“Then I went chomp, spit. The dove’s head landed on the PR chick’s lap in a splatter of blood. To be honest with you, I was so pissed, it just tasted of Cointreau. Well, Cointreau and feathers. And a bit of beak.”
So goes an excerpt from the autobiography of Ozzy Osbourne, aptly titled I Am Ozzy (Grand Central Publishing). It's a tale of decadent excess on high, a relentless quest for personal ruin and the torment of everyone around him. But it also happens to be a hilariously touching portrayal of the Prince of Darkness that adds a sense of compassion to the car-crash wonderment of the man's life.
John Michael “Ozzy” Osbourne's story (born December 3, 1948) is familiar to most rock fans. He grew up in the heavily industrial city of Birmingham, England with little options besides the factory floor, or a life of crime. But with determined minds and a mile-wide wild streak, he and the other three members of Black Sabbath managed to rise above their surroundings to become one of the most popular bands in the world.
He'd conquered every musical mountain a man could dream of by age 25, leaving him with nothing to fill his time with but excess and destruction. Destruction of self, of those around him, of the concept of rock stardom itself. The band fired him in 1979, but after meeting Sharon Arden his career was revitalized, and with the help of young guitar phenomenon Randy Rhoads Ozzy wrote and recorded most of the material that would become Blizzard Of Ozz, and Diary Of A Madman. It was a career revival for the record books, but the underbelly, the Ron N' Roll toll, as it were, was a hideous monstrosity that ripped everything apart in his personal life.
Rhodes’ life was cut short in a stupid freak accident, which Ozzy dealt with by ingesting mountains of cocaine and doing things even the most indulgent rock star would go pale at: he executed an entire coop of chickens with a shotgun at point-blank range. He had to get a series of painful rabies shots after he bit the head off a bat, his most legendary stunt. He snorted lines of army ants with Motley Crue, and he’s bought loads of cocaine from a man who claimed to be an FDA agent. He pissed on the Alamo wearing his wife's nightgown.
Hilarious Rock tales abound, from tales of Bob Marley smoking the biggest joint Osbourne’s ever seen before taking the stage on Top of the Pops to the famously straightedge Frank Zappa trying to score drugs off Ozzy “for his bodyguard.” Hell, he even fed hash to a priest. We're taken through the creation of the wildly lucrative Ozzfest festival, as well as the terrible-idea debut of "The Osbournes" reality show in 2002, when things went absolutely insane for the Osbourne clan, and Ozzy was introduced to mainstream America as a bumbling, shuffling applesauce-brained patriarch.
I Am Ozzy is bluntly honest, and the host is apologetic to many, many people he wronged. There's rightful bragging, subtle preaching, but rife with a simmering dark side underneath it all: his uglier moments - hitting his spouses, cruelty to animals and more - have left him with severe regrets.
Filled with unbelievable charm, self-depreciating humor and more than a heaping dose of brutal truth, I Am Ozzy was a surprisingly compelling book. Maybe it’s naïve to think this autobiography wasn't ghostwritten, given that the man's barely able to complete a sentence by himself nowadays (or at least it seems), but for all the unbelievable things in the book, it's not hard to believe that Ozzy's done it all - and then some.
I AM OZZY: Updated Tour & Signing Events
February 18
BORDERS
6521 Las Vegas Blvd. South
Las Vegas, NV
6:30pm to 8:30pm
February 19
WARWICK’S
7812 Girard Avenue
La Jolla, CA
6:30pm – 8:30pm
February 20
CHANGING HANDS
6428 S. McClintock Drive
Tempe, AZ
3pm
February 21
BOOK PASSAGE
1 Ferry Building
San Francisco, CA
1:00pm – 3:00pm
February 26
BARNES & NOBLE
12405 N. Kendall Drive
Miami, FL
6:00pm – 8:00pm
February 27
BARNES & NOBLE
7700 West Northwest Hwy
Dallas, TX
2:00pm – 4:00pm
