I Am Ozzy (34 page)

I'd spoken to Tony only once or twice since Live Aid. Although we had done a gig together, of sorts, in Orange County at the end of the
No More Tours
tour in 1992. I can't remember if it was me who called him first, or the other way around, but once the word got out about a reunion, we had a few 'big talks' on the phone. During one of them I finally asked him why Black Sabbath had fired me. He told me what I already knew - that I'd been slagging off the band in the press, and that my drinking had become unmanageable - but for the first time I actually got it. I ain't saying it was right, but I got it, y'know? And I could hardly complain, because if Tony hadn't kicked me out, where would I be now?

That summer, we went out on the road.
At first, it wasn't the full original line-up: it was just me, Tony and Geezer, with Mike Bordin from Faith No More standing in on drums for Bill. I honestly don't know why we couldn't get Bill to play those first few shows. But I was told he'd had a lot of health issues, including a bad case of agoraphobia, so maybe the rest of us were trying to protect him from the stress. By the end of the year, though, he was back with us to do two gigs at the Birmingham NEC, which were fucking phenomenal. Even though I've always played Sabbath songs on stage, it's never as good as when the four of us do them. Today, when I listen to the recordings of those shows - we put them out the following year on an album called
Reunion
- I still get chills. We didn't do overdubs or anything. When you put that album on, it sounds
exactly
as it did on those two nights.
Everything went so well that we decided to have a go at making a new album together, which would have been our first since
Never Say Die
in 1978. So off we went to Rockfield Studios in South Wales - where I'd quit the band twenty years before.
At first, it all went smoothly enough. We did a couple of bonus songs for the
Reunion
album - 'Psycho Man' and 'Selling My Soul'. But then the practical jokes started again.
Or so I thought, anyway.
'Ozzy,' said Bill, after we'd finished the first rehearsal, 'can you give me a massage? My hand's hurting.'
Here we go, I thought.
'Seriously, Ozzy.
Argh
, my hand.'
I just rolled my eyes and walked out of the room.
The next thing I knew, this ambulance was coming up the driveway with all its lights flashing. It skidded to a halt in front of the studio, then four paramedics jumped out and ran into the studio. About a minute later they came out again with Bill on a stretcher. I still thought it was a joke. We'd relentlessly been giving Bill shit for his dodgy health, so we thought he was just getting his own back with a wind-up. Part of me was quite impressed: he was putting so much effort into it. Tony thought he was fucking around, too. He was on his way out for a walk when the ambulance arrived, and he just looked at it and said, 'That'll be for Bill.'
Bill had always been the boy who cries wolf, y'know? I remember one time, back in the day, I was at his house and he said, 'Oh, 'ello Ozzy. You'll never guess what? I've just come out of a coma.'
'What d'you mean, a coma? That's one stage removed from being dead. You know that, don't you, Bill? '
'All I know is I went to bed on Friday, and now it's Tuesday, and I only just woke up. That's a coma, isn't it?'
'No, that's taking too many drugs and drinking too much cider and sleeping for three days in a row, you dick.'
But this time it turned out that Bill wasn't fucking around. His sore hand was the first sign of a major heart attack. Both his parents had died of heart disease, so it ran in the family. He was kept in hospital for ages, and even when he was let out he couldn't work for a year. So we had to tour without him again, which was a terrible shame. When he finally felt up to it, we gave it another shot in the studio, but by then it just wasn't happening.
The press blamed my ego for our failure to record a new album. But in all honesty I don't think that was the problem. I'd just changed. We all had. I wasn't the crazy singer who spent most of his time getting blasted down the pub but could be called back to do a quick vocal whenever Tony had come up with a riff. That wasn't how I worked any more. And by then I'd been solo for a lot longer than I'd ever been with Black Sabbath. If I'm honest, being sober probably didn't help the creativity, either - although I was still a chronic drug addict. I latched on to a doctor in Monmouth in no time, and got him to prescribe me some Valium. I was also taking about twenty-five Vicodins a day, thanks to a stash I brought over from America. I needed
something
to calm me down. I mean, the expectations for the album were just so high. And if it wasn't as good as before, what was the point of doing it? There
wasn't
a point, as far as I was concerned.
So it never happened.

