OZZY DROPS THE BOMB

OZZY DROPS THE BOMB

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Sylvie Simmons

Some people collect plastic airline coffee stirrers. Ozzy Osbourne collects scandals. Or rather scandal—unlike the South East London garbage service—collects Ozzy, on a regular basis.

New record, new scandal, here it comes, sniffing at his heels. Sometimes it stops to take a bite, sometimes it pisses up his leg, most times it just trundles off to a corner and chases its own tail till we get tired of looking at it and switch the channel. But it keeps on coming around: here’s Ozzy, biting the heads off doves, bats, bullets, generally putting things in his mouth that had better off not be there and which tend to come out the other end —urinating on the Alamo, defecating in hotel flowerpots, oh that Ozzy!

The latest is something about his records driving Californians to suicide. More people have offed themselves at the mere threat of listening to the last Loverboy album. But it’s Ozzy who attracts this sort of scandal. Always has. Probably always will. And the daft thing is this man’s about as undemonic as you get. Hell, Ozzy loves us all! Look at the man onstage: there he is, doing that awkward clockwork-monkey-bent-over-bashingimaginary-cymbals bit, faithfully reproduced by his followers, peace-singing “Godbless”-ing, you can seriously consider him Satanic? Dangerous? A threat to women, children and national monuments?

Ozzy’s a clown—says so himself, “All I am is a showbiz rock ’n’ roll clown,” there you go—and you can laugh when he’s pissing in Tony lommi’s girlfriend’s purse, piss yourself when he falls on his face, vicariously enjoy him doing all the things most of us are too sensible or scared to do, turn him off when you’ve had enough, and he’ll still carry on being Ozzy. A genial, well-meaning, hypochondriac metal star who’s let his publicists get far more carried away than his legendary drinking.

Not that he’s drinking much these days. The man who walks into the front room of a glorious house in Hampstead at a time of day when he used to be in bed negotiating deals between God and his hangover, looks fit, bright and happy. Of course it doesn’t hurt that his latest album, The Ultimate Sin, is selling better and faster than anything he’s ever done, his tour is selling out, and his new band—featuring hardy perennial Jake E. Lee on guitar, joined by Robih Georgerefugee Phil Soussan on bass and ex-Lita Ford Band drummer Randy Castillo—is “one of the liveliest and best-looking bands I’ve had in a long time.

“I think the band has got a revitalized sort of energy from somewhere,” says Ozzy over a nice cup of tea. “Phil and Randy are very positive people. When I had Don Airey it was always like, ‘Oh, we’re not going to pull it off, it’s shaky,’ and you don’t want a situation where people are forever putting a downer on things. Because if they say something like that long enough, you think maybe they’re right. The funny thing is, if you think positive, positive things start to happen. I’m actually smiling onstage for a change. I’m enjoying this tour for the first time in a long time, because towards the end of the Bark At The Moon tour I was really miserable.”

I remember. He called himself “the loneliest man in the world” back then, kicking himself towards the edge.

He nods. “I was fighting my drug addiction. Now I don’t take drugs, apart from the occasional drink of alcohol, and I’m trying to beat that one as well. I was miserable! Because I was drugged out of my head all the time. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. It was a physical and mental torture.

“In the past, if I had a day off like this I’d get up and go straight to the drinks cupboard and get smashed all day.” And now a cup of tea will do the trick?

“Well, I’m training hard now most days, when I can get around to it. All last week I was running three miles a day, and I’ve got this karate expert”—actually Jake’s Jeet Kune Do trainer—“on the road with me.”

So now he can chop the heads off animals?

“Yeah! Actually, it’s very good for you. Everything becomes a pain in the arse when you’re suffering from yesterday’s drunk. So now after a show I’ll have a couple of beers and that’s about it. I want to quit drinking entirely. Part of the problem is that just as in Jacques Cousteau’s business, where water comes with the territory, ditto for rock ’n’ roll and drink. It’s my excuse anyway.” Have you ever tried reviewing a Steve Perry solo project, without a drink? Ozzy has the same problem writing songs. “I’ve tried. Nothing comes out. If I try and write straight, I can’t fantasize. I need a drink to get the imagination working.” So is that why this album took so long?

“The time was actually spent looking for musicians. As we were looking, Jake and I were continuously writing little bits and pieces and trying to put it together.”

He and Jake seem a good team. “Yes,” he nods, “we’re a very good team—today. You never know how things are going to change in the future, so I don’t like to look on anyone or anything as permanent except me. Because if the worst happens and you break up, you get shocked. So I sort of have to take it with an open mind: anyone can come, anyone can go.” And they usually seem to go. Is it something personal?

