Ozzy Osbourne - Road Stories with Dave Lawrence - January 2023

By Dave Lawrence

Published January 27, 2023 at 5:00 PM HST

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Today we've got quite a Road Stories episode for you!

HPR All Things Considered Host Dave Lawrence welcomes among rock's most celebrated artists, a music pioneer whose significance and influence is hard to quantify: Ozzy Osbourne. The original voice of revolutionary rock group Black Sabbath, star of MTV's most-watched show, influence to untold musicians and a towering solo artist with massive album sales. Ozzy has sold more albums - 70 million - than Bonnie Raitt, Paul Simon and Robert Plant combined, with twelve million to spare, according to bestsellingalbums.org.

The Prince of Darkness himself, Ozzy joined us for a conversation in December just a few days after his 74th birthday. We're airing this a little more than a week before he heads to the Grammy Awards, with four nominations earned for his latest album,Patient Number 9. That album debuted at number one on the Billboard Top 200. But it also earned another distinction: it sent two of it's tracks to #1 on the rock radio charts: the title track, which features late guitarist Jeff Beck, and One of Those Days, featuring guitarist Eric Clapton. The official music videos for both are included below, after the enclosed transcript of the interview special, plus we've included the complete 30 minute+ interview and Dave's 2000 dressing room chat. We've included select live videos, too, and embedded the complete new album.

Ozzy Osbourne HPR Radio Interview Special - Transcript

Dave: Ozzy, how you doing?

Ozzy: I’m doing alright, actually.

Dave: A huge aloha and mahalo, my brother, it’s been 22 years since we’ve spoken, so a big thank you for this, and a gigantic, recent happy 74^th birthday!

Ozzy: Thank you! I don’t know how I made it to 74.

Dave: (laughs).

Ozzy: And, considering what I’ve been through, I don’t feel that bad. I’m still having a bit of difficulty walking, but I’m working on it.

Dave: I know you’re still having some issues walking, and I’ve read you’re really working on it. Back to your birthday; how did you celebrate turning 74?

Ozzy: Well, Saturday, we just had a lunch, my son came with his babies, my daughter came with her son; I had all my grandchildren, from this marriage.

Dave: Sort of an early start, if you will, to the gift-giving season, too, your birthday coming just before the holidays.

Ozzy: To be honest with you, I’m not big on Christmas. I’m one of these guys, if I’m milling about town, and there’s no specific day, I see something and I go ‘oh’, so and so would like that, and I buy it then.

Dave: You’re saying you’d rather give gifts more spontaneously, and not linked to… Christmas.

Ozzy: In England, for instance, Christmas, if you don’t drink, you’re f-ing boring.

Dave: (laughs).

Ozzy: Everyone gets hammered in England.

Dave: (laughs).

Ozzy: I was the f-ing ringleader of all that s-.

Dave: I know you were.

Album gatefold of 1982 album Speak of the Devil

Ozzy: But you know what I find, life isn’t so bad being straight.

Dave: Are you sober now?

Ozzy: (pause) Yeah… (pause) well, I’m nearly sober.

Dave: (laughs).

Ozzy: I use a little bit of marijuana, but nothing compared to what I used to.

Dave: Yep, you were a wild man, without question.

Ozzy: (laughing) … My drinking escapades are in history books (laughing).

Dave: Yeah (laughing), your escapades are… legendary my brother.

Ozzy: But I’ll tell you what’s happening to me now. Literally, nearly every week, somebody else I know dies.

Dave: Right.

Ozzy: When you’re younger, it’s once every f-ing blue moon, but now, my friends are few and far between; most of them are dead.

Dave: That’s heavy.

Ozzy: You know, my wife said to me recently, ‘Do you know what our most valuable asset is right now?’… She goes, ‘time’.

Dave: Time.

Ozzy: If I make it to a hundred, which I don’t think I will.

Dave: (laughs).

Ozzy: I really want to get back on stage. I really want to do some gigs.

Dave: Well, thinking about that-

Ozzy: What I’ve done, I’ve set myself a date; May, we decided on.

April 6, 1974
at California Jam pic.twitter.com/iH6CYjKn1G
— Ozzy Osbourne (@OzzyOsbourne) April 6, 2020

Dave: Try to hit the road with your tour in May…

Ozzy: That’s my goal. I have to start everything from scratch again… my physical training, my vocal work… it’s a great challenge to have.

Dave: Man, it’s a massive challenge. When you think of your overall health these days, and so many people concerned, you know my boss here, he just got diagnosed with ALS in the last couple years-

Ozzy: What’s that?

Dave: My boss, Jose, he got diagnosed with ALS.

Ozzy: What’s ALS?

Dave: ALS, it’s, ah, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, it’s a real heavy disease-

Ozzy: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave: That was the period you came out with your Parkinson’s diagnosis.