I was back in LA, staying at a rented place in Malibu, when the phone rang. It was Norman, my brother-inlaw.
Oh shit
, I thought. This ain't gonna be good news.
It wasn't.
'John?' said Norman. 'It's your mother. She's not doing very well. You should come home and see her.'
'Now?'
'Yeah. I'm sorry, John. But the docs say it's bad.'
It had been eleven years since the argument about the newspaper retraction, and I hadn't seen much of my mum since - although we had made up over the phone. Of course, I now wish I'd spent more time with her. But my mum didn't exactly make it easy for me, talking about money all the time. I should just have given her more of it, I suppose. But I always thought that whatever I had was temporary.
As soon as I got the call from Norman, I flew back to England with my assistant Tony. Then we drove up to Manor Hospital in Walsall, where she was being treated.
My mum was eighty-seven, and she'd been ill for a while. She was diabetic, had kidney trouble, and her ticker was on the blink. She knew her time was up. I'd never known her go to church before, but all of a sudden she'd become very religious. She spent half the time I was there reciting prayers. She'd been raised a Catholic, so I suppose she thought she'd better catch up on her homework before going over the great divide. But she didn't seem frightened, and she wasn't suffering - or, if she was, she didn't let me know. The first thing I said to her was: 'Mum, are you in pain? You're not just putting on a brave face, are you?'
'No dear, I'm all right,' she said. 'You've always been such a worrier. Ever since you were a little baby.'
I stayed for a few days. Mum sat up in bed for hours talking to me with her arm hooked up to this whirring and bleeping dialysis machine. She seemed so well, I began to wonder what all the fuss was about. Then, on my last day there, she asked me to pull my chair closer to the bed, because she had something very important to ask me.
I leaned in really close, not knowing what to expect.
'John,' she said, 'is it true?'
'Is what true, Mum?'
'Are you really a
millionaire
?'
'Oh, for fu--' I had to stop myself. After all, my mum was dying. So I just said, 'I don't really want to talk about it.'
'Oh, go on, John, tell me.
Pleeeease
.'
'OK, then. Yeah, I am.'
She smiled and her eyes twinkled like a schoolgirl's. I thought, Well, at least I finally made her happy.
Then she said, 'But tell me, John, are you a multi-multi-multi
multi
-millionaire?'
'C'mon, Mum,' I said. 'Let's not talk about this.'
'But I want to!'
I sighed and said, 'OK, then. Yeah, I am.'
Her face broke into that huge grin again. Part of me was thinking, Is this really
that
important to her? But at the same time, I knew this moment was the closest we'd been in years.
So I just laughed. Then she laughed, too.
'What's it like?' she asked, with a giggle.
'Could be worse, Mum,' I said. 'Could be worse.'
After that we said our goodbyes and I flew back to California with Tony. As soon as I landed, I had to go and do a gig with Black Sabbath at the Universal Amphitheatre. I can't remember much of it, 'cos I couldn't concentrate. I just kept thinking about my mum, asking me if I was a millionaire. After the gig, I went back to the house in Malibu. When I opened the door, the phone was ringing.
It was Norman.
'John,' he said. 'She's gone.'
I sobbed, man.
I sobbed and sobbed and
sobbed
.
It was April 8, 2001 - just forty-eight hours since we'd been talking in the hospital.
I don't know why, but I took it very hard. One thing I've learned about myself over the years is that I'm no good at dealing with people dying. It's not that I'm afraid of it - I know that everyone's gotta go eventually - but I can't help thinking that there are only one or two ways of being brought into this world, but there are so many fucked-up ways of leaving it. Not that my mum went out in a bad way: Norman told me that she just went to sleep that night and never woke up.
I couldn't face the funeral - not after what had gone down at my father's. Besides, I didn't want it to be a press event, which it would have been, with people asking me for a photograph outside the church. I just wanted my mum to go out in peace, without it being about me. I'd given her enough grief over the years, and I didn't want to add to it. So I didn't go.
I still think it was the right decision - if only because my final memory of my mum is such a fond one. I can see her so clearly, lying in the hospital bed, smiling up at me, asking what it's like to be a 'multi-multimulti
multi
-millionaire', and me answering, 'It could be worse, Mum. It could be worse.'

