and I’ll take it to the grave with me. My own parents used to fight a lot, so maybe I thought that’s just what you do. But there’s no excuse. One night, when I was out of my tree on booze and pills, I hit Thelma so hard I gave her a black eye. We were meeting her father the next day, and I thought, Fucking hell, he’s gonna beat the crap out of me now. But all he said was, ‘So which one of you won, eh?’
The saddest thing is, it wasn’t until I became sober that I truly realised how disgusting my behaviour was. But I do now, trust me.
While all that fucked-up stuff was going on, we decided to make another album—this time hauling all our gear and crew to America and booking into Criteria Studios in Miami. The title we’d decided on was Technical Ecstasy, although I can’t say I was 100 per cent enthusiastic.
By now, our albums were getting ridiculously expensive to make. We’d recorded Black Sabbath in one day. Sabotage took about four thousand years. Technical Ecstasy didn’t take quite as long, but the cost of doing it in Florida was astronomical.
At the same time as our sales were falling, the record company wasn’t as interested as it used to be, we’d just got a million-dollar tax bill from the IRS in America, we couldn’t afford to pay our legal bills, and we didn’t have a manager. At one point, Bill was the one manning the phones. Worse than all that, though, we’d lost our direction. It wasn’t the experimentation with the music. It was more that we didn’t seem to know who we were any more. One minute you had an album cover like Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, with the bloke being attacked by demons on it, and the next you had two robots having sex while they’re going up a fucking escalator, which was the artwork for Technical Ecstasy.
I’m not saying the album was all bad—it wasn’t. For example, Bill wrote a song called ‘It’s Alright’, which I loved. He sang it, too. He’s got a great voice, Bill, and I was more than happy for him to do the honours. But I’d started to lose interest, and I kept thinking about what it would be like to have a solo career. I’d even had a T-shirt made with ‘Blizzard of Ozz’ written on the front. Meanwhile, in the studio, Tony was always saying, ‘We’ve gotta sound like Foreigner,’ or, ‘We’ve gotta sound like Queen.’ But I thought it was strange that the bands that we’d once influenced were now influencing us. Then again, I’d lost the plot with the booze and the drugs, and I was saying a lot of bad things, making trouble, being a dick-head.
In fact, my boozing was so bad during the Technical Ecstasy sessions in Florida, I checked myself into a loony bin called St George’s when I got back home. It’s real name was the Stafford County Asylum, but they changed it to make people feel better about being insane. It was a big old Victorian place. Dark and dingy, like the set of a science-fiction movie.
The first thing the doctor said to me when I went in there was, ‘Do you masturbate, Mr Osbourne?’ I told him, ‘I’m in here for my head, not my dick.’
I didn’t last long in that place. I’m telling you, the docs in those funny farms are more bonkers than the patients.
Then Thelma bought me some chickens.
She probably thought it would help bring me down to earth. And it did, for about five minutes. But then the novelty wore off—especially when I realised that Thelma expected me to feed the fucking things and clean out their shit. So I started trying to find a reason to get rid of them.
‘Thelma,’ I said to her, one morning, after I’d finally had enough. ‘Where did you get those chickens from? They’re broken.’
‘What do you mean, they’re broken?’
‘They’re not laying any eggs.’
‘Well, it would help if you fed them, John. Besides, they’re probably stressed out, poor things.’
‘Why d’you say that?’
‘Come on, John. You put up a sign beside their coop that says, “Oflag 14”. I know they can’t read, but still.’
‘It’s just a joke.’
‘Firing warning shots over their heads every morning probably isn’t helping much, either.’
‘Everyone needs a bit of encouragement.’
‘You’re scaring the living daylights out of them. You’ll give one of them a heart attack if you keep it up.’
Here’s hoping, I thought.
As the weeks and months went by, I kept forgetting to feed the chickens, and they kept forgetting to lay any eggs. All I would hear from Thelma was: ‘John, feed the chickens.’ Or:
‘John, remember to feed the chickens.’ Or: ‘John, did you feed the chickens?’
It was driving me fucking nuts.
I was trying to have a break—making Technical Ecstasy had been knackering, mainly thanks to all the boozing involved—but I couldn’t get any peace. If it wasn’t Thelma, it was the lawyers. If it wasn’t the lawyers, it was the accountants. If it wasn’t the accountants, it was the record company. And if it wasn’t the record company, it was Tony or Bill or Geezer, worrying about the ‘new direction’ or complaining about our tax bills.
The only way I could handle it was to get loaded all the time.
Then one day I finally lost it.
I’d been up all night—a lock-in at the Hand & Cleaver, followed by more boozing at home, then a few toots of coke, then some dope, then some more coke, then a blackout around breakfast time to refresh myself, then some coke to wake me up again. By then it was time for lunch. So I had a bottle of cough syrup, three glasses of wine, some more coke, a joint, half a packet of cigarettes and a Scotch egg. But no matter how much I put away, I couldn’t get rid of this horrendous restless feeling. I’d often get that feeling after coming home from America: I’d find myself standing in the kitchen for hours, just opening and closing the fridge door; or sitting in the living room in front of the telly, flipping from one channel to the next, never watching anything.
But this time, something was different.
I was going insane.
There was nothing else for it: I was gonna have to go back down the Hand & Cleaver and sort myself out.
I was just about to leave the house when I heard Thelma coming down the stairs. She walked into the kitchen and said, ‘I’m going to my mum’s to get the kids.’ I watched as she picked up a pile of Good Housekeeping magazines from the table and started putting them in her bag. Then she stopped and turned to look at me standing there beside the fridge in my underpants and my dressing-gown, fag in mouth, giving my balls a good old scratch.
‘Did you feed the chickens?’ she said.
‘I told you, they’re broken.’
‘Just feed them, John, for God’s sake. Or, y’know what? Let them die—I don’t care any more.’
‘I’m going down the pub.’
‘Wearing the terrycloth bathrobe you got for Christmas?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Classy, John. Very classy.’
‘Have you seen my slippers?’
‘Try the dog bed. I’ll be back at eight.’
Next thing I knew I was staggering out of the house in a pair of welly-boots—I couldn’t find my slippers— heading in the direction of the pub. As I walked I kept trying to tighten the cord around my dressing-gown. I didn’t want to be flashing a loose bollock at any passing farmers; especially not the bearded cross-dressing loony from down the road.
When I got to the gate at the bottom of the driveway I suddenly had a change of heart.
‘You know what?’ I said to myself. ‘I’m going to feed those chickens. Fuck it. If it keeps her happy, I’ll do it.’ So I turned around and started wobbling back in the direction of the house.
But I was thirsty now, so I went over to where the Range Rover was parked, pulled open the door, and reached into the glove box for my emergency bottle of Scotch.
Swig. Ahhh. That’s better! Burp.
On I went into the garden… But then I had another change of heart. Fuck the chickens! I thought. Not one of those little fuckers has ever laid any eggs for me! Fuck them! Fuck them all!
Swig. Ahhh. Burp. I lit another fag.
