What I've Learned: Ozzy Osbourne

Ozzy Osbourne was 56 and living in Beverly Hills when he spoke to Esquire for its What I've Learned interview series. This story appeared in the January edition of Esquire. Osbourne died on July 22 at the age of 76.

I grew up in Aston, a neighborhood in Birmingham, right at the poverty line. I always felt shitty and intimidated by everyone. So my whole thing was to act crazy and make people laugh so they wouldn’t jump on me.

My problem is that by the time I understood a little bit about life, I was well on the way to fucking burnout.

Back in the day, it was, “If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.” Where in the fuck was San Francisco? And the only flowers we ever saw in Aston were on a coffin going to a cemetery.

When I heard “She Loves You,” my world went up like a shooting star. It was a divine experience. The planets changed. I used to fantasize that Paul McCartney would marry my sister.

Sorry, folks, it’s John, Paul, George, and Ringo, not Paul, John, George, and Ringo.

How did my dad handle my success in Black Sabbath? It was like someone winning the fucking lottery. It changed the family structure, because now everybody was looking for a handout.

Ozzy Osbourne performing in Detroit in 1986.

If you’re going to do a cover of a song that has a great melody, don’t change the melody, for chrissakes.

I was married to another woman before Sharon, and I was a raving drug addict and an alcoholic and about as much good as an ashtray on a motorbike. My father was abusive to my mum, and I would slap my first wife around because I thought that’s what men have to do.

I can’t do anything in moderation. When I used to smoke, I smoked thirty Cohibas a day.

What makes a good day for me? It’s not picking up a drink or using drugs. At this point, today.

I’m dyslexic, I have attention-deficit disorder, and I’ve got something like a hereditary tremor. In this town, if you’ve got anything wrong with you and you don’t know what it is and you’re Ozzy Osbourne, you expect to lose quite a bit of money trying to find out what it is. With the last guy, I spent something in the region of $720,000 in one year.

People ask me, “Do you regret anything?” Sure, I have fucking regrets. But if I didn’t have my life the way it’s been or the way it’s gonna be, I’d be fucking with the big guy in the sky.

Sharon’s father was a gangster manager, so she’s a great businesswoman. I remember saying to her once, “What’s always amazed me is that you’ve been in the music business most of your life, but when you sing, you sound like a fucking dying wildebeest.” She said, “What’s always amazed me is how you’ve been in the music business most of your life and you don’t know the ass end of a contract.”

Nobody else in the world fucking sounds like me.

I tried to do with my son what my dad couldn’t do with me and teach him some things that were necessary. He still ended up using drugs. Jack is nineteen, and he’s been a year and a half clean and sober. I went to a group meeting with him. They’re all kids, and I said to them, “You guys are a miracle. At your age, to recognize you’ve got a problem and do something about it is unbelievable.” When I was their age, I was just getting in gear.

To be a liar, you’ve got to have a great memory, and I don’t have a memory.

If a family is prepared to have a camera crew living in their house twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, filming everything, any family is going to come up with good stuff. It’s all in the editors hitting the right buttons.

We are little ants on a giant anthill. And on TV, all the other ants see you.

After the first year of The Osbournes, I went out and did Ozzfest, and people would go, “What are you in town for?” I’d say, “I’m doing a show.” “What kind of show?” “A rock show.” And they’d go, “You do that as well?”

Ozzy, Sharon, Jack, and Kelly in a promotional photo for the MTV show The Osbournes, which premiered in 2002 and introduced Ozzy to a new audience.

A few years ago, I asked Penelope Spheeris to go out and film the crowd during the concert. I had no idea what goes on during one of my concerts until I saw the film. It’s fucking unbelievable.

Sex with groupies? It’s like going into a pastry shop. Everybody says, “I’m not touching anything ’cause it will spoil me lunch.” But you’ve got to have a piece of chocolate or cream.

I’ve used heroin on one or two occasions, but I was always afraid to buy it on the street. It was easier to find a starstruck doctor to shoot me up with morphine.

You don’t accidentally become an asshole. It takes a bit of work.

I know what’s going to be on my tombstone, and there’s no getting around it: “Here lies Ozzy Osbourne, the ex-Black Sabbath singer who bit the head off a bat.”

It was my fate to be who I am and what I am. I’ve just been myself. And I’ve got a great manager.

Visit the library of Esquire What I've Learned interviews, which includes Liam Gallagher, Tom Selleck, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Elliot Page, Evel Knievel, Senator Mark Kelly, and many more.