Dead Again

T
he first time we allowed TV cameras into our house was in 1997, the year Black Sabbath got back together. We were renting Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith's old place in Beverly Hills. I was off the booze - most of the time, anyway - but I was still scamming as many pills as I could from any doctor who'd write

me a prescription. I was smoking my head off, too. Cigars, mainly. I thought it was quite acceptable to fire up a foot-long Cuban while lying in bed at nine o'clock at night. I'd say to Sharon, 'D'you mind?' and she'd look up from her magazine and go, 'Oh no, please, don't mind me.'

I don't think the TV guys could believe what they were seeing most of the time. On the first day, I remember this producer turning to me and saying, 'Is it
always
like this?'
'Like what?'
'A sit-com.'
'What d'you mean, "a sit-com"?'
'It's the timing,' he said. 'You walk in one door, the dog walks out of the other, then your daughter says, "Dad, why does the dog walk like that?" and you say, "Because it's got four legs." And then she goes into a huff and storms off, stage left. You couldn't script this stuff.'
'We're not
trying
to be funny, you know.'
'I know. That's what makes it so funny.'
'Things just happen to my family,' I told him. 'But things happen to
every
family, don't they?'
'Not like this,' he said.
A company called September Films made the documentary -
Ozzy Osbourne Uncut
, they called it - and it was shown on Channel Five in Britain and the Travel Channel in America. People went crazy over it. In the year after it came out, Five repeated it over and over. I don't think anyone could get over the fact that we had to deal with the exact same boring, day-to-day bullshit as any other family. I mean, yes, I'm the crazy rock 'n' roller who bit the head off a bat and pissed on the Alamo, but I also have a son who likes to mess around with the settings on my telly, so when I make myself a nice pot of tea, put my feet up, and try to watch a programme on the History Channel, I can't get the fucking thing to work. That kind of stuff blew people's minds. I think they had this idea in their heads that when I wasn't being arrested for public intoxication, I went to a cave and hung upside down, drinking snakes' blood. But I'm like Coco the Clown, me: at the end of the day, I come home, take off my greasepaint and my big red nose, and become Dad.
The documentary won a Rose d'Or award at the Montreux TV festival in Switzerland, and all of a sudden everyone wanted to make TV stars out of us. Now, I've never much liked being on telly. I just feel so hokey doing it. Plus, I can't read scripts, and I when I see myself on screen, I get a fucking panic attack. But Sharon was all for it, so we did a deal with MTV to do a one-off appearance on
Cribs
, which was a bit like a cooler American version of
Through the Keyhole
. By then, we'd long since stopped renting Don Johnson's old place and I'd forked out just over six million dollars for a house around the corner at 513 Doheny Road. We were living there full-time, going to Welders House only when we were in England for business or on family visits.
Again, people went crazy for it. That
Cribs
episode became a cult classic overnight. So one thing led to another, and MTV ended up offering us a show of our own.
Don't ask me how all the business stuff went down, 'cos that's Sharon's department. As far as I was concerned, I just woke up one morning and we had this thing to do called
The Osbournes
. I was happy for Sharon, 'cos she loved all the chaos in the house. She loved doing TV, too. She'll openly say, 'I'm a TV hoo'er.' She'd be the next fucking test card, if she had her way.
But if I'm honest, I was hoping that it would all be shelved before it ever made it on to the air.
A few days before we agreed to the filming, we had a family meeting, to make sure the kids were OK with it. You often hear people say, 'How could they expose their kids to that kind of fame?' but we had no idea how popular our little MTV show would become. And our kids had been born into show business, anyway: Aimee went on tour with us when she was less than a year old; Kelly was the kind of girl who'd stand up at the front of a jumbo jet and sing 'Little Donkey' to all the passengers; and Jack used to sit on my shoulders when I did encores on stage. It was the life they knew.
