The dark side of rock music’s hell-raisers

On Wednesday Ozzy Osbourne will make his final journey through Birmingham as fans, friends and family say goodbye - Aaron Rapoport/Corbis Historical

In a dispute with his daughter, Kelly, Ozzy Osbourne once compared the circumstances of his impoverished upbringing with that of his children. As recounted in the documentary film God Bless Ozzy Osbourne, the late singer asked if there was anything for which his and Sharon Osbourne’s middle child had ever wanted? The fierceness of Kelly’s stare suggested there was. For many years, she said, she had wanted for “a father”.

As is known, Ozzy was more adept at being a rock’n’roll wild man. The last time I interviewed him, in person at least, he told me that his recently acquired sobriety had not diminished his capacity to find drugs anywhere in the world inside of 15 minutes. We were sat in view of the undulating hills and grazing sheep that abutted the back garden of his spacious home in rural Buckinghamshire. “I bet you can’t round here,” I said. With a clarity of purpose that continues to resonate in my mind, he looked me in the eye and replied, “How much do you want to bet?”

Ozzy Osbourne, wife Sharon and children Kelly, Jack and Aimee at the Kerrang Awards 1997 in London - Neil munns/PA Wire

I recalled this vivid encounter in my book Bodies: Life and Death In Music, examining the many and varied ways by which the rock biz screws people up. Having spent 18 months mired in its grisly details, with approximate humility, I feel emboldened to say that I know rather a lot about this subject. Setting sail upon stormy waters, Ozzy Osbourne’s life listed sideways, and sometimes capsized completely. Throughout it all the applause grew only louder.

“Given the swimming pools of booze I’ve guzzled over the years – not to mention all of the cocaine, morphine, sleeping pills, cough syrup, LSD, Rohypnol … you name it – there’s no plausible medical reason why I should still be alive,” he said in 2010.

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For my book, I was spoilt for choice when it came to fallen icons who embodied the twisted mythology of hard rock’n’roll. There was Bon Scott, from AC/DC, who died following a night’s hard drinking at the Camden Palace; or Phil Lynott, who passed away, aged 36, after too many years on too many drugs. I had Steve Clarke, from Def Leppard, who shortly before his passing, at age 31, registered a blood-alcohol level higher than that of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham. Bonham choked to death on his own vomit after drinking much more than a litre of vodka.

Phil Lynott passed away, aged 36, after too many years on too many drugs - Paul Natkin/Getty Images

It’s tempting to look at the lives of Ozzy and Clarkie and Bonzo and conclude that “they” don’t make them like this any more. In their place stand wholesome British entertainers such as Chris Martin and Ed Sheeran, both of whom remind me a little bit of children’s entertainers. Certainly, today, musicians are more likely to talk about mental wellbeing than anything to do with penicillin shots and a deviated septum. For anyone wondering what that’s all about, it’s easy to believe that rock’n’roll has changed for the worse.

But I don’t agree. I don’t think that artists should have to die for my entertainment. I don’t think that terrible addiction and dizzying dysfunctionality should be an accepted reality of life in the music business. I don’t need it. I’m not saying that rock’n’roll is the only industry sozzled on booze and strung out on drugs, because of course it’s not. But it is the only one in which onlookers cheer the afflicted all the way to the grave. As Ozzy is laid to rest in his beloved Birmingham, perhaps it’s time to say goodbye to the rock’n’roll wild man too.

Not that all hell-raisers fit the Ozzy mould. James Taylor was an opioid addict for decades. Tom Petty was in hock to heroin. Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins died with his intoxicants aplenty in his blood; his heart was twice the size that it should have been. Tom Gray, from Gomez, used to buy heavy-duty pick-me-up pills from “rock docs” in America. Wilco singer Jeff Tweedy got in deep with prescription medication. I mean, how long have you got? Because, honestly, I can do this for hours.

Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins died with his intoxicants in his blood - Jerod Harris/Getty Images

As Ozzy Osbourne noted in his memoir, I Am Ozzy: “What other occupation rewards you for being out of your brain all the time? The more loaded I was when I got on stage, the more the audience knew it was gonna be a good night.”