“Black Sabbath had the same members all the time and that was boring. That was the thing with Sabbath—we all wanted to split, but we didn’t know where to split, how to split. / certainly didn’t know how to audition people. What do I know about good guitar players or drummers or whatever? I just sing.

“All I want in this band is a certain amount of technique and a certain attitude. I don’t want cocky people, egoedout people. I don’t want ‘rock-stars.’ I want a bit of spark.”

So he got a band and he made an album. Got a producer, too, this time— his wife, manager and general all-roundsorter-outer Sharon’s idea. “I said, ‘I know what’s going to happen, at the end of the day I’m going to end up getting a producer that I hate and end up doing it myself, but if you get one I’ll do it.’” So she did. And he didn’t like him too much, but he didn’t end up doing it himself, and "it was the easiest album I think I’ve ever done in my life. When I was doing it all myself I had the pressure of, ‘Is that what you sound like? Is it mixed right?’ And this time Ron Nevison said, ‘Look, all you’ve got to do is sing; I’ll tell you when I think you’ve sung it good enough,’ and that’s really all I had to do. At the end of it I thought, ‘Why am I feeling so relaxed and not screaming up the walls like I’m usually doing?’ I don’t even feel like I made a record.”

So we get to talking about individual songs, which is what you do in this interviewing lark and seeing as two of them are about the Bomb (which is, incidentally, what Ozzy considers the Ultimate Sin; as for other sins, he beams but says he doesn’t indulge, what with being a Happily Married Man and that) we get into that for a bit, how if you’ve got kids the prospect doesn’t fill you with joy exactly. He hasn’t and won’t come out publicly antinuke. But in recent weeks he’s been noisily anti-drug. The Yorkshire Police popped backstage at a gig to ask him to do some anti-heroin commercials. Which might sound a bit strange in light of his reputation, a bit like Motley Crue’s antidrink crusade. A case of don’t-do-as-l-dodo-as-l-tell-you?

“I know a lot of people who’ve taken cocaine, including myself, a lot of people who’ve smoked dope, including myself, a lot of people who’ve taken a lot of things—but I’ve never really taken heroin, only once or twice. Everybody that I know that’s taken heroin is either a mental case or dead. Or they end up zombies. Even if you stop taking it, you never return to the person you were before; you end up screwed up for the rest of your life. I think it’s terrible that young kids at school are getting junked out. I did Hammersmith the other night, and they were carrying these kids out who were sniffing glue! It’s getting ridiculous.

“I’m not trying to be a goody-goody two-shoes. I suppose sincb I’ve got a family, I wake up to the fact that it ain’t clever. And if Chief Inspector Jones gets up there and says, ‘You shouldn’t take heroin’ they’d go, ‘Oh fuck you!’ And I thought, if / did it maybe I could save someone’s life. Heroin is awful. Look what happened to poor old Phil Lynott.

“So many rock stars have died now, look at them! I’m not saying I’m any better than Phil Lynott or Keith Moon—I’m luckier, that’s all.”

But more bored? Worse still, more boring when he’s ceased to be the lovable Metal Monster?

“You don’t have to take a drug to be a monster! It’s pathetic what I was like. On that Bark At The Moon tour I was insane. I didn’t know what I was doing. I couldn’t remember anything. Talk about blackouts! And the most horrific thoughts would come to mind. If a cop came up to me and said ‘I’m arresting you for the murder of so-and-so,’ I wouldn’t know. And I said no, this has got to stop, I’m losing control here. It’s one thing getting pissed and falling on the floor, but when you don t have a clue what you did yesterday...I’d have had to give my wife a video camera to follow me around and show me what I was up to!

“It’s all no good really, none of it, not even booze. I’m going to go back to the A.A. meetings and stop for about a month and then keep slipping back in, but eventually I know I’ll come to terms with it one way or another. But it ain’t an easy battle.

“When I first got involved with rock ’n’ roll, I thought the equipment was a bag of drugs, a crazy attitude and a wild party at the end of the gig. That’s honestly what I believed rock ’n’ roll was.” And it’s not? “And it’s not. I don’t blame rock ’n’ roll for my addiction—it’s my fault, and I’ve got to fight it. But it’d be good if we could all do just one gig, like the Band Aid thing, and build a proper clinic for them, like the Betty Ford Center,” where Ozzy dried out last year.

“That place really opened my eyes. I was so embarrassed to go and get help.