So we weren't surprised when Jack and Kelly said they were all for
The Osbournes
.
Aimee felt differently, though. From the very beginning, she didn't want anything to do with it.
We respected her for that. Aimee likes to be anonymous, and we'd never have forced her into doing anything she wasn't comfortable with. In fact, I said to all my kids, 'Look, if you decide you want to get involved with this, it's gonna be like being on a fairground ride - you won't be able to make it stop.'
Jack and Kelly both understood. Or at least they said they understood. To be honest with you, I don't think any of us really understood.
Meanwhile, Aimee's mind was made up. 'Have fun, guys. See ya.'
She's a smart one, Aimee. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying we were all idiots for signing on the dotted line, 'cos in many ways
The Osbournes
was a great experience - but I'd never have agreed to any of it if I'd known what I was letting myself in for. No fucking way, man. I agreed to do it mainly because I thought there was very little chance it would ever happen. Even if it
does
happen, I remember thinking, it won't get any further than one or two shows. American telly is very brutal. The bitching and backstabbing that go on when the cameras aren't rolling are ridiculous - it's enough to make the rock 'n' roll business look like a fucking joke. And it's like that because very, very few shows ever make it. I was convinced
The Osbournes
would be one of the failures.
Our first big mistake was letting them do all the filming at our real house. Most of the time on telly, everything's recorded in a studio, then they cut to stock footage of a street or a bar or whatever to make you think that's where the scene's being shot. But no one had done a show like
The Osbournes
before, so MTV just made it up as they went along.
First they set up an office in our garage - Fort Apache, I called it, 'cos it was like some military command post. They put all these video monitors in there, and little office cubicles, and this big workboard, where they kept track of everything we had planned for the days ahead. No one slept in Fort Apache, as far as I know. They just staggered the shifts so they had all these technicians and camera operators and producers coming in and out all the time. It was very impressive, the way MTV organised the logistics; those guys could invade a country, they're so good.
And I have to admit, it was a laugh for a week or two. It was fun having all these new people around. And they were good guys - they became like family after a while. But then it was like,
How much longer is this going to go on?
I mean, if you'd have taken me aside after those first few weeks of filming in 2001 and told me that I'd still be doing it three years later, I'd have shot myself in the balls, just to get out of it. But I didn't have a fucking clue.
None of us did.
In the early days, the production team's life was made a lot easier because I had a very specific routine. Every morning, come what may, I'd get up, have a coffee, blend some juice, and go and work out in the gym for an hour. So all they had to do was put static cameras in those places and leave them running. But after a while these cameras started to appear all over the house, until I felt like I couldn't get away from the things.
'Right, that's it,' I said one day. 'I need a bunker - a safety zone - or I'm gonna go out of my mind.'
So they taped off this room where I could go to scratch my balls, or pick a zit, or knock one out, without it ending up on the telly. I mean, you want reality only up to a point.
But then one day I was sitting in the safe room, smoking a joint and having a good old rummage under my ballsack, when I started to get this creepy feeling. At first I thought, The stress of this show's driving me insane, 'cos I'm starting to get an attack of the old paranoia. But I searched the room anyway. And there in the corner, hidden under a pile of magazines, was a little spy-camera. I went apeshit about that. 'What's the point of having a safe room if there's a fucking TV camera in it!' I yelled at them.
'Don't worry, Ozzy, it's not recording anything. It's just so we know where you are.'
'Bollocks,' I said. 'Get rid of it.'
'But how will we know where you are?'
'If the door's closed, that's where I am!'