Ozzy: You know what, I mean… my Parkinson’s guy said that… my case… must be the mildest case-

Dave: Wow-

Ozzy: That he’s ever seen… but that’s no, uh, insurance; I could wake up tomorrow morning… and be paralyzed. I don’t think about it, cause I’m one of these guys that if I think about it, I’ll talk myself into having a seizure, you know?

Dave: (laughs) Right.

Ozzy: I mean, my son’s got MS; Jack’s got MS.

Dave: I lost my Mom to MS, and I had sort of forgotten about Jack having multiple sclerosis; I guess that came out a ways back, huh?

(dog barking)

Ozzy: Oh, he’s had MS for a while now.

(dogs barking)

Ozzy: Hold on one sec.

Dave: Sure.

(dogs barking)

Ozzy: (speaking off-mic to someone else) Can you do something with these f-ing dogs, I can’t hear what this guy’s saying?

(dogs barking)

Ozzy: I’m sorry, I’ve got about 15 dogs barking in the house-

Dave: (laughing) I can hear them.

Ozzy: I, I just get on with it, cause you know, things aren’t like… your boss got Lou Gehrig’s Disease, huh?

Dave: Right.

Ozzy: Parkinson’s… they said, ‘Oh, you’ve got Parkinson’s’… I knew about the word, but that’s about it, I didn’t know what it did-

Dave: hmmm…

Ozzy: What happens… I just don’t think about it.

Dave: You’ve got a great thing to concentrate on, my brother, which is this Patient Number 9, and there’s so many-

Ozzy: Yeah-

Dave: Catchy hooks.

Ozzy: Do you know what? Working with Andrew Watt… is so easy-

Dave: It’s the guy who produced the record-

Ozzy: It was effortless. And usually, by the end of an album I’m f-ing arguing with my wife, the record company or whatever…

Dave: (laughing) Right…

Ozzy: I just went and had fun with it, you know, it was great.

Dave: You bring this… couple of your peers… Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton-

Ozzy: And Andrew says, ‘You know who would be great on this track? Jeff Beck’; I said they’re going to think I’m a f-ing lunatic-

Dave: (laughs).

Ozzy: But it turned out that my business manager in England is also Jeff Beck’s manager-

Dave: Ah-

Ozzy: And I asked him to ask Jeff and Jeff said yeah! And I love his work.

Dave: Have you ever met Jeff Beck?

Ozzy: Yeah.

Dave: What’s a memory of meeting him?

Ozzy: Uh, I met him at a gig; he was alright.

Dave: I guess after you meet The Beatles, nothing’s a big deal.

Ozzy: Well, you’ve got to understand, when I met Paul McCartney I was like… duhhhhhh (laughing) you know? Biggest high that I had in my life.

Dave: (laughing).

Ozzy: My hero.

Dave: How about Eric Clapton? Now he’s on the record.

Ozzy: He’s a great guy. He was a really nice guy. I’m not one of these guys that wants to be out seen with this one and that one; I’m quite a private man, you know.

Dave: I know.

Ozzy: Andrew said, ‘Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck’… I thought they were going to say ‘Ozzy Osbourne, f- off’. And Jeff Beck was going, ‘If you don’t like it, I’ll play it again’.

Dave: Wow!

Ozzy: F-ing hell… I mean, I don’t like to be a nuisance to people.

Ozzy featured on the iconic cover of Black Sabbath's 1972 album, Volume Four.

Dave: Awh, man, and he wanted to do it. You know what’s weird about your record, and one of your houses? I was thinking of the title track of Patient Number 9, and it’s basically about mental health, and… when you think about your house in England, the Welder’s House-

Ozzy: Yeah, yeah…

Dave: Tell people what you know about the history of your property, cause it kind of has a weird connection to mental health.

Ozzy: Well, it’s been like a million years since I’ve lived there, and we’re having it refurbished right now.

Dave: Right, I know you haven’t lived there in a long time, and uh, and I did read you guys are putting a bunch of dough into it, working on it, had a bunch of leaks and stuff, but it’s a super old, historic building, even got it’s own Wikipedia Page, the Welder’s House.

Ozzy: Eh, during the war it was uh… uh… uh….

Dave: It was like a home for lunatics, St. Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics bought the place. It was also a convalescent home for women.

Ozzy: It’s just over 100 years old.

Dave: Were you aware that your house had that kind of connection to-

Ozzy: No I wasn’t, I wasn’t… uh… I found out these things as we went along.

Dave: After living in it, you became aware of some of it’s… fascinating history.

Ozzy: But you see, the thing in England, if it’s a ‘listed house’, what they call, you get different grades; grade one, two and three. If it’s a ‘listed one’ building, you can’t put like a modern, say uh, window in… you got to have it done the way it was done when it was built, you know, with the old methods. And there’s very few people that work doing that-

Dave: Right-

Ozzy: It’s a craft. So, when we are having things done to the house, you’ve got to keep it to the building code of the house when it was built, which is a royal pain in the butt, you know.

