Los Angeles - Never mind the platinum records, the adoration of millions or even his apparently blissful family life, Ozzy Osbourne's just grateful to be alive.
That may not be cause for celebration for the people who never cottoned onto his cartoonish image or to the whole Black Sabbath ethos. "When they're bad their numbing," the Rolling Stone Album Guide says of the legendary band Osbourne fronted until he was fired in 1979.
Still, Osbourne refuses to disappear from the scene despite his frequent efforts over the years, intentional or otherwise. Not surprisingly, he is an enormously complex person who says his brain has been damaged by years of alcohol abuse. To this day, his on-stage bravado obscures layers of insecurity, self-doubt and frustration.
"It sucks, everything I like is bad for you," Osbourne told RockNet. "I've been on the works. I've had a fucking cocaine addiction, heroin. I didn't have a big thing on heroin but tried it for a while. Morphine, Demerol, big-time booze and pills and all that shit over the years."
Nowadays he's clean. Even tobacco is a no-no and he describes himself during the first couple of smoke-free days as "Satan's fucking uglier brother." Food is his weakness, as those who have seen him in concert recently will testify. Still, there's an air of regret about cutting back on the hedonism.
I'm not one of those people that says, 'I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't do drugs...so I'm an example.' Listen, man if I could get fucking stoned right now, I wouldn't be doing this interview. If I could be out there having fun and wake up without those dreadful hangovers, I'd be drinking..."
Instead, Osbourne has to make do with the anti- depressant Prozac because of his neurological problems. Attempts to kick it made him feel strange.
"You start to obsess on things. I've got one of those minds that's like Inspector Clousseau on acid. I think everything's a plot. It just kind of mellows me out, y'know? I fought against Prozac for years because I felt that anything that didn't give me euphoria I didn't want to know, y'know?"
He's also on a world tour promoting his latest album "Ozzmosis" (Epic), which has sold almost a million copies in the U.S. since its release last October. The trek is called the "Retirement Sucks Tour," a reference to his short-lived withdrawal from the scene after touring behind his 1991 album "No More Tears" left him feeling hollow and directionless.
"I kinda lost my focus, I didn't really know why or what I was doing it for" he says of that time. "I felt like a mouse in a wheel going round and round in circles thinking, 'Where is this going to lead? There's got to be an end to it somewhere. What does it matter to me if I sell 50 million albums? I'm still going round in circles.'"
So he dropped out of circulation and describes 1994 as one of the best years of his life because he got to spend time at home in England with his wife/manager Sharon and their young children and come to terms with his personal foibles.
"I'm a very complex person. When I feel happy, it's immediately followed by insecurity," he says, revealing that he sees a shrink from time to time. "I've found out that a lot of creative people have some kind of wacky streak going through them.
"We all need something, whether it be on a material level or on a spiritual level. I always thought that if you have enough money, you wouldn't have any worries, but that's just a crock of shit. I would wake up in the morning and worry because I didn't have anything to worry about, y'know?"
Osbourne even worried that "Ozzmosis" sucked. The album features many tracks dating from the "No More Tears" era. Producer Michael Beinhorn (Soundgarden, Soul Asylum, Red Hot Chili Peppers) constructed "Ozzmosis" from a selection of 40 songs that Osbourne had co- written with such infamous "song doctors" as Mark Hudson, Jim Vallance and Steve Dudas. Osbourne's favorite is "My Little Man," a lullaby he co-wrote with Steve Vai.
Yet he wishes the album had a few more rockers in addition to the handful such as "Perry Mason," "Thunder Underground" (for which ex-Sabbath cohort Geezer Butler wrote the lyrics) and "My Jekyll Doesn't Hide."
As with most things of Ozzy, there's a duality in his life, and the anger that inspires those driving rockers is half-hearted, which in turn brings out the dark side we know and love.
"As I get older, I kinda write how angry and pissed off I am at the world when I'm staying in a fucking hotel suite and I've got a 24-hour limo on call and I've got my own aeroplane, I've got a $6 million house in England and I live like a king."
He wasn't enthused about touring for it, but wiser heads at the label prevailed. "The response from everybody who listened to the album was so positive, I thought, 'Maybe I'm wrong for once.' When I make a record, I get too involved.
"I'm basically a rock'n'roller and it's becoming more refined. Producers are getting more celebrity status that the fucking rock'n'rollers are now in my opinion."
Other dualities come to the fore when he points at how he hates being called the godfather of Heavy Metal (don't even mention his fabled eating habits) and points to a catalog of ballads that would do a budding Michael Bolton proud.
On the other hand, he revels in his satanic image by peddling t-shirts featuring a cartoon Ozzy bearing a cross saying "RIP Ozzy." On stage, he relies heavily on old Sabbath tunes and then moons the audience after drenching it with high-powered water pistols.
In short, don't expend too many brain cells trying to figure out who John "Ozzy" Osbourne really is, because he's got no idea himself. He's just a working class lad from Birmingham who "sings songs I thought were worth singing."
-Dean Goodman