The show was broadcast for the first time on March 5, 2002 - a Tuesday night. By Wednesday morning, it was like I'd moved to another planet. One minute I was a dinosaur who'd been told to fuck off by Lollapalooza; the next I was strapped to a rocket and being blasted through the stratosphere at warp factor ten. I can honestly say that I never knew the power of telly until
The Osbournes
aired. When you've got a hit TV show in America, that's as big as it gets, fame-wise. Bigger than being a movie star. Bigger than being a politician. And
a lot
bigger than being the ex-lead singer of Black Sabbath.

I can't say that I ever sat down and watched any of the shows all the way through. But from the clips I saw, it was obvious that the production team had done a phenomenal job - especially when it came to editing down the thousands of hours of footage they must have had. Even the title sequence - Pat Boone doing a jazzy version of 'Crazy Train' in that silky voice of his - was genius. I love it when people mess around with musical styles like that - it's so clever. And the funny thing was we'd lived next door to Pat Boone for a while at Beverly Drive. He's a lovely bloke, actually: a born-again Christian, but he never gave us a hard time.

We knew immediately that
The Osbournes
was big. But it took a few days for us to realise just
how
big. That weekend, for example, me and Sharon went down to Beverly Hills for a little walk around this market they have in the park, just like we often did. But literally the second I got out of the car, this girl turned around, screamed, then ran up to me with her mobile phone and went, 'Ozzy! Ozzy! Can I take my picture with you?'

'Oh, sure,' I said.

But then all these other people turned around, then
they
screamed, which made even more people turn around, then
they
screamed. Within about three seconds, it seemed like thousands of people were screaming and wanted a fucking picture.

