I Am Ozzy

Born John Osbourne in 1948 in Aston, a working-class district of Birmingham, the future rock star grew up at 14 Lodge Road in a cramped terraced house with no indoor plumbing. His father Jack was a toolmaker; his mother Lillian worked at a factory. Six children shared tight quarters on meager wages. Ozzy, as he came to be known, was a deeply anxious child. Mental health conditions ran in the family: One grandmother was violent, and an aunt died by suicide. Ozzy himself would not learn of his dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) until his thirties.

School was miserable. Unable to read properly, he compensated by becoming the class clown. At Birchfield Road Secondary Modern, a sadistic teacher publicly beat students until the day young Ozzy snapped, hurling metal rods at the man's face. After leaving school at 15 with no qualifications, he cycled through dead-end jobs: plumber, industrial degreaser, car horn tuner, and slaughterhouse worker. When desperation drove him to burglary, he proved spectacularly inept, once leaving fingerprints from a thumbless glove. Unable to pay the resulting fine, he served six weeks in Winson Green, a notoriously brutal Victorian prison, and resolved never to return.

Everything changed when he bought the Beatles' second LP, With the Beatles. For the first time, he felt his life had meaning. His father took out a loan for a PA system, making Ozzy attractive to local bands. After stints in several unsuccessful groups, he met bassist Geezer Butler, guitarist Tony Iommi, and drummer Bill Ward. The four formed the Polka Tulk Blues Band, later renamed Earth, and began grinding through the gig circuit.

Tony briefly joined Jethro Tull but returned after four days, insisting the group write original material. When confusion with another band called Earth forced a name change, Geezer suggested "Black Sabbath," borrowed from a Boris Karloff film. Tony composed an ominous riff built on the tritone, a dissonant interval that medieval churches had banned. Geezer wrote lyrics about a figure in black coming to take a man to a lake of fire.

In January 1970, Black Sabbath signed with Philips Records. Their debut album, recorded in about 12 hours, was released on Friday, February 13. Critics savaged it, but it reached number eight in Britain and number 23 in America. During sessions for the follow-up, Tony improvised a riff, and within 20 minutes the band had written "Paranoid." The single reached number four in Britain and earned them a slot on Top of the Pops, the BBC's flagship music program.

Ozzy married Thelma Riley in 1971. He first tried cocaine in Denver that year and fell in love with it immediately. Drug use escalated with each album. For Vol. 4, the band rented a mansion in Bel Air where cocaine arrived twice daily. The toll was severe: Ozzy's voice was damaged, Bill contracted hepatitis, Geezer was hospitalized, and Tony collapsed from exhaustion. Domestic life at Bulrush Cottage in Staffordshire, purchased after the birth of daughter Jessica in 1972, descended into chaos that earned the house the nickname "Atrocity Cottage." Ozzy also hit Thelma, behavior he identifies as his greatest regret.

Financial ruin followed. Manager Patrick Meehan had been taking nearly everything: Individual bank accounts did not exist, checks bounced, and publishing rights had been sold in perpetuity. They fired Meehan, triggering years of lawsuits. Subsequent albums reflected a band in crisis. Ozzy's father died on January 20, 1978, of esophageal cancer. On April 27, 1979, Bill, sent by the others, told Ozzy he was fired from Black Sabbath. Ozzy views the decision as hypocritical but later concedes it gave him the push he needed.

After months of self-destructive isolation in a West Hollywood hotel, Sharon Arden, daughter of music mogul Don Arden, found Ozzy and offered to manage him. She proved transformative, eventually buying out all his contracts to secure his independence. Ozzy's creative rebirth centered on guitarist Randy Rhoads, a 22-year-old classically trained musician from the band Quiet Riot, hired on the spot after Ozzy heard him warm up. Their collaboration produced Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman, launching Ozzy's solo career. At a CBS Records meeting, Ozzy bit the head off a live dove to generate publicity, a stunt that became legendary.

On January 20, 1982, at a concert in Des Moines, Iowa, a fan threw what Ozzy assumed was a rubber bat onto the stage. He bit into it, only to discover it was real, and was rushed to the emergency room for rabies shots. On March 19, tragedy struck in Leesburg, Florida. Tour bus driver Andrew Aycock, high on cocaine, took a small plane without permission and buzzed the bus with Randy and wardrobe artist Rachel Youngblood aboard. The wing clipped the bus, and the plane crashed and exploded, killing Randy, Rachel, and Aycock. Ozzy wanted to quit, but Sharon insisted he continue. They married on July 4, 1982, in Hawaii.

Daughter Aimee arrived in 1983, and Ozzy entered the Betty Ford Center shortly after, shocked to discover it was a rehabilitation facility. He relapsed almost immediately. Kelly was born in 1984, Jack in 1985. A fan's suicide spawned a lawsuit over alleged subliminal messages in "Suicide Solution," dismissed on First Amendment grounds. On September 3, 1989, Ozzy blacked out and attempted to strangle Sharon. He woke in jail charged with attempted murder. Sharon dropped the charges, telling him the person he became when drunk had to disappear forever. The Crown Prosecution Service, England's state prosecuting authority, dropped the lesser assault charge as well.

No More Tears, released in 1991, Ozzy considers his best solo work in years. When the touring festival Lollapalooza rejected him as a "dinosaur," Sharon created Ozzfest in 1996, providing a platform for bands shut out of the mainstream circuit. She then proposed reuniting Black Sabbath as headliners. After years of estrangement, Ozzy and Tony reconciled, and the 1997 reunion concerts were captured on the live album Reunion.

His mother Lillian died in 2001. The following year, MTV launched The Osbournes, a reality show that became a cultural phenomenon, catapulting Ozzy to a level of fame that dwarfed his musical celebrity. But Sharon was diagnosed with colon cancer that had spread to her lymph nodes, giving her roughly a 33 percent chance of survival. Months of chemotherapy followed. Ozzy's son Jack developed an addiction to OxyContin, a prescription painkiller. When Ozzy demanded to know what Jack had ever lacked, Jack replied, "A father," forcing Ozzy to confront the cost of his addiction. Sharon's cancer eventually went into remission.

Dr. Allan Ropper at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Boston finally diagnosed Ozzy's tremor as Parkinsonian syndrome, an extremely rare genetic condition. On December 8, 2003, a quad bike accident broke his neck, collarbone, and eight ribs and punctured both lungs. He was placed in a medically induced coma for eight days. He woke to learn that "Changes," his duet with Kelly, had reached number one in the UK, his first chart-topping single in 33 years.

The memoir closes with Ozzy reflecting on his improbable survival. A doctor, reviewing decades of substance abuse, asks why he is still alive. Ozzy describes finally getting clean: quitting cigarettes, then alcohol, then narcotics, with the help of a sponsor, therapy, and Dr. Ropper's ongoing care. He maintains regular contact with all five children and four grandchildren, has weekly phone calls with his sister Jean, and credits Sharon with saving his life. The epitaph he imagines: "Ozzy Osbourne, born 1948. Died, whenever. He bit the head off a bat."