteryear. “I don’t need the money. I’m financially better off now than I ever was with Black Sabbath. In the past five years I’ve personally got kind of wealthy. Say if we did decide to get back together, what would happen to all my work if three months up the road I said, fuck this, I can’t stand this anymore, and it falls apart? I’ve lost my band and I’ve lost that band and I’m back to square one again...

“I think it’s going to be very strange, because I’m not a band member anymore, I’m a band leader, and there’s a difference. It would be nice,’’ Ozzy muses, “to do the Ethiopian thing with my own band, I think.’’

But thanks to a phone call from Geezer Butler’s wife to Ozzy’s wife, Sharon, it wasn’t to be. Sharon passed on Geezer’s big idea, “and I said, ‘totally out of the question. It would never work.’ Because their manager’s my father-in-law [Don Arden] and we don’t exactly hit it off these days.” But before he knew it there was an announcement on MTV and a press release and he couldn’t exactly back out, could he, without people calling him an uncharitable asshole (he’s not; there’s the $25,000 check he quietly handed over to the Leukemia Foundation this year, for one) and Ethiopian hit squads yelling outside his Mayfair home and upsetting the snooty neighbors. He downed a whole bottle of Scotch when he heard the announcement, which helped him put it in perspective. “It’s only 20 minutes. We’re going to do all the old favorites. And it’d be interesting to see the guys and play with them, to say the least.” Especially since he and Tony lommi hate each other’s guts? “No, I get on quite well with Tony. There was a period when we didn’t like each other and we were bad-rapping each other, but we all get a bit older and a lot of water’s gone under the bridge.” Will they all try to upstage each other then, egos on parade? “If Sabbath tries to upstage each other,” Ozzy laughs, “it’ll probably be the first time any of them have moved around onstage in the last 15 years! Sabbath, let’s face it, weren’t exactly hot rock ’n’ rollers; it was like cool, maaaan. It’d be good fun if they all started having a go. No, it’s 20 minutes, play your songs and say goodnight.”

Sharon pops in to say goodbye, kids in tow. A smart, funny woman, she’s been credited by many, including Ozzy, for making him a household name and for yanking him out of the bottomless pit of his own image that he fell into a while back. “My wife's swearing! She just told me to fuck off—put that in the article!’’ Ozzy’s up and ranting while Sharon gives him a wet kiss and both of us even wetter bottles of Perrier and Diet Coke. Dangerous stuff—goes right through you, especially goes right through Ozzy from all the things you read: pulling down his pants and fertilizing hotel-lobby flowerpots, pulling down his zip and washing Tony lommi’s girlfriend’s handbag, watering the Alamo, hosing down the streets of America, moisturizing Mrs. Osbourne...

“She’s a great woman—honestly, I love her so much. And she don’t mind a bit of piss now and again!” The moisture’s good for the complexion. “She should have the best-looking face in the world—hahahahaha!” The school of thought that reckons it’s all down to pottytraining as to whether you come out as a Cliff Richard or an Ozzy Osbourne would be having a field day.

“I’m glad I’m not a fucking Cliff Richard! It's the same with everything else—the bad man of rock gets the most publicity. Everybody likes to read about somebody else’s shit because it keeps everybody away from theirs.” In that case...“I don’t need any laxatives before I go onstage, I tell you! I’m in and out of the toilet for the last hour-and-a-half, and pacing. It’s like going in front of a firing squad.” And even more so without a final drink in his hand. Just before Rio, Ozzy spent six weeks in the Betty Ford dry-out clinic, “going to group therapy and getting analyzed” with the rest of the heavy drinkers: “office guys, construction workers, doctors, priests, ordinary people. I laid off the drink for a good three months. I wish I could have stuck it out, but in my lifestyle I can’t do it.

“It doesn’t cure you, all it does is educate you. And I know what I’m doing now—I think my fucking liver’s going to pack in. Look at David Byron, done himself in. It happens.