I said, ‘Me? Ozzy International blah-blah? I’ve got to tell them I’m sick?’ But I couldn’t fight it any more. I did my 15 rounds and I couldn’t go out for a 16th. It was killing me, and I didn’t want to die.”

Which brings us to the lawsuit the father of a California teenager has taken out against Ozzy, blaming him for the suicide of his son after apparently listening to the song “Suicide Solution.” Lawsuits being what they are, Ozzy asked me to be careful with what I printed from his long, impassioned answer.

“First of all I feel very, very sorry for the boy’s death. It was never my intention to write a song to cause anyone harm. But I can’t really feel guilty about anything because it’s absurd—it’s like you leaving me now, getting in your car, getting killed in a car wreck and blaming me because you came and visited me to do an interview...

“If these people were to actually read the lyrics to ‘Suicide Solution’ they would realize it couldn’t be further away if it tried.

“It was written about Bon Scott,” AC/DC’s late singer, “who drank himself to death. The word ‘solution’ doesn’t mean ‘way out,’ it’s ‘solution’ meaning ‘liquid,’ alcohol. Wine is fine but whisky’s quicker, suicide is slow with liquor—and I’ve lived that life for years, and I know what I’m talking about! Most alcoholics at the end of the day commit suicide because they can’t find a way out...”

So we talk about how you don’t hear a record and blow out your brains, how it’s a long build-up of depression, then both declare ourselves to be far from experts on suicide and, treading on dangerous legal ground anyway, stop with Ozzy’s comment, ‘‘Before they,” meaning those people in general who’ve been appearing on your TV screens a lot of late, ‘‘start getting on rock ’n’ roll’s case, they should start clearing up a few more things, like the sale of firearms in America. There’s far greater issues in America, in the world, than rock ’n’ roll. All we’re trying to do is entertain people.

I don’t go out there to do anything Other than make people smile.” The showbiz rock ’n’ roll clown. ‘‘It is,” he says, ‘‘a dreadful case of misinterpretation.”

And was it misinterpretation when topname producers turned down the chance to work with Ozzy? ‘‘No, no, no. When I drank—everyone in the world who drinks makes a complete fool of themselves sometimes. Anyone who reads this article has a skeleton in the closet somewhere; there’s always something in your past you don’t want brought up again. But unfortunately when / get goofed out, it gets in the press. It has its advantages,” he says of the publicity, ‘‘but it also has its disadvantages. The only question I ever get asked these days is, ‘What do bats taste like?’ ‘Did you really piss up the Alamo?’ That’s history, that happened five years ago, and that’s the legacy

III am a showbiz ck W roll own"

I’ve got to drag around for the rest of my life! I can’t complain, but it’s getting to wear a bit thin now.”

Black Sabbath’s another bit of history he’s always getting asked about. ‘‘Sabbath is like someone coming up and going, ‘Remember me? We were in school together when we were 14.’ ” And yet well before the Live Aid reunion, Ozzy got together with Tony lommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward in a secret meeting to discuss getting back together again properly. “Nothing came of it,” he tells me, and knowing the management situation— his manager-wife Sharon is the daughter of Sabbath’s manager Don Arden, and they’re not exactly playing Transatlantic Happy Families—nothing will. “You’re fighting a never-ending battle even before you get out the door.

“In fact the Live Aid thing was really good in the respect that it settled a few little unanswered questions in my head.

I thought, ‘Well, I am different and my attitude to it is totally different to what it was. I’m miles up the road.

“I think it’s so sad they’re calling it Black Sabbath, because it’s not remotely like Black Sabbath. It’s a damn good album as a Tony lommi solo project; he should have had the courage to just use his name and salvage what was left of the Sabbath memory.

“Maybe one day when I feel like it’s all gone, everybody’ll come back and do an album or whatever. But at the present time it’s totally out of the question.” He’s having, he says, too good of a time.

So what inspires him most at the moment?

“My wife, Sharon. She’s golden.” Sharon’s the one who sent him to Betty Ford (she says because it was ruining her sex life, him always falling over on the stairs on the way up to bed!) and she’s the one who sends him out on the stage when hypochondria or exhaustion or his legendary nerves keep him huddled in the corner of the dressing-room. “I’ll say ‘Sharon, I’ve got a bad throat,’ and she says, ‘Look, just go up there and have fun. The kids will carry it.’ And the kids keep me going. The whole thing keeps me going. I’ve really been having fun on these gigs, I think this album is one of the best I’ve ever done, and I’m even enjoying not getting high anymore!” ®