Having the MTV crew trailing along behind didn't exactly help matters, either.
It was terrifying, man. I mean, I ain't complaining, 'cos
The Osbournes
had given me a completely new audience, but the whole thing felt like Beatlemania on LSD. I couldn't believe it. And I certainly couldn't understand it. I'd never been that famous before - not even close. So I fucked off back to England to get away from it. But the same thing happened there. The moment I got off the plane at Heathrow, there was this wall of flash-bulbs and thousands of people shouting and screaming and going, 'Oi, Ozzy! Over 'ere! Gis a picture!'
Obviously, I was no longer famous for being a singer. I was famous for being that swearing bloke on the telly - which felt very strange, and not always in a good way.
I got a lot of flak for it, too. Some people said that I'd sold out 'cos I was on the telly. But that's a load of bollocks, that is. The thing is, no one like me had done a reality show before. But I've always believed that you've got to move with the times. You've got to try and take things to the next level, or you'll just get stuck in a rut. If you stay the same you might keep a few people happy - like the ones who think that any kind of change is a sell-out - but sooner or later, your career will be fucked. And a lot of people forget that in the beginning,
The Osbournes
was just an MTV experiment. No one expected it to blow up in the way it did. But it didn't change me at all. When I was on the show, I never pretended to be anyone other than who I am. Even now when I'm doing ads on the telly, I'm not pretending to be anyone other than who I am. So how's that selling out?
Mind you, there are things that happened on
The Osbournes
that I still can't get my head around to this day. Like when Sharon got a call from Greta Van Susteren, one of the anchors at Fox News.
'I was wondering if you and Ozzy wanted to have dinner next week with the President of the United States,' she said.
'Is he in trouble again?' asked Sharon.
Greta laughed. 'Not that I know of, no.'
'Thank God for that.'
'Will you come?'
'Of course we will. It would be an honour.'
When Sharon told me, I couldn't believe it. I always thought I'd be on a 'Wanted' poster on the Oval Office wall, not invited over for tea. 'What does President Bush want to talk about, anyway?' I said. 'Black Sabbath?'
'Don't worry,' said Sharon, 'it won't be just the four of us. It's the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner. Fox News has a table, so there'll be plenty of other people there.'
'George Bush used to be the Governor of Texas, didn't he?' I said.
'Yes?'
'Well, I pissed on that Alamo thing once. He's gonna be cool with that, is he?'
'I'm sure he's forgotten all about it, Ozzy. He used to like a drink or two himself, y'know.'
'He did?'
'Oooh yeah.'
So off we went to Washington. The dinner was at the Hilton, where Ronald Reagan had been shot. It wasn't long after 9/11, so I was feeling really paranoid about the security situation. Then, when we got there, it was pandemonium. They had about five thousand TV cameras outside, and just one little metal detector with a couple of guys manning it. I had to cling on to Greta's jacket just to get through the crowd.
Meanwhile, my assistant Tony - who's only a little fella - skipped over the rope and walked behind the metal detector without anyone even noticing. It was a joke, man. I could have smuggled a ballistic fucking missile into that place, and no one would have said a word.
Then the dinner started, and I started to have this horrendous panic attack. There I was, this halfbaked rock star, in a room with all these Great Brains and the Leader of the Free World. What the
fuck
was I doing there? What did all these people want from me?
The Osbournes
had only been on air for about two months, and my brain was already struggling to process it all.
In the end, I just snapped. I couldn't survive one more second in that place without being pissed out of my mind. So I grabbed a bottle of vino from one of the waiters, filled my wine glass, downed it, refilled it, downed it, refilled it, and carried on until the bottle was empty. Then I got another. Meanwhile, Sharon was glaring at me from the other end of the table. I ignored her. Not tonight, darling, I thought.
Then the First Lady walked into the room, with George W. Bush following her. And the first thing he said when he reached the podium was: 'Laura and I are honoured to be here tonight. Thanks for the invitation. What a fantastic audience we have tonight: Washington power-brokers, celebrities, Hollywood stars... and Ossie Ozz-Burn!'
By that time I was well and truly blasted, so as soon as I heard my name, I jumped up on the table like a drunken arse-hole and screamed, '
Yeeeeeeeehhaaaaaa!!
' It brought the fucking house down. But I was
fucked
, so I didn't know when to stop. I just stayed up there, going, '
Yeeeeeeeehhaaaaaa!!
' until the whole room of eighteen hundred people went silent.
Bush looked at me.
'
Yeeeeeeeehhaaaaaa!!
' I screamed again.
Silence.
'
Yeeeeee
--'
'OK, Ozzy,' snapped Bush. On the tape, you can even hear him say, 'This might have been a mistake.'
I finally climbed down from the table - actually, I think Greta might have pulled me down. Then Bush started to tell this joke about me: 'The thing about Ozzy is he's made a lot of big hit recordings: "Party with the Animals", "Face in Hell", "Bloodbath in Paradise"...'
I was about to get back up on the table and tell him that none of those were big hits, but then he delivered the punchline.
'Ozzy,' he said, 'Mom loves your stuff.'
The whole room went crazy.
I don't remember much after that.
