Kory Grow of Rolling Stone interviewed Ozzy Osbourne. Highlights from the interview appear below.
Rolling Stone: What’s the best part of success?
Ozzy: Not doing a job that you don’t really want to do. You can’t say what I do is a job – it’s a f–king gift from God.
Rolling Stone: How do you relax now?
Ozzy: Masturbate [laughs]. No, I have a room in my house where I paint. I’m just mixing colors. I’m not an artist by any sort, but I do designs and patterns and listen to Eighties music or watch a bit of TV. I’m obsessed with Game of Thrones, like 90 percent of the world is.
Rolling Stone: What music still moves you the most?
Ozzy: I like old music. I have things that turn me on from the Seventies, a bunch from the Eighties. You know, I can’t remember the fucking Nineties. I remember Waco and the Oklahoma bombing – but I can’t remember the Nineties. I thought the Eighties were pretty cool, and it was a lot more personal in the Seventies; there wasn’t that many bands about, compared to what it was the Eighties.
Rolling Stone: Who are your heroes?
Ozzy: I’d have to say the Beatles. They turned me on to wanting to be a rock & roll performer. And I like Mick Jagger as a frontman. We all owe him a certain amount of respect. He can still do it in his seventies.
Rolling Stone: You recently finished Black Sabbath’s “The End” Tour. What are your thoughts on retirement?
Ozzy: People around my age go, “I’m 65 now. I’m retired.” Then they f–king die. My father got a bit of cash from the job he had, did the garden and died. And I’m going, “That’s a bit of an anticlimax after working so many years in a factory.” I ain’t retiring. People still want to see me, so what’s there to retire from?
Rolling Stone: What did you learn from saying goodbye to Sabbath?
Ozzy: They’ve retired but I haven’t. It’s like I’m jumping off one boat onto another. People forget, I was with Sabbath from ’68 to ’79, but I’ve been on my own from ’79 ’til now. I’ve been on my own thing for a lot longer than when I was with Sabbath. I love what Sabbath did for me and I love what I did for Sabbath, but it’s not the be-all, end-all of my own whole career.
Rolling Stone: Since you’ve been solo since ’79, what have you learned about leadership?
Ozzy: I’m not so much into it; it’s my wife. Sharon would back me up or advise me on what to do, or what not to do, and I listened. Although Sharon came to me recently and said it wasn’t all her either. It must have been unnerving when I started biting the f–king head off this and that.
Rolling Stone: What did you learn from biting the heads of the bat and the dove?
Ozzy: That Ozzy’s a bit more than [those stories]. People remember Robin Hood and Jesse James and Bonnie and Clyde and Al Capone – they don’t remember people that did some good. It’s just folklore.
Rolling Stone: Your guitarist, Randy Rhoads, died in a plane crash while you were on tour in 1982. What did you learn about moving forward?
Ozzy: I felt somewhat responsible. If he wasn’t in my band, he would probably be alive. Also, at the same time, I thought if I had been awake, I know I would have been on the plane with him. So, it’s a weird feeling for me. It really f–ked me up for a long while. Sharon took it harder than anybody. She was the organizer of the band at that point. It was just one of them f–king things. It was a freak accident and all that. But Sharon said, “You’ve got to get back on the horse.” I said, “You must be f–king joking. Who’s gonna replace Randy? He’s unreplacable.” She says, “We’ve got to go.” I remember doing Madison Square Garden with this [guitarist] Bernie Tormé. It was such a surreal thing. It takes a while to get over something so traumatic.
Rolling Stone: You don’t play any instruments. What have you learned about making music with just your voice?
Ozzy: That’s one of my biggest regrets. I can play a little bit of harmonica, and that’s about it. But I have an ear for melody. I once talked to a writer and he said, “You can learn the piano, but you most probably will lose your natural instinct for melody.” And I said, “That’s too much of a gamble.” It’s been interesting, because I can’t communicate on a musical level with other musicians. I just like what’s in my head. Musicians tend to go, “Oh, I can transcribe whatever you write.” But they’ll make it their song and then it’s this f–king political side of it – “I wrote this, you wrote that.” Then Sharon gets pissed off and goes, “Hey, wait a minute. It was Ozzy’s idea,” or whatever.