Album gatefold of the landmark 1970 Black Sabbath release "Paranoid".

Dave: Right (laughs). You know the other part of your story, before I wrap it up with you, cause you’ve been really generous today with your time; your entire career, from Sabbath on to today, has had you associated with the Cross, and, I’ve never heard you talk about what is your own personal religious background, how your mom and dad raised you.

Ozzy: Well, um, I was christened Protestant, which is… I don’t how you call that in America. I grew up in primarily a Catholic Protestant area.

Dave: uh-hm.

Ozzy: I never went to church. I don’t believe you got to go to church to be a good person. But doing something for your fellow man out of the blue is a good, like, for instance, I’ll very often see a homeless person and I’ll just give ‘em a bit of cash.

Dave: You’ve got a huge heart, and I appreciate your approach there; how were your marriage ceremonies conducted with Sharon, in terms of religious representation?

Ozzy: Well, we got married in Hawaii, it was the first time. Then we got married again at a Jewish wedding.

Dave: Right.

Ozzy: Then we got, ah, we went out and renewed the vows again. But, I think we had ceremonies… it was about four or five now.

Dave: Four or five ceremonies you’ve had?

Ozzy: Yeah, it’s twice by hobby (both laughing).

Dave: (laughing) Listen to you… and I’m guessing these days being sober, not celebrating quite the same way for, uh, each wedding ceremony.

Ozzy: No, cause Sharon, when the kids were little, I’d wake up to an empty house. But then that got old very quick, and, I don’t do much anymore.

Dave: Well, certainly better than in the old days, going on those epic benders…

Ozzy: I mean, I’d go for a drink on Monday and come back f-ing three weeks later, you know…

Dave: (laughing)…

Ozzy: Yeah… I don’t miss it, I know, I mean, the one thing that Sharon often says… It was always the drugs and booze, was one thing, but I never thought you’d stop smoking tobacco. Which I did.

Dave: Quitting cigarettes is significant, and uh, your final couple questions Ozzy… when did you get that nickname? Your name is John Michael.

Ozzy: It always was Ozzy. Like, at school they called me Ozzy.

Dave: When did you first put that on your hand? Your first tattoo was your name, right?

Ozzy: Oh, that was when I was about fifteen. My immediate family, my uh, sisters and brothers, call me John. But anybody ever, if I’m walking down the street, and someone was to go ‘John’, I wouldn’t stop.

Dave: Right (laughing). And what’s your most recent tattoo?

Ozzy: A bat on my hand.

Dave: Ah… appropriate for you; when did you get that?

Ozzy: At the end of Ordinary Man.

2000 album Ordinary Man — 2020 album Ordinary Man

Dave: OK, so the last couple years you got it.

Ozzy: Yeah, yeah.

Dave: And what an incredible life, to consider how fresh and current this Patient Number 9-

Ozzy: What I want to do now is to write another book. I’ve already done one, but I want to do another one.

Dave: Like, what’s the angle?

Ozzy: I don’t, I don’t know… um… cause when you get a ghost writer he asks you questions and you answer the questions… it’s kind of like an interview, really.

Dave: Wow, well you can always ask me, I’d be happy to help you work on your book… (laughing) in a heartbeat.

Ozzy: Alright, (speaking over each other).

Dave: Say again?

Ozzy: I’ll keep that in mind.

Dave: I appreciate it, and I really do hope you had fun talking today.

Ozzy: Yeah it was good, it was good; where are, where are you now in Hawaii?

Dave: I’m in Honolulu.

Ozzy: I was just there about two or three months ago.

Dave: Where were you?

Ozzy: (speaking off-mic to someone else) Where were we in Hawaii?

Ozzy: Not Maui… Not Honolulu… I can’t remember, one of the islands, we had a good time.

Dave: (laughing). What island did you actually get married on?

Ozzy: We got married on Maui… 40 years ago. What I used to do is we’d do a tour, play Honolulu, which would pay for the trip.

Dave: Makes sense; you play Honolulu, and then that pays for, uh-

Ozzy: Kona; that was the name of the island we went to.

Dave: Oh, this recent time, Kona?

Ozzy: Yeah.

Dave: Right on, very cool place. It is Ozzy Osbourne, what a pleasure today. Patient Number 9, new album that hit number one, guest stars Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton, two number one hits on the radio, four… (laughs) Grammy nominations… how you’re going to top this, my brother, I have no idea.

Ozzy: You know what? It’s kind of like a problem because…

Dave: (laughing).

Ozzy: I’ve got to do something different… something, uh, different, I haven’t really thought about it, but I’m sure something will work out.

Dave: No doubt, no doubt. Stay safe, Ozzy.

Ozzy: Alright. God Bless, take care.