{‘People shrieked. Cried. Vomited’: Ten Extraordinary Life Lessons from the rock legend’s New Memoir

“The truth is, man,” ponders the late Ozzy Osbourne in his latest memoir. “Why would anybody want counsel from me?”

Indeed, he gave us War Pigs and countless other heavy metal anthems. But, by his personal confession, Osbourne was also a criminal, a deceiver and an substance abuser, who regularly risked his and others’ lives and bit the head off a bat. (To explain, he says, he thought it was a toy.)

Despite his mistakes and misdemeanours, however, Osbourne is portrayed positively in Last Rites: self-aware, rational and hilariously blunt, and not just by rock star standards.

Osbourne died in July aged 76, less than three weeks after taking the stage with the founding Black Sabbath. Like a dispatch from the afterlife, Last Rites documents his struggles privately with a neurological condition, high-stakes spinal surgery in 2019 and ongoing complications.

But it wasn’t all bad, Osbourne adds, characteristically self-effacing: he also voiced King Thrash in Trolls World Tour, and recorded a song with Post Malone.

Reflecting on his guiding principle as the “Prince of Darkness”, he writes: “I had 70 great years, which is a lot longer than I ever expected or likely deserved.” Here are 10 takeaways.

1. Where there’s a will, there’s a way

Osbourne credits his career to his dad, who purchased for him a 50-watt PA system on hire purchase for £250 – £2,000-3,000 in today’s money, and an “huge sum” for a factory-worker father-of-six in Birmingham.

Ozzy’s greatest regret was that he never thanked him: “Without that PA system, I’d would still be in Aston.”

Aged 19, and fresh out of prison (for burglary), Osbourne formed his first band: the Polka Tulk Blues Band, inspired by his mum’s favorite brand of talcum powder. But they were consistently metal, in spirit if not yet in name.

Tony Iommi, the guitarist and “de facto head” of Black Sabbath, lost the tips of two fingers in an industrial accident. Not to be dissuaded, “He just invented himself a set of new fingertips using an old Fairy Liquid bottle, then re-taught himself how to play,” Osbourne writes.

Later Ozzy displayed the same determination and resourcefulness to get high, cultivating relationships with every unscrupulous medical professional who’d write him a prescription. “At one point I had more friends who were dental anaesthesiologists than the average dental anaesthesiologist did.”

Two. Addiction knows no bounds

As a “top-tier” drug addict and alcoholic, Osbourne’s habits had a tendency to escalate. One pint of Guinness resulted in nine more, then cocaine, then pills; an effort to quit smoking ended with him smoking 30 cigars a day.

His only saving grace, Osbourne writes, was that he had “never, ever wanted to shoot up … Needles just freak me out, man.” Virtually everything else was fair game, narcotic or no.

Ozzy recounts being addicted to various drugs, of course, but also sex, fame, fast cars, Yorkshire Tea, English sweets, doodling, wordsearch books, “texting funny shit” to his mates and Peter Gabriel’s album So, which he listened to so much upon its release that his security guard was compelled to take stress leave.

At one point, Osbourne was eating so much ice-cream (vanilla and chocolate only, “sometimes strawberry”), he decided it would be more cost-effective to hire a chef to make it for him. “Big mistake … After a few weeks, I became at risk for diabetes.”

Even his better routines spiralled out of control. In Los Angeles, Osbourne got hooked on apples, and “none of that granny smith bullshit”: they had to be pink ladies, carefully chosen from the high-end LA grocer Erewhon. At his peak, Osbourne was eating 12 a night. “I guess I’m a recovered apple-a-holic now.”

3. Owning luxury cars doesn’t equal skill

Osbourne’s last bender was in 2012. “The first sign of trouble,” he writes, was when he purchased a Ferrari 458 Italia, then a second Ferrari 458 Italia, then an Audi R8 – despite not knowing how to drive.

He took the exam in LA: a “easy task”, Osbourne writes. “All you’ve gotta do is drive around the block at this place in Hollywood and not hit anything. They don’t even make you park, never mind do a hill start.”

But once back in Buckinghamshire, the Californian driving licence made him overconfident. He started driving under the influence to High Wycombe to buy coke. “To this day, I have no recollection of ever going to High Wycombe.”

Sharon – still in LA, making her TV Show The Talk – eventually got wind, sold all of his cars and got him into AA. “That one bender cost me north of half a million quid.”

4. Don’t attempt dangerous acts

In 2018, Ozzy was clean for half a decade, a few months off turning 70 and busy preparing for his final concerts, No More Tours II. (The first No More Tours tour, in the 90s, had been billed as his farewell “before I realised there’s only so much time you can spend in your back garden wearing wellies”.)

