‘I found your song idea in the oven this morning,’ she said. ‘Then I poured your song idea down the sink.’
It was only a week or so after the oven incident, on September 2, 1983, that Aimee was born at the Wellington Hospital in St John’s Wood, London. She was a guiding light for us, she really was. It had been just over a year since Randy and Rachel had died, and we were only just starting to get over it. With Aimee, we had a brand new reason to feel good about life. She was such an innocent little thing, when you looked at her, you just couldn’t help breaking into a huge smile.
But no sooner had Aimee been born that it was time to go on the road again, this time to promote the Bark at the Moon album, which I’d just finished making with my new guitarist, Jake E. Lee. Sharon could have stayed at home, but that wasn’t her style, so we put a little cot in the back of the tour bus for Aimee and carried on. It was great for her: Aimee saw more of the world before her first birthday than most people do in a lifetime. I just wish I’d been sober for more of it. I was there physically, but not mentally. So I missed things you can never do over again: the first crawl, the first step, the first word.
If I think about it for too long, it breaks my heart.
In many ways I wasn’t really a father to Aimee. I was more like another kid for Sharon to look after.
9. Betty, Where’s the Bar?
‘Someone’s gonna die before this is over,’ I said to Doc McGhee, on the second night of the Bark at the Moon tour. Doc was the American manager of Motley Crue, our support band, and a good mate of mine.
‘Someone?’ he said. ‘I don’t think someone’s gonna die, Ozzy. I think we’re all gonna die.’
The problem, basically, was Motley Crue—which back then still had the original line-up of Nikki Sixx on bass, Tommy Lee on drums, Mick Mars on guitar and Vince Neil on vocals.