Rolling Stone: Crazy Train is about the Cold War and nuclear bombs. Do you think about that?
Ozzy: When I was singing that on the weekend at some festival thing, I’m singing, “Heirs of a cold war/That’s what we’ve become.” I went, “Fuck me. It’s started.” I’m like, well, we ain’t in the Cold War anymore. Now we’ve got Donald Trump, which is something. You should be careful what you write about, when you do a song. I didn’t write those lyrics; the old bass player did. For the time, it was perfect. It’s interesting.
Rolling Stone: Gene Simmons has said that rock is dead. Do you agree?
Ozzy: Live, good rock music is not dead. But I think the record industry is really suffering now. There are only about two f–king record companies left. And when I went to the Grammys a couple of years ago, there’d be artists who’d go from a f–king laptop straight to the charts and release a record. It’s really a sad thing for me. … It’s just changed so much. I said to Sharon, “It’s like when vaudeville ended and f–king modern music began. We’re the history now.” And no matter what gimmick – what color album, vinyl, whatever, the fact of the matter is people don’t want it. Why should people buy records when they can download it. You can get anything now online. And at the same time, I don’t know how to turn the f–king light on the monitor.
Rolling Stone: Will you be making another record soon?
Ozzy: I would like to do another record. But it’s wasting money. Nobody’s buying. You don’t have to sell that many records anymore to get a Number One. Depending how many records you’ve sold. You can have 30 or 40 [laughs]. Nobody buys them.
Rolling Stone: What is it about the U.S. that made you want to move here?
Ozzy: I wouldn’t have survived as long as I have in England. America is a music capital for me. You could do well in Germany but to last 49 years in another country, I don’t know. I’m lucky.
Read more at Rolling Stone.
source: rollingstone.com
12 Responses
While I’m sure it was very difficult for Ozzy to immediately continue touring after Rhoads’ tragic death, Sharon knew that it was best for Ozzy to keep busy or Ozzy would have fallen deeper into drugs/alcohol over his grief. Still hard to believe it’s been 35 years since that terrible plane crash.
I hope Ozzy does make another album, particularly now that Zakk has returned to the band. It may not “pencil” for Ozzy to make one, but I know I would buy it!
I just got a first pressing 1974 quad version of Paranoid on vinyl…you oughta hear this thing..it’s huge, there’s tonalities and guitar picking I never heard before too.
I know everyone rags on Sharon, but she probably kept Ozzy alive after Randy’s death. If she wouldn’t have been there to keep pushing Ozzy to move forward, he may have overdosed or drank himself to death. I have read that Ozzy sometime suffers from severe depression, and it was especially bad after Randy’s death. She probably kept him alive.
I would definitely buy another Ozzy album, but I understand his point about the business end of it. These guys make next to nothing on record sales anymore, even bands like Ozzy, Iron Maiden, etc. Their money comes from touring, merchandise, etc. The big established bands can tour for years on their catalog, so what’s the point of putting out new music? Gene Simmons says the same thing. A lot of younger people think that they should be allowed to download music for free, which is what makes creating music such a financial loser! Sad but true!
People think they ought to get lots of things for free: healthcare, housing, education. LOL. I think it’s funny that Ozzy said “the former bass player.” I think Bob Daisley was a bit more important than the title of “former bass player.”
Totally agree, Nathan. The whole “entitlement” mindset that many folks have sure can mess it up for the rest of us. For me, buying the music was always my way of supporting the bands I loved. Buying the music, wearing the concert T-shirts, etc. made you part of the gang/ club. Hell, KISS made a boat load of cash off of this KISS Army member, back in the day!
Go figure. Most rockers talk about not remembering decades because they were so messed up.
Ozzy on the other hand can’t remember the decade he got clean in.
Ozzy’s last few solo albums have actually been really good. Would be interesting if he and Zakk did another one together.
For some reason I’ve been listening to Sabbath’s last album a lot lately…moreso than when it first came out. I’ve gotta admit it’s really growing on me all of a sudden. Iommi is still such a beast.