Ozzy Osborne…he’s called the Godfather of Heavy Metal and he isn’t dead yet; he is the founder of Black Sabbath, the darkest, evilest, most random band ever. He is many more things and three minutes isn’t enough to scratch the makeup on his face, let alone his entire personality and life story. Then again, ‘exception’ is the rule with Ozzy. So let me try.
He bit a bat’s head off while performing on stage. Yeah, that ought to do it... “Sometimes I think my whole career and life has only been about a bloody Bat!” he sums up. And it’s because, there was no known reason for why he did what he did, even to him. He thought it was rubber! Now that’s too lame and is an obvious lie. I’ll come back to why.
As a child Ozzy was dyslexic and it was the 1950s England. He quit school and started working in odd jobs at 15, burgled a store, got arrested and couldn’t make bail because there wasn’t enough money. “My mother was an amateur singer, my father was an amateur drunk,” he sums up his childhood (Ozzy Osborne Quotes, n.d.). But that doesn’t explain the bat.
He watched a gory movie, named his band after it, came to the U.S. and found success without too much struggle. His eerie voice paved the way for him. People liked being frightened, shaken up and as a side-effect, inspired. In his career, Ozzy won every kind of music award there is under the sun, including a Grammy and an NME ‘Godlike Genius’ and he has his space in all kinds of halls of fames as well. People were all-heart for the prince of darkness. Always. Then President Bush was floored by Ozzy’s mere presence at the White House. “The thing about Ozzy is, he's made a lot of big hit recordings – 'Party with the Animals', 'Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath', 'Facing Hell', 'Black Skies' and 'Bloodbath in Paradise'. Ozzy, Mom loves your stuff,” he praised (Kennedy, Burger, 2002). And Queen Elisabeth had the same pleasure as President Bush’s mom. A step ahead, she even managed to have him perform for her. “I cannot turn down this incredible honour twice!” Ozzy sums up. Obviously, there is nothing in his career to warrant bat craving!
But craving Ozzy did, for all things god-made and man-made, all through his life. He had abused drugs and alcohol for so long in his life that he had to be fired from his own band. Twice. But he squared that out by shooting all of his first wife Thelma’s kitties, fifteen of them. With a gun though, not venom spit. After he formed his own band, his guitarist was in a plane and Ozzy was in a tour bus and they were playing touch-me-not. The plane crashed. The guitarist died. But five years later Ozzy wrote “Suicide Solution” as a tribute to him. A kid committed suicide listening to that. Fair and square. Ozzy has six children from two wives, one of them adopted and there is a seventh one who is still not legally adopted. All he ever wanted for them was to not be addicts like him. Two of them are already out of rehab. It’s literally a celebration! What’s more? Scientists are now trying to figure out the genome sequence in Ozzy’s DNA that helped him live so long despite never being sober in front of another soul (Kreps, 2010). Never. Who knows? Ozzy might as well hold the key to all kinds of medical problems of today. “The lifestyle I`ve been living for the last 30 years, I could have been dead a thousand times,” he sums up. Why the hell would he chew a bat’s head off for that?
So, no, after carefully analysis, I refuse to believe that Ozzy ate the bat’s head because he was drunk or stupid or crazy or complete psycho. Neither did he think it was rubber. Ozzy or some part of Ozzy deliberately did what he did. Because people took offense when a year before that, he bit the head off a freaking dove!
He just wanted to make them happy.
“The bat thought I was giving him a kiss of life,” he sums up.
References
Ozzy Osborne quotes (n.d.). LucyWho.com. Retrieved October 9th, 2011 from http://quotes.lucywho.com/ozzy-osbourne-quotes-t3652.html
Kennedy, H., Burger. T.J. (2002). W rocked by Ozzy at dinner. Daily News. Retrieved October 9th, 2011 from http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/2002/05/05/2002-05-05_w_rocked_by_ozzy_at_dinner.html
Kreps, D. (2010). Scientists probe Ozzy's body for medical miracles. Rolling Stone music. Retrieved from http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/scientists-probe-ozzys-body-for-medical-miracles-20100615
