{‘People yelled. Wept. Threw up’: Ten Remarkable Wisdom from the rock legend’s Latest Autobiography

“Listen up, man,” ponders the recently departed Ozzy Osbourne in his latest memoir. “Why would anybody want counsel from me?”

Yes, he gave us Iron Man and numerous other iconic rock songs. But, by his personal confession, Osbourne was also a lawbreaker, a deceiver and an substance abuser, who routinely risked his and others’ lives and bit the head off a bat. (To explain, he claims, he believed it was a toy.)

Despite his mistakes and wrongdoings, however, Osbourne comes off well in Last Rites: introspective, rational and hilariously blunt, and not just by celebrity standards.

Osbourne passed away in July aged seventy-six, less than three weeks after taking the stage with the original Black Sabbath. Like a dispatch from the afterlife, Last Rites chronicles his battles 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.

Considering his guiding principle as the “Prince of Darkness”, he writes: “I had seven decades of amazing life, which is a lot longer than I ever expected or likely deserved.” Below are 10 takeaways.

1. Persistence pays off

Osbourne attributes his career to his dad, who purchased for him a 50-watt PA system on installment plan for £250 – thousands of pounds in today’s money, and an “astronomical sum” for a factory-worker parent in Birmingham.

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

At nineteen, and recently released from prison (for burglary), Osbourne formed his first band: the Polka Tulk Blues Band, named after his mum’s preferred brand of talcum powder. But they were consistently metal, in spirit if not yet in name.

Tony Iommi, the guitarist and “unofficial leader” 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 retrained himself how to play,” Osbourne writes.

Later Ozzy showed the same resolve and resourcefulness to get high, befriending every crooked 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.”

2. Addiction knows no bounds

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

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

Ozzy describes being addicted to all manner of 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 played so much upon its release that his security guard was forced to take stress leave.

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

Even his healthier habits became excessive. 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 uber-expensive LA grocer Erewhon. At his peak, Osbourne was eating 12 a night. “I guess I’m a former apple-a-holic now.”

3. Purchasing power isn’t driving ability

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 never having learned to drive.

He sat his test in LA: a “easy task”, Osbourne writes. “All you’ve gotta do is navigate the block at this place in Hollywood and not crash into 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 absolutely no memory 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 set me back north of half a million quid.”

Four. 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 farewell tour, 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”.

From he was a boy – and through his marriage, much to Sharon’s displeasure – Osbourne had always leapt into bed with a running jump. One night in 2018, he got up to relieve himself before returning to bed with his usual dramatic entrance. 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, dislodged the metal holding his shoulders and spine together, requiring intrusive surgery.

Though Osbourne was recommended 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 forced the delay, 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 quite a statement.”

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 turned out any worse.”

Osbourne’s other major mistake was not checking the small print of his first contract with Black Sabbath. Not understanding 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 set him back. The accountant replied reluctantly, and only after being pressed, that it was roughly £100m. “I had to go and sit down.”

6. Be memorable

Ozzy is conflicted about Black Sabbath’s devilish 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 starstruck meeting Phil Collins. Of the teenage girls who used to flee 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 “stand out” 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 hidden it there for a poorly planned stunt about peace – and decapitate it. “The place went absolutely fucking nuts. People screaming. Crying. Vomiting.”

Osbourne adds that he was 36 hours into a 72-hour bender. “The poor dove didn’t deserve it,” 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 dodged, not catching some mutant virus … has gotta be right up there.”

7. Pick warm-up bands with care

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 struggled when metal started to shift towards spectacle.

Choosing 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, waggling his tongue.

Meanwhile, “The closest I got to a sexy album cover was me in a werewolf costume,” Osbourne writes. They thought they’d understood the issue: “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 ended up hiring a little-known LA outfit called Van Halen. After he watched 20,000 jaws drop at Eddie Van Halen’s futuristic 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 slaughtered us”.

Eight. Marry someone who makes you feel like Ozzy, not John

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 good-looking chick.”

They eventually married (after Osbourne’s divorce)