while.
Randy was smoking fags and sipping from a can of Coke. He hardly touched the booze.
He only liked that horrible aniseed shit. What’s it called? Anisette. Like a thick, milky liqueur thing. Didn’t do drugs, either. Mind you, he made up for it with the fags. He could have won a gold medal in the Lung Cancer Olympics, could Randy Rhoads.
‘Are you joking with me?’ I said, trying not to choke on my drink.
‘No, Ozzy, I’m serious.’
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
It was long after midnight—maybe three or four in the morning—and me and Randy were the only ones still awake. Sharon was in the bedroom at the back. Rudy and Tommy were sprawled out on the bunks, along with some of the crew members who travelled with us, like Rachel Youngblood, an older black lady who did all our wardrobe, hair and make-up.
I was amazed they could sleep, ’cos the bus was rattling and shaking and groaning like it was gonna fall to pieces. It was a seven-hundred-mile journey from Knoxville to Orlando, and the driver was going like the clappers. I remember looking out of the window at all the headlamps of the cars and trucks flying past in the other direction and thinking, Any minute now, the wheels are gonna come off this thing. I had no idea that the driver had a nose full of coke.
I only found that out later from the coroner’s report.
Mind you, I had no idea about anything, me. I was out of my skull with all the booze and the coke and the fuck-knows-what-else I was shoving down my throat, twenty-four hours a day.
But I knew I didn’t want Randy to leave.
‘How could you quit now?’ I said to him. ‘We’ve only just broken through, man. Sharon says Diary of a Madman might sell even more copies than Blizzard. It’s going fucking gangbusters all over the world. Tomorrow night we’re playing with Foreigner!’
Randy just shrugged and said, ‘I want to go to university. Get a degree.’
‘Are you mad?’ I said. ‘Keep this up for a couple of years and you can buy your own fucking university.’
At least that made him smile.
‘Look,’ I went on. ‘You’re just knackered. Why don’t you get some rest, give yourself a bit of a break, y’know?’
‘I could say the same thing to you, Ozzy.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘That’s your fourth bottle of gin in twenty-four hours.’
‘Keeps me happy.’
‘Ozzy, why do you drink so much? What’s the point?’
The right answer to that question was: because I’m an alcoholic; because I have an addictive personality; because whatever I do, I do it addictively. But I didn’t know any of that back then.
All I ever knew was that I wanted another drink.
So I just gave Randy a blank look.
‘You’ll kill yourself, y’know?’ said Randy. ‘One of these days.’
‘Goodnight Randy,’ I said, draining my glass. ‘I’m off to bed.’
When I opened my eyes a few hours later, it was getting light. Sharon was lying next to me in her dressing- gown. My head felt like a pile of toxic shit.
I couldn’t understand why I’d woken up so early. The gin should have knocked me out until at least mid- afternoon.
Then I heard the noise.
It sounded like an engine at full revs. I thought we must have been overtaking a truck.
BBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRMMMM…
Whatever it was that was making the din seemed to move away from the bus, but then all of a sudden it came back, even louder than before
B B B B B B R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M B B B B B B R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R M M M M M M M M M…
‘Sharon?’ I said. ‘What the fuck is that noi—’
Then my head smashed into the bed frame as all the windows of the bus exploded.
I could smell fuel.
For a second, there was nothing but blackness.
Next thing I know I’m looking out of the porthole-shaped window next to my left arm. I can see black smoke and people with their heads in their hands, screaming. So I jump out of bed—stark bollock naked apart from a pair of greasy old underpants—and force open the bedroom door. There are tiny fragments of glass everywhere, and a fucking massive hole in the roof. Then I notice that the entire bus has been bent into a V-shape.
The first thing that comes into my head is that the driver must have lost control on the freeway. We must have crashed.
Then I’m coughing from the stench of the fuel and the smoke from the fire outside.
And I think: Fire and fuel. Oh, fuck.
‘EVERYONE GET OFF THE FUCKING BUS!’ I start to shout. ‘IT’S GONNA BLOW! IT’S GONNA BLOW!’
Panic.
Numb legs.
Sharon screaming.
I was still sozzled from the gin. My head was throbbing. My eyes were all crusty and raw. I looked for an emergency exit, but there wasn’t one. So I ran to the open door at the front of the bus instead, pulling Sharon along behind me. Then I looked around for the others, but all the bunks were empty. Where the fuck had everyone else gone? Where the hell was Randy?
I jumped out of the bus and landed on grass.
Grass?
At that point I thought I must have been dreaming.
Where was the road? Where were the cars? I’d expected to see twisted metal, blood, spinning hub-caps. But we were parked in the middle of a field, surrounded by a bunch of over-the-top, coke-dealer-style mansions. I saw a sign that said, ‘Flying Baron Estates’. Then, next to one of the houses, a gigantic fireball—like something from the set of a James Bond film. That’s where all the smoke was coming from. There was wreckage strewn around it. And what looked like…
Oh, Jesus Christ. I almost threw up when I saw that shit.
I had to turn away.
Aside from the smoke, it was a clear day—but it was early, so there was still a kind of muggy haze in the air.
‘Where are we? What’s happening?’ I kept saying, over and over. I’d never felt so totally fucking out-of-it in my life. It was worse than the worst acid trip I’d ever had. Then I noticed what looked like an air strip and a hangar. Next to the hangar, a woman in riding gear was walking next to a horse, like nothing had happened—like this was an everyday fucking occurrence. I was thinking, This is a nightmare, I’m dreaming, this can’t be real.
I stood there, in a trance, while our keyboard player, Don Airey, ran back to the bus, grabbed a miniature fire extinguisher from somewhere, jumped off the bus, then pointed it in the direction of the flames.
It spluttered and dribbled uselessly.
Meanwhile, Sharon was trying to do a head count, but people were scattered all over the field. They were just pointing at the flames and wailing and sobbing.
Now I could make out the remains of a garage around the flames. It looked as though there were two cars inside.
Something must have crashed into it.
And whatever it was must also have ripped the hole in our tour bus and taken out half the trees behind it.
Then Sharon went over to Don—‘El-Doom-O’, we used to call him, ’cos he was always expecting the worst —and screamed, ‘What happened? Tell me, what the fuck happened?’
