Ozzy Osbourne will play his last ever show this summer in Birmingham on 5 July, reuniting the original Black Sabbath for the occasion.
But Ozzy might not have made it this far - as he admitted when he discussed his wild life in an interview with Q magazine.
“I was plain out-and-out crazy,” Ozzy said of his days as an alcoholic. “I’ve been arrested numerous times and I don’t remember much about any of them.
“It’s like when somebody told me they’d read the Mötley Crüe book [The Dirt] and they asked me, ‘Is it true that you snorted a line of ants?’ How do I fucking know?”
Ozzy talked about one incident when he might have died…
“There’s a girl who used to work for me and she was getting married in Hawaii and she asked me to give her away at the wedding. We were driving along the coast and she said to me, ‘Remember that cliff there - when you dived off it?’ I’d never believed in blackouts, but this made me think again.
“She said there was a forty-foot cliff and I’d dived off it into the ocean. Apparently I’d said it was a good day to fly!
“I couldn’t believe what she was saying. For one thing, I’m scared of heights. But she said it was true, and I had no recollection of it. That’s crazy shit.”
Ozzy reckoned that his alcoholism and drug use peaked after he was fired from Black Sabbath in 1979.
“When you get kicked out of a band like Black Sabbath and you make it on your own, you end up with a massive ego,” he said. “You really do think that your shit doesn’t stink. When the booze ands drugs really kicked in, my ego was out of control.”
He admitted that this was a low point in his life.
“I’d look in the mirror and I’d feel so pathetic,” he said. “So ashamed of myself. I couldn’t enjoy my success. I’d have to get fucked up.
“I’m from a working class family, and working class people, when they’ve done something worth celebrating, they go to the pub. And that’s what I did.”
He also praised his wife and manager Sharon for making him see sense.
“Drugs were making me miserable,” he said. “I’d get high and come straight back down again. Then do it all over again.
“Sharon said to me, ‘You see a kid in his twenties getting fucked up and you understand it, but when you see a guy in his fifties doing it, it’s pathetic.’
“That’s when it hit me,” Ozzy said. “That’s when I realised: this stuff isn’t working…”