“I’ll tell you the truth, I still drink alcohol, but not as intensely. I was waking up in the morning trying just to get to the next day. When you’re on the road it’s OK, everything’s worked out for you, but when you stop and have to readjust back, you go fucking nuts. And I thought, wait a minute, I’m making pots and pots of dough, I’m making lots of fucking people happy, but I’m not happy myself. And the only thing that could get me away into a fantasy world was the drugs and the drink, and I was like a dog chasing his tail. I'd get to the end of the day and think, what the fuck was that all about? I couldn’t remember what I’d done.

“Although I drink alcohol in more of a controlled thing, I realize that I’m still an alcoholic, I’m not going to change. But now I stop for a few days at a time, because I know if I don’t I’ll soon go back to square one again. But it’s very difficult when you’re in this business and live this kind of lifestyle. I’m not making excuses, but when I tried to write music straight, I couldn’t fucking fantasize. A drink makes my head start dreaming up things.”

And on the road it helps quell the stillpresent stage fright.

“I don’t have booze in the dressing room, because that's fatal. Because I’m the worst offender. If the cocaine’s there or the booze is there I’m going to go for it. So I’ve eliminated that entirely.”

"I believe if it wasn’t for the bomb, we’d all be at war anyway. ”

There were reports that Sharon, his manager as well as his wife, topped that and eliminated drink, drugs and sex on the road for Ozzy, band and crew. True?

‘‘That’s a fucking impossibility!” Ozzy looks positively startled. ‘‘What, make them leave their dicks at home? I don’t give a fuck what anyone does, as long as they do the shows well. We have a rule of no drinks onstage because I think it’s bad to see these bands and these fucking Jack Daniels bottles. If I went to a show and they’re all stumbling around pissed, I’d think what the fuck have I bought a ticket for? I could go down the pub for free to see some jerk get drunk! I’ve done it, I’ve been onstage pissed out of my head, but it’s not fucking fair. It’s letting them down, and it’s letting yourself down to make yourself look like a fucking idiot.”

And if someone throws a bottle onstage, like they did at last year’s Donnington festival?

‘‘I thought, oh nice, someone’s thrown me a bottle of cider, and he put it in his mouth, you know, like he tends to do with things—doves, bats, bullets—‘‘and it was p/'ss!” Back to that again. ‘‘Still, it was a good flavor, about eight people’s piss,” says our urinary expert. Nice of them to have a whip-round. And no worse than the live chicken that ‘‘stank to high heaven” that the punters threw onstage in Rio, ‘‘yelling ‘Kill it! Kill it!’ I didn’t. It stunk.” That’s what happens when you’ve got a reputation nearing honorary Satanhood at the very least.

‘‘I couldn’t give a fuck what people think about me,” states Ozzy, ‘‘because no matter what I do or say they’ve already prejudged me. It amazes me that people still fucking believe what they read. If I became a born-again Christian, they wouldn’t believe it; they’d say, ‘Where’s the catch?”’ Are you one? “No," Ozzy chuckles, ‘‘I’m not a born-again Christian. I’m a born-again Hitler!”

He certainly likes his role as band leader.

‘‘Being in the driver’s seat, it’s a lot more relaxing for me. That’s the thing I enjoy about my own projects—that you don’t feel like you’re a cat on hot bricks all the time.” And having his name on it means he can change band members without drastically altering the band. Which he does. Frequently. Dons Airey and Costa have gone, drifted away or been punched on the nose, Tommy Aldridge, Bob Daisley, Carmine Appice, the list goes on. Only the late, great Randy Rhoads’s departure was unrequested.

‘‘It’s like if the shirt gets dirty on my back, I want to change my shirt—that’s how I feel about members of my band. It seems like I change them every week, but I don’t. Tommy and I are very good friends, but it was time to split—a change is as good as a rest when that spark starts to die. A young kid who wants to make an impression, he’ll fight like hell to do it. And then they’re ready to do their own thing. It’s like the Ozzy Osbourne school for rock ’n’ rollers! Someone said I’m like the old John Mayall of Heavy Metal,” except that Ozzy’s line-up’s all under 30, his 36-year-old self excluded; he doesn’t think much of old men.