Life was good, as evinced by his hi-tech bed. Osbourne describes it as having “a “bigger brain than ChatGPT”, with two remotes for him and Sharon to each control their separate sides and “motors, wires and gear wheels”.

Ever since he was a boy – and through his marriage, much to Sharon’s displeasure – Osbourne had always taken to bed with a running jump. One night in 2018, he got up to use the bathroom before returning to bed with his usual stage-dive. This time, however, he hit the floor, hard.

“To this day, I don’t understand how the fuck I could have missed it … It’s like having a Sherman tank parked in the middle of the room.”

Five. Seek multiple views and check details

In 2003, while filming The Osbournes, Ozzy had wrecked his quad bike, broken his neck and spent eight days in a medically induced coma. The failed leap into bed, 15 years later, shifted the metal holding his shoulders and spine together, requiring intrusive surgery.

Though Osbourne was advised to get a second opinion about having surgery, he ended up going ahead with a specialist he dubbed “Dr No Socks … ’cos he didn’t wear any”. For years after the procedure, he struggled to recover and suffered serious illnesses such as sepsis and pneumonia.

Together with the Covid-19 pandemic, this caused postponement, then the cancellation, of No More Tours II, sparking online rumours of Osbourne’s death. At one point he was in intensive care. “I’d never taken so many drugs in my life, which was fucking saying something.”

Though Ozzy did not blame Dr No Socks, he regretted not getting a second opinion, he writes. “It’s hard to imagine it could have ended up any worse.”

Osbourne’s other big regret was not checking the small print of his first contract with Black Sabbath. Not comprehending the term “in perpetuity” lost the band their publishing rights, which were transferred to “a bloke called David Platz, who died in the nineties”, and since then his children.

Once Osbourne asked his accountant how much that mistake had cost him. The accountant replied reluctantly, and only after being pressed, that it was roughly £100m. “I had to go and sit down.”

6. Make your mark

Ozzy is conflicted about Black Sabbath’s sinister reputation, and his own as the “Prince of Darkness” (“not that I knew who the fuck John Milton was”).

His first musical love was Cliff Richard; later, he was awestruck meeting Phil Collins. Of the teenage girls who used to run out of Sabbath gigs screaming, he writes: “You’ve gotta remember, a lot more people went to church back then.”

Nonetheless, when asked by Sharon to “make an impression” at a big meeting with his American label in 1980, Osbourne’s response was to pull a live dove out of his jacket pocket, having stashed it there for a vaguely-thought-out stunt about peace – and bite its head off. “The place went absolutely fucking nuts. People shrieking. Crying. Vomiting.”

Osbourne adds that he was 36 hours into a 72-hour bender. “The poor dove was innocent,” but it did help with the promotional campaign for his solo album, Blizzard of Ozz. “People thought I was an absolute fucking lunatic.”

Decades later, when Covid hit, Osbourne was disturbed by the risks he’d run with the dove and then the bat in Des Moines (though, again – he thought it was a toy). “Of all the bullets I’ve ever avoided, not catching some deadly disease … has gotta be right up there.”

Seven. Choose your opening act carefully

For all its occultish stylings, Black Sabbath was “the kind of band that went on stage in our jeans and leather jackets”, Osbourne writes – “a male band … for male audiences”. They had difficulty when metal started to move toward spectacle.

Picking Kiss to open for their mid-70s tour was a mistake, Osbourne writes, remembering their Spandex jumpsuits, bared nipples, extravagant facepaint and “half a ton of explosives”. Sabbath bassist Geezer “almost had a heart attack” at Gene Simmons, 7ft tall in platforms, flashing his tongue.

Meanwhile, “The closest I got to a sexy album cover was me in a werewolf costume,” Osbourne writes. They thought they’d learned their lesson: “You wanted your support act to be good, but didn’t want to overshadow yourself. You wanted Status Quo, basically.”

Instead, for their 1978 tour, Sabbath wound up booking a obscure LA outfit called Van Halen. After he watched 20,000 jaws drop at Eddie Van Halen’s innovative performance of Eruption, Osbourne recalls “going back to our dressing room in silence and just sitting there, staring at the fucking wall”. Every night of the tour, Van Halen “just destroyed us”.

8. Find a spouse who accepts your identity

Osbourne met Sharon through her father, Don Arden, Black Sabbath’s original manager. When Paranoid came out, in 1970, she was about 18 and working as his receptionist.

Sharon’s first memory of Ozzy, he writes, was when he came into the office “with no shoes on”. His first memory of her was thinking, some time later, “Wow, what a attractive chick.”

They finally wed (after Osbourne’s divorce)