I Thought Ozzy Osbourne Could Never Die

What I’ve Learned: Satan

this way out

as told to david katz

I prefer Mephistopheles. God calls me Satan.

These days, a lot of people overestimate what they can get for their souls. Frankly, it’s a buyer’s market.

I’m not gonna lie to you. Heaven is a nice place. All the harp music just made me snap.

First sit through a David Arquette movie, then talk to me about eternal suffering.

I generally tell people to bring lots of bottled water, a good pair of sunglasses, and plenty of SPF 45.

When you’re in hell, you have a horrible eternal thirst that can never, ever be quenched—but a cold, crisp Heineken comes close.

I used to try to cover my horns with a hat. I look back at old pictures and it’s like, what was I thinking?

Please, I don’t even own that pitchfork anymore!

I see you’re working on a Mac laptop. Myself, I’m a Windows guy, 100 percent.

Clean while you cook. I can’t stress that enough.

Have you heard the expression “Hell is other people”? This is true, especially if the other people are French.

The most evil person ever? Hmmm. Good question, good question. How’d God answer that one?

If you’re just talking about the numbers, then of course, Hitler. But start looking at the intangibles and Courtney Love emerges as a real contender.

If you think I’m bad, you should meet my agent.

Christianity is all about tolerance and sharing and hugs. Then the devil worshipers show up, and it’s like, “Check, please.” I can’t stand that kind of hypocrisy.

God’s an easy man to love but a hard guy to live with.

At least down here you can still smoke in bars.

You spend millions of eons cultivating serious fear and loathing—really working on your craft, you know? Then some copywriter at Ogilvy thinks it would be real clever to use a little devil to sell his ass ointment. Poof! There goes your credibility. As an artist, that can be frustrating.

I’m not taking all the credit, but honestly, can you name a better party snack than the deviled egg?

I don’t know if I’d use the term “role model,” but yeah, Mike Eisner is someone I look up to.

With the number of publicists we have down here, you’d think we’d have a better image.

I don’t care what he does next, I am not admitting Mike Tyson. That dude is twisted.

I hung a WELCOME KEITH RICHARDS banner down here every day for forty years. Eventually I just gave up.

When you’re the devil, women instantly suspect your motives.

Also, Asian restaurants assume you want everything “extra spicy.”

Truthfully, I can’t tell you exactly why it didn’t work out between me and Christina Aguilera. I will say this, though: There’s sinister, and then there’s just plain dirty.

Seriously, though, what the hell is brimstone?

Take it from a guy who spends a lot of time hovering around people’s ears, waxy buildup is a huge problem.

You think you’ve got it all figured out and then Christian rock comes along and messes with the boundaries.

I wouldn’t mind seeing Colin Farrell play me.

That whole “idle hands” thing really irks me. I mean, war, pestilence, reality television—that stuff doesn’t just happen by itself.

You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t,

I grew up in Aston, a neighborhood in Birmingham, right at the poverty line. I always felt shitty and intimidated by everyone. So my whole thing was to act crazy and make people laugh so they wouldn’t jump on me.

My problem is that by the time I understood a little bit about life, I was well on the way to fucking burnout.

Back in the day, it was, “If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.” Where in the fuck was San Francisco? And the only flowers we ever saw in Aston were on a coffin going to a cemetery.

When I heard “She Loves You,” my world went up like a shooting star. It was a divine experience. The planets changed. I used to fantasize that Paul McCartney would marry my sister.

Sorry, folks, it’s John, Paul, George, and Ringo, not Paul, John, George, and Ringo.

How did my dad handle my success in Black Sabbath? It was like someone winning the fucking lottery. It changed the family structure, because now everybody was looking for a handout.

If you’re going to do a cover of a song that has a great melody, don’t change the melody, for chrissakes.

I was married to another woman before Sharon, and I was a raving drug addict and an alcoholic and about as much good as an ashtray on a motorbike. My father was abusive to my mum, and I would slap my first wife around because I thought that’s what men have to do.

I can’t do anything in moderation. When I used to smoke, I smoked thirty Cohibas a day.

What makes a good day for me? It’s not picking up a drink or using drugs. At this point, today.

I’m dyslexic, I have attention-deficit disorder, and I’ve got something like a hereditary tremor. In this town, if you’ve got anything wrong with you and you don’t know what it is and you’re Ozzy Osbourne, you expect to lose quite a bit of money trying to find out what it is. With the last guy, I spent something in the region of $720,000 in one year.

People ask me, “Do you regret anything?” Sure, I have fucking regrets. But if I didn’t have my life the way it’s been or the way it’s gonna be, I’d be fucking with the big guy in the sky.

Sharon’s father was a gangster manager, so she’s a great businesswoman. I remember saying to her once, “What’s always amazed me is that you’ve been in the music business most of your life, but when you sing, you sound like a fucking dying wildebeest.” She said, “What’s always amazed me is how you’ve been in the music business most of your life and you don’t know the ass end of a contract.”

Nobody else in the world fucking sounds like me.

I tried to do with my son what my dad couldn’t do with me and teach him some things that were necessary. He still ended up using drugs. Jack is nineteen, and he’s been a year and a half clean and sober. I went to a group meeting with him. They’re all kids, and I said to them, “You guys are a miracle. At your age, to recognize you’ve got a problem and do something about it is unbelievable.” When I was their age, I was just getting in gear.

To be a liar, you’ve got to have a great memory, and I don’t have a memory.

If a family is prepared to have a camera crew living in their house twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, filming everything, any family is going to come up with good stuff. It’s all in the editors hitting the right buttons.

We are little ants on a giant anthill. And on TV, all the other ants see you.

After the first year of The Osbournes, I went out and did Ozzfest, and people would go, “What are you in town for?” I’d say, “I’m doing a show.” “What kind of show?” “A rock show.” And they’d go, “You do that as well?”

A few years ago, I asked Penelope Spheeris to go out and film the crowd during the concert. I had no idea what goes on during one of my concerts until I saw the film. It’s fucking unbelievable.

Sex with groupies? It’s like going into a pastry shop. Everybody says, “I’m not touching anything ’cause it will spoil me lunch.” But you’ve got to have a piece of chocolate or cream.

I’ve used heroin on one or two occasions, but I was always afraid to buy it on the street. It was easier to find a starstruck doctor to shoot me up with morphine.

You don’t accidentally become an asshole. It takes a bit of work.

I know what’s going to be on my tombstone, and there’s no getting around it: “Here lies Ozzy Osbourne, the ex-Black Sabbath singer who bit the head off a bat.”

It was my fate to be who I am and what I am. I’ve just been myself. And I’ve got a great manager.