In a new interview with for Nick Reilly for Rolling Stone UK, Ozzy Osbourne chats about his life and 50-year career, and how his greatest dream is to perform just one more time. The following is an excerpt from the feature...
But even if Ozzy remains the defiant survivor who has weathered a storm of addictions and overdoses, it’s fair to say that a few setbacks in recent years have left some of the wider world wondering if Old Father Time is finally catching up with the Prince Of Darkness.
Earlier this year, he underwent a fourth bout of spinal surgery to remedy the damage inflicted by a fall in 2019 which dislodged the metal rods that were put into his body after a serious quad bike crash at his Buckinghamshire home in 2003.
“It’s really knocked me about,” he tells me. “The second surgery went drastically wrong and virtually left me crippled. I thought I’d be up and running after the second and third, but with the last one they put a fucking rod in my spine. They found a tumour in one of the vertebrae, so they had to dig all that out too. It’s pretty rough, man, and my balance is all fucked up.”
The events of recent years have taken a toll on his family, says Sharon Osbourne. “It’s been nearly five years of heartache, and at times I’ve just felt so helpless and so bad for Ozzy, to see him going through the pain. He’s gone through all these operations and the whole thing has felt like a nightmare. He hasn’t lost his sense of humour, but I look at my husband, and he’s here while everyone else is out on the road. This is the longest time he hasn’t ever worked for. Being at home for so long has been so foreign to him.”
At the same time though, Ozzy believes that some of the press reports have been somewhat wide of the mark. “I’m getting pissed off reading the papers, and they’re saying things like ‘Ozzy is fighting his last battle’. He’s sung his last ‘Paranoid’. You know, I don’t even think about Parkinson’s that much,” he says of the neurological condition he was officially diagnosed with in 2003.
“Every time I scratch my arse, they put it down to Parkinson’s!” To further prove the point, he outstretches his arms - showing very little signs of the tremors that affect the majority of people suffering from the condition.
Read the full feature at rollingstone.co.uk.
