Ozzy Osbourne Opens Up About the Bad Old Days in New Film

'I sometimes wonder, 'Is that really me? What the f--k was I smoking at the time?'' he tells Rolling Stone

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"He starts smearing shit all over the walls," Lee recalls in the film. "He's painting with it! And I thought, 'This is some next level shit. I'm not ready for this!' I'm cool with just taking a shit in the toilet."

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Osbourne's old antics might be funny if they hadn't often rendered him unconscious afterwards and unable to recall what he had done. He couldn't remember making music videos, and he couldn't remember his own children's birthdays (watch a clip from the movie below). Asked in the documentary what year his eldest daughter Jessica (from his first marriage) was born, he has to guess. "I think it was 1971? '72? I really don't know. I'll find out for you." Even more disturbing, he couldn't remember trying to strangle his wife Sharon in 1989 after drinking four bottles of vodka.

"When you're on the bottle, you don't realize you're as bad as you are," Osbourne told Rolling Stone. "We've all done something that makes us say, 'Did I do that?' I have all these old photographs of me in the Eighties, Nineties, and I can't remember taking them. I sometimes wonder, 'Is that really me? What the fuck was I smoking at the time?'"

In some of these photographs and video footage, Osbourne's face is so flaccid and expressionless that his Black Sabbath mates used to hold his smile in place for photo shoots. Eventually, they got tired of their wasted singer, and fired him.


"I'm not proud of all that," he said. "But it's been part of my journey."

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"The Osbournes was done at a strange time in our family," his son Jack, who produced the documentary, told Rolling Stone. "My dad isn't the same person he is today as he was back then."

Osbourne was eventually able to clean up – possibly for good – once his son got sober, too. "I don't drink. I don't do drugs. I don't smoke," he said of his current state. At long last, he's even been able to get his driver's license. "It's a kind of freedom," he said. "I couldn't drive before because I was fucked up. And I'm tired of being that crazy fucked-up person. It wasn't fun being fucked up all the time."


Watch Ozzy Osbourne Discuss the Possibility of a Black Sabbath Reunion

"I'm willing," Osbourne said. "But there are three other guys as well." And one of them – Butler – publicly ruled out a reunion in February. "It goes backwards and forwards. One day this, one day that. I'm up for it. But we'll see. If it's meant to happen, it'll happen."
