{‘People yelled. Wept. Got sick’: Ten Incredible Life Lessons from the rock legend’s Latest Book

“The truth is, man,” muses the late Ozzy Osbourne in his new memoir. “Why would anyone want counsel from me?”

Indeed, he gave us War Pigs and so many other metal classics. But, by his personal confession, Osbourne was also a lawbreaker, a deceiver and an substance abuser, who often risked his and others’ lives and decapitated a bat. (In his defence, he claims, he believed it was a toy.)

Despite his mistakes and misdemeanours, however, Osbourne comes off well in Last Rites: self-aware, rational and savagely funny, and not just by rock star standards.

Osbourne passed away in July aged seventy-six, less than three weeks after performing with the original Black Sabbath. Like a dispatch from beyond the grave, Last Rites documents his struggles behind the scenes with a neurological condition, risky spinal surgery in 2019 and successive complications.

But it wasn’t all bad, Osbourne notes, typically modest: he also provided the voice for King Thrash in Trolls World Tour, and made a song with Post Malone.

Considering his golden rule as the “Prince of Darkness”, he states: “I had seven decades of amazing life, which is a lot longer than I thought possible or probably deserved.” Here are 10 takeaways.

One. Determination leads to success

Osbourne attributes his career to his dad, who bought him a sound equipment on installment plan for £250 – £2,000-3,000 in today’s money, and an “huge sum” for a blue-collar parent in Birmingham.

Ozzy’s greatest regret was that he never thanked him: “Without that PA system, I’d never have left Aston.”

At nineteen, and fresh out of prison (for burglary), Osbourne put together his first band: the Polka Tulk Blues Band, inspired by his mum’s preferred brand of talcum powder. But they were always metal, in essence if not yet in name.

Tony Iommi, the guitarist and “unofficial leader” of Black Sabbath, severed 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 resolve and enterprising spirit to get high, befriending 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. Anything can be addictive if you’re an addict

As a “world-class” drug addict and alcoholic, Osbourne’s habits had a tendency to intensify. One pint of Guinness resulted in nine more, then cocaine, then pills; an attempt 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.” More or less 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 listened to 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 decided it would be more cost-effective to hire a chef to make it for him. “Big mistake … After a few weeks, I became pre-diabetic.”

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 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. You can buy the Ferrari(s). It doesn’t mean you can drive

Osbourne’s last bender was in 2012. “The first sign of trouble,” he writes, was when he bought 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 “piece of piss”, Osbourne writes. “All you’ve gotta do is navigate 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 – found out, 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 try that stunt at home

In 2018, Ozzy was clean for half a decade, a few months off turning 70 and getting ready for his farewell tour, No More Tours II. (The first No More Tours tour, in the 90s, had been marketed 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 demonstrated by his advanced bed. Osbourne describes it as having “a “bigger brain than ChatGPT”, with two remotes for him and Sharon to each adjust 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 flying leap. One night in 2018, he got up to relieve himself before returning to bed with his usual dramatic entrance. This time, however, he landed on 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. Consult others and review contracts

In 2003, while filming The Osbournes, Ozzy had crashed his quad bike, broken his neck and spent eight days in a chemical coma. The failed stage-dive into bed, 15 years later, dislodged the metal holding his shoulders and spine together, requiring intrusive surgery.

Though Osbourne was advised to get a second opinion about having surgery, he wound up going ahead with a specialist he nicknamed “Dr No Socks … ’cos he didn’t wear any”. For years after the procedure, he had a difficult recovery 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 hold responsible 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 comprehending the term “in perpetuity” cost the band their publishing rights, which were signed over 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.”

Six. Be memorable

Ozzy is ambivalent 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 awestruck 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 take out a live dove out of his jacket pocket, having stashed it there for a vaguely-thought-out stunt about peace – and decapitate it. “The place went absolutely fucking nuts. People shrieking. Weeping. Vomiting.”

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

Decades later, when Covid hit, Osbourne was shaken 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.”

7. Choose your opening act carefully

For all its dark 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 move toward 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 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 ended up hiring a obscure 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 early 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)