I’m not suggesting that rock’n’roll made Osbourne (or anyone) an alcoholic or a drug addict; very plausibly, he might have attained these ends in a world where strangers didn’t know his name. But the thing about the music business is that it attaches booster rockets to behaviour that simply wouldn’t be tolerated on Civvy Street. Unless it’s something uniquely vile, you can be cheered to the heavens for breaching any statute that displeases you. Breaking-the-law-breaking-the-law looks like no end of fun, even though it usually isn’t.

I don’t wish to sound like a scold, either. Despite myself, I love some of Ozzy’s stories. Last week, I let slip a chuckle when recalling the time, in 1982, when the singer was arrested in San Antonio for urinating on the Alamo Cenotaph. As if this weren’t quite enough, he did so when drunk, in the middle of the day, while wearing a colourful selection of his wife’s clothes. After being sprung from jail, he even played a show that very evening.

But as the laughter subsides, increasingly, my mind turns to the words spoken to me by a consultant clinical psychologist who works in the music industry. “The creative mind is a vulnerable mind,” opined Dr Charlie Howard when I interviewed her for my book. Three years later, her piercing declaration has yet to leave me in peace.

In another statement capable of knocking fixtures from a wall, Dr Howard also told me: “I’ve never met anyone in the public eye who is authentically happy. I’ve never met an artist who is authentically happy. Never. I’ve met people who have periods of happiness, or for whom there are things that they do, like performing, that gives them a buzz, but they’re not fundamentally happy.”

To his credit, Ozzy Osbourne was a most endearing rock’n’roll madman. He could be intelligent, perceptive, unguarded, kindly, and – I don’t know – hapless in a way that took the edge off things. Despite the danger to life and limb he so often posed, he appeared strangely benign. Held in consistently high affection, he was as sexless as a speak-your-weight machine. By far my favourite description of his onstage demeanour is by a writer who likened him to a man who had lost his keys.

Ozzy Osbourne with Black Sabbath’s original drummer, Bill Ward, in 1977 - Richard E. Aaron/Redferns

But success for Ozzy Osbourne came at a speed that held no promise of acclimation. Barely a year after Black Sabbath had changed their name, from Earth, by 1970 they had two hit albums on both sides of the Atlantic and a single, Paranoid, that reached number two on the British chart. The work rate was as astounding as its attendant excess. As well as scorching their synapses and sinuses on cocaine, two years later, Sabbath were snorting heroin.

Despite the dysfunctionality, Ozzy Osbourne appeared certain that the distorted reality of the rock star was the only thing that could have saved him from a life of drudgery in working class Birmingham. He spoke not of the talent, or the work, required to change one’s circumstances in such drastic fashion; he didn’t seem to have considered that his own agency had played any part in his success. Instead, he enthused with gratitude about what rock’n’roll had given him without pausing to consider that he might have been good to it.

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“You couldn’t dream up Ozzy Osbourne,” he once said. “I left school with little more education than I had when I started going, you know? Because of my dyslexia, I couldn’t learn … one of my sisters would tease me about not being able to read – ‘John [Ozzy] can’t read’ and all this. It’s very shameful. My childhood, if it wasn’t for The Beatles turning me onto music in a big way, I don’t know what I would have done.”

This humility made him easy prey for the sharks of the music industry. Even as late as the mid-1970s, Ozzy had never seen a royalty cheque, let alone an audit of any kind. Instead, he rang his managers in London and asked them to buy him whatever he wanted. Even by the infantilising standards of the music industry, the setup was jarringly paternalistic. “Look at that drunken fool”, it seemed to say, “stoned out of his mind, too stupid and too grateful to pay attention”.

“The agents and managers, they don’t think of you as a human being,” he told the NME in 1986. “They think of you as a machine for making money. And if I say I feel tired this week, which I’ve been a lot lately … this last tour’s really knocked me about. I’ve been feeling sick a lot. And I suddenly thought, ‘Is this a way of life?’ Is this what I wanna be doing, at this level, for the rest of my life?”

The reporter asked why he didn’t just give it all up? “Because I make money for everybody,” came the reply. “I’m easily manipulated, and I hate to feel that I’m letting people down … It’s like a boxer, like an addiction, you can never say no. I’m a very excessive man. I don’t feel like I’ve done it unless I’m lying in a hospital with a drip sticking out of my arm. ‘Hey, man, what a great tour!’”

Bodies: Life & Death In Music, by Ian Winwood, is published by Faber & Faber. To order your copy for £5.59, call 0844 871 1514 or visit Telegraph Books

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