Y'know, ever since I went to that dinner, people ask me what I think of Bush. But I can't say I have an opinion, because I don't know enough about all that political stuff. I mean,
somebody
must have voted for him, right? In 2000
and
2004. And I think a lot of that crazy terrorist shit had been going on for a long time before he got into power. I don't think they were sitting around in their cave and suddenly said, 'Oh, look, Bush is in the White House. Let's fly some planes into the World Trade Center.'
The thing is, I'm living in America as a guest, so it's not up to me to say anything, y'know? I keep trying to explain that to Jack: 'Don't talk about politics here, because you're not an American. They'll just say to you, "Get the fuck out of our country, if you don't like it".' We've made a good living from America. We should be grateful.
A month later, I met the Queen.
She came up to me and shook my hand after I'd done a song at the Party at the Palace concert, during the Golden Jubilee weekend. Magnificent woman, I've always thought. I have so much respect for her. Then I met her again, not long after, at the Royal Variety Performance. I was standing next to Cliff Richard. She took one look at the two of us, said, 'Oh, so
this
is what they call variety, is it?' then cracked up laughing.
I honestly thought that Sharon must have slipped some acid into my cornflakes that morning.
Seriously, though, I get on very well with the royals. I'm even an ambassador for the Prince's Trust now, so I've met Charles a few times. Very nice guy. The press keep giving him stick, but if you get rid of the monarchy, what do you replace it with? President Gordon 'Wet Fart' Brown? Personally, I think the royal family do a hell of a lot of good. People think they live in that palace and spend their whole lives just holding up sceptres and watching the telly, but they work their arses off. They have to be on all the time. And the dough they make for Britain adds up to a ridiculous fortune every year.
I'm not so comfortable with politicians. Meeting them always just feels weird and a bit creepy, no matter who it is. For example, I met Tony Blair during
The Osbournes
period at this thing called the Pride of Britain Awards. He was all right, I suppose; very charming. But I couldn't get over the fact that our young soldiers were dying out in the Middle East and he could still find the time to hang around with pop stars.
Then he came over to me and said, 'I was in a rock 'n' roll band once, y'know?'
I said, 'So I believe, Prime Minister.'
'But I could never work out the chords to "Iron Man".'
I wanted to say, 'Fuck me, Tony, that's a staggering piece of information, that is. I mean, you're at war with Afghanistan, people are getting blown up all over the place, so who honestly gives a fuck that you could never work out the chords to "Iron Man"?'
But they're all the same, so there's no point getting wound up about it.
For a while after
The Osbournes
went on air, it seemed like everyone in the world wanted to be around me. Then we had a party at our house, and Elizabeth Taylor showed up. For me, that was the most surreal moment of all, 'cos when I was a kid, my dad had said to me, 'I want you to see the most beautiful woman in the world.' Then he'd let me stay up late to watch
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
. So that's what Elizabeth Taylor has always been to me - the most beautiful woman in the world. But, of course, I can't even remember what I said to her, 'cos I was fucking wasted again.
Of all the people I got to meet, though, the most special was probably Paul McCartney. I mean, I'd looked up to that man since I was fourteen. But what the fuck are you supposed to talk to him about, eh? It's like trying to strike up a conversation with God. Where d'you start? 'Oh, I see you made the Earth in seven days. What was that like?' We were at Elton John's birthday party: Paul on one side of me, Sting on the other, and Elton opposite. It was like I'd died and gone to rock star heaven. But I'm useless when it comes to making conversation with people I admire. I'm a big believer in just leaving them alone, generally. In that way, I'm very shy. There were some rumours going around in the press for a while that me and Paul were gonna do a duet, but I can honestly say I never heard a word about it from the man himself. And I'm glad I didn't, 'cos I would have shit my pants, big time.
He played at the Brits when me and Sharon were hosting, though. I remember Sharon turning to me halfway through his set and whispering, 'Did you ever think you'd be standing on stage with a Beatle?'
'Never in a million years' was the answer.
It didn't even seem so long since I'd been looking up at his picture on the wall of 14 Lodge Road.
We e-mail each other from time to time now, me and Paul. (Which means I speak and Tony taps what I've said into the computer, 'cos I don't have the patience for all that internet bollocks.) It started when I heard a song called 'Fine Line' on a Lexus commercial. I thought, Fucking hell, that's not a bad tune, I think I'll nick it. So I mentioned it - just in passing - to a guy who used to work with me called John Roden, who also happened to work with Paul.
John said, 'Y'know who wrote that, don't you?'
I told him I didn't have a clue.
'My
other
boss,' he said.
Obviously I left the song well alone after that.
Then, out of the blue, came this letter saying, 'Thanks for not nicking "Fine Line", Ozzy.' You couldn't get the smile off my face for days. And it just went on from there. We don't e-mail very often, but if he's got an album coming out, or if he's getting some flak in the press, I'll drop him a line. The last one I sent was to congratulate him on that
Fireman
album he did. If you haven't heard it, you should, 'cos it's fucking phenomenal.