Ozzy Osbourne has just announced the news that every fan wants to hear – a one-off all-star farewell gig in his hometown of Aston. But back in 2010, the singer was promoting his new album, Scream – and as Classic Rock discovered, he was expecting the “Jesus freaks” not to be happy about it.
We meet Ozzy Osbourne in a giant room that’s painted entirely white. The walls, the ceiling, the floor, even the trestle table in front of us… everything is bleached-out and colourless. It’s an eerie feeling.
The Prince Of Darkness is perched on a white folding chair, sipping tea from – yes – a white china cup. He presents a stark contrast to the pallid surroundings, dressed as he is in his customary apparel de noir. His dusky outfit is alleviated only by a trusty gold crucifix, which dangles on a somewhat sunken chest, plus customary blue-tinted specs. His long, brown-black, dyed hair, usually rail-straight, is curiously tousled and curly today.
The large anaemic area in which we’re conducting our interview lends an almost spectral air to proceedings. Your Metal Hammer scribe feels like Saint Peter at the Gates Of Heaven, sitting judgment on Ozzy’s evil past and wondering how much commotion he’ll cause if we allow him into our peaceful realm of fluffy clouds and harp-plucking. However, having heard one of his new songs, Diggin’ Me Down, it’s likely the gates will stay firmly shut.
“I’m bound to get some fucking flak for that song, from all the Jesus freaks,” the POFD admits.
Time for a double- take and a dose of reality. We’re actually ensconced in a place called The Worx, in Parsons Green, West London. It’s a sprawling photographic studio and entertainment complex, and Ozzy has taken over the place for the day for a blitz of publicity for his new album, Scream.
At the time of our encounter, Metal Hammer has heard five tracks from the record: the aforementioned Diggin’ Me Down, Let Me Hear You Scream, Let It Die and Soul Sucker, each an out-and-out fist-pumping rocker, plus Time, a typically tormented ballad.
Scream is the first studio record Ozzy has done without guitarist Zakk Wylde since 1986’s The Ultimate Sin, and the first without drummer Mike Bordin since 1995. Gus G of Firewind and Tommy Clefetos (Rob Zombie, Alice Cooper) have taken over. Rounding out the lineup are bassist Blasko and keyboard player Adam Wakeman.
The new album sounds monstrously heavy.
“Unconsciously I can hear my Sabbath roots in it. There’s some thudding Iron Man riffs in there. I’ve got my own ProTools studio at my house. I call it The Bunker. Kevin Churko, the producer, he’s a very clever guy. He and I laid the foundations of it and we put the band on afterwards. Which is a new way for me of doing it.”
We noticed some interesting lyrics on Diggin’ Me Down: ‘How will I know you, Mr Jesus Christ, how will I know that you’re the Son Of God?’ What’s that all about?
“They say that Jesus is going to come back. Well, how fucking bad is it going to get before he decides to return? There’s been a lot of wars and a lot of people have died in the name of religion. When I was a kid and I found out there wasn’t a Santa Claus and it was all bollocks… it’s a similar thing, isn’t it? Those Jesus freaks, they’re really annoying. Imagine if someone was to come up to me and say, ‘Excuse me, I’m Jesus.’ I’d reply, ‘Yeah, and I’m fucking Hitler.’ I don’t know if you’re the Son Of God, I don’t know if you’re Jesus Christ. The nuthouse is full of them.”
We thought for a moment you’d done an about-turn and become religious.
“No, no. I’ve never got my head around the idea of organised religion. It’s bullshit. When I was a kid I grew up with a load of Catholics and the people around where I lived had no money. There was one woman who had eight kids, her old man had fucked off, she was broke, and she’d send her kids, spick and span, to church every Sunday morning. She’d go into debt to keep them looking good. I don’t get that. I think people believe in God because that’s all they’ve got. It’s a crutch.”
Another of your new songs, Soul Sucker, seems to be about people who always want a piece of you…
“Yeah, people always want something, you know? They want something for nothing. It’s crazy. I just tell them to fuck off, you know? Another interesting song on the album is Let It Die. I quite like it. The lyrics are very repetitive. You know that Billy Joel song? [We Didn’t Start The Fire] The play with words is really clever on it. We wanted to do a song like that. The way it picks up, speeds up, I can really hear Sabbath in it towards the end. And with Gus on guitar, he came in and he did a good job.”
Gus G: he’s Greek, isn’t he?
“Blessed are the Greeks.”
What’s happened to Zakk Wylde?
“I was beginning to sound like Black Label Society, you know? I’m not putting him down at all, I love his stuff, but I’ve been putting off the inevitable, thinking about it for two or three years, trying to find a permanent replacement. Zakk was OK about it.”
You’re still on good terms?
“I used to say better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. With Gus, I’ve got to find out what he’s like to tour with, but at the same time if I needed Zakk for anything I’d just pick up the phone and he’d be there the next day, you know? As he said to me, ‘Our relationship goes beyond music.’ I’m godfather to his son. We went out to dinner, my family and his family, the other day. I don’t want anyone to think we’ve fallen out, that I’ve fired him and he hates me. It’s not true. I just knew I had to get a full- time replacement in the end, because on the last tour Zakk was opening the show with his band and fucking closing it with my band. It was my fault in a lot of ways, I kept going, ‘I can’t go through the fucking audition process again, I can’t do it.’”