‘‘I feel kind of proud,” he says, ‘‘that nine out of 10 people who’ve played with me have done good on their own—Brad Gillis with Night Ranger, Rudy Sarzo with Quiet Riot...” And what about Jake E. Lee? There’s rumors he’s leaving. ‘‘If he is, good luck to him, but he hasn’t spoken to me. He’s been working his balls off on this new album. Jake and I had written the album before the other two joined.”

The other two are Randy Castillo, onetime drummer in Tony lommi’s girlfriend Lita Ford’s band, who got the job even while auditioning with a broken foot; and Phil Soussan, an ex-Robin George Band bass-playing pin-up, found on Ozzy’s secretary’s back-doorstep after he’d flown in hundreds of potentials from the States. The album—which they were writing in Scotland, rehearsing in Brighton—will be out around Christmas and titled The Ultimate Sin.

“It gets harder and harder, it really does. ”

“The last album suffered because we ran out of time; I wasn’t really into that album because I was tired after touring on the road for three years. It was off-thetour, into-the-studio, do-the-album—you lose it after a while. I took my time with this one.

“It gets harder and harder, it really does. It’s like, I’ve sung everything now, done everything, my backwards-this and flange-that. I went to one producer who wanted to use a fucking machine for a drummer and I thought, forget it! I like to keep it as basic as I can as a band, because that’s the way rock ’n’ roll music started, and that’s the way it s got to continue, or in the end all I’ll need is a fucking button and me. If I hear another fucking machine drummer I'll go insane.’’ He does a good impersonation of same. “The only people it makes smile is a lot of these fucking business people. I’m a rock ’n’ roller.” And this will be a rock ’n’ roll album—no ballads this time, “Fuck that Barry Manilow shit!” even if the ballad “So Tired” gave him a rather handsome hit single.

“I ain’t going to start doing fucking Osmond numbers! I’m Ozzy, there’s no getting away from it. I did slightly cringe when I saw the video of ‘So Tired,’ because that was glamorous, it’s not me. I humored it up a little bit, all these fucking ballet dancers and everything, so it turned into a bit of a joke. But this one’s turning out real good.

“There’s a song called ‘Thank God For The Bomb,’ which could have been the title, which is going to wind up a lot of these anti-nuclear guys,” he chuckles. “But it’s not saying, I’m glad we’re going to blow ourselves up, it’s just I believe if it wasn’t for the bomb we’d all be at war anyway.

“I think The Ultimate Sin is a good concept, though, a very interesting title to work with. I mean, what is the ultimate sin?” What would you say? “Fucking a sheep or something?” he laughs. So that’s going to be on the album sleeve?

“I don’t know, nine out of 10 people I've said, draw me an album cover of the ultimate sin, they’ve come up with this fucking apple in the Garden of Eden, the original sin, but that’s obvious.”

We toss ideas around and come up with Reagan in black stockings “being whipped by Nancy and Margaret Thatcher smoking a joint. I don’t think that one will get passed!”

Anyway, you won’t see the tour till after the album comes out, and that’s not likely to be much before the end of the year, but when it happens, says Ozzy, “It will be the most elaborate show I’ve ever had—a futuristic thing or something.

“I can’t stop rock ’n’ roll. I’ve been off the road for a long time now and it’s driving me fucking nuts!”

He said not so long ago that he was going to give the whole thing up when he is 40 years old. He’s 37 this December; does he feel the same way still?

“I’ve changed my mind,” perks up Ozzy. “That was when I was depressed. Everyone has to have a goal to reach. If I’m still into it when I’m 40, I’ll be carrying on. I don’t think I could go on without doing a gig—it’s the highlight of my life.

“There’s never been a 60-year-old rock star,” he muses into the deep bubbles of the Perrier. “Maybe I’ll be the first.”