What about the reaction to your initial album title: Soul Sucka?
“I thought Soul Sucka was a great title for the album. But then someone told me my website had gone nuts with complaints about it. I said, ‘What the fuck are you on about?’ Apparently people weren’t going to buy the album because they thought I was turning into a hip-hop artist. I didn’t realise the word ‘sucka’ is what they use in fucking hip-hop. I don’t listen to the fucking stuff, you know?”
The actual track. Soul Sucker, now seems to have an ‘er’ at the end.
“I ain’t got a clue. Sharon does all that. I think it’s Suck-A. Or it’s Suck-ER. I don’t fucking know.”
Any other tracks you can tell us about? What about a song we haven’t heard so far, called I Love You All?
“It’s just a three-minute… three-second… it’s only a short thing. You know on stage when I go, ‘Good night, God bless, I love you all’? On the song I go, ‘We all must stand together now, or one by one we fall, to all of you who stood by me, God bless I love you all.’ It’s like a little poem at the end. It doesn’t mean I’m going to quit. It’s just the end, the end of the fucking album.”
What inspires you, as an artist, to keep recording new stuff? Because you could easily rest on your laurels…
“You’ve got to have something to do. In my case it’s a high- profile job but it’s what I do. Most of my time is spent watching a DVD in a hotel room, so the best part is making an album or playing a gig. If I can’t do an album or a gig I’m fucking pissed off.”
Is retirement something you’ve got in your sights?
“If I can still do it and people still want to see me, then great. I’m not going to go from arenas and festivals down to bars and seedy clubs; I don’t want to do that. I’m doing a couple of small shows in London soon – I like doing them from time to time, but I won’t do them if that’s all I’ve got left. I’m not a dummy. I’m not going to go from sell-out shows to playing in front of three people. Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, they’re still doing it, so why can’t I? If people still want to come and see me, then age doesn’t come into it.”
For your previous album, Black Rain, you had a playback for the posh press at Abbey Road. Metal Hammer managed to infiltrate it, but it was a rather high-falutin’ affair. You seem to be going back to your roots with Scream.
“I always wanted to do a varied album; I don’t want to do one with the same headbanging tunes all the way through. I want it to be more like a journey, you know. Rob Halford made an all-out modern metal album and it wasn’t particularly successful, so you can’t really go that far, you’ve got to stick to your roots.”
Are you trying to reclaim your heartland with Scream?
“You know what? That TV celebrity that I became, I fucking didn’t like it. Sharon loves flying around the world and being a TV star. I don’t, I can’t stand it, because my heart is in music. ‘Hi guys, it’s good to be here on TV again.’ Fuck that. Sharon said, ‘I want to do a variety show.’ [The ill-fated Osbournes: Reloaded]. I said, ‘What do you want to do that for?’ She said, ‘Just one time for me.’ I hated every second of it. She kept pushing me into this fucking stuff.”
So, have you finally decided to hold your ground?
“I said, ‘I tell you what, Sharon, don’t even fucking ask me, don’t even go there with me in future, because I don’t want to know.’ If it comes to the point, at the end of my days, I’m going to be remembered as a chat show host or something… well, I don’t want that to happen, you know?”
What are your thoughts on the death of Ronnie James Dio?
“When I heard he was sick, I did send him a message. I bumped into [Heaven & Hell drummer] Vinny Appice at an awards ceremony a few weeks back and I said, ‘If there’s anything I can do to help Ronnie out, please let me know.’ Sharon had cancer a few years back and it’s fucking miserable to watch somebody going downhill.”
Does Ronnie’s death, in a strange way, open doors for you to do anything Black Sabbath- related in future?
“Well, I never say never any more. But I wouldn’t do [a reunion] with anybody but the original three: Bill, Tony and Geezer. That is Black Sabbath. I don’t want to get a stand-in drummer. I think Bill is set in his ways, but I’d imagine he’d do it. We did try and make another album, we’ve still got a bunch of tapes, but the thing about that is, it’s a really dodgy thing because you’re returning to this fucking myth, aren’t you?”
Wouldn’t your lawsuit against Tony Iommi affect a potential Sabbath reunion?
“It’s been settled now. We got 50 per cent of the name or something. I don’t really know too much about it. Sharon was dealing with it. But it has been resolved. I think so, yeah. I don’t want to fall out with Tony, so I don’t know.”
Who would play you in an Ozzy Osbourne movie?
“A lot of people have suggested Johnny Depp. I’d prefer a young, unknown guy from Birmingham. I’m English; I’m from the Midlands, not from fucking Hollywood. Johnny Depp is one of the few Americans who can do a really good English accent but I’d like it to be someone relatively unknown.”
Ozzfest is coming back in the summer of 2010…
“We’re doing a few shows, not that many. There are a lot more festivals out there now.”
You’re doing Ozzfest with Mötley Crüe. Will we see a repeat of the debauchery of when you toured with them IN the 1980s?
“No. I’m going to do my gig and fuck off home. That tour was the wildest tour I was ever on. I remember saying to [then Crüe manager] Doc McGhee, ‘I think one of us is going to die on this tour.’ [Mötley Crüe] were bad news; they were out of control. I was with Nikki Sixx a couple of days ago and he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t get stoned any more. We’re all different guys now.”
Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 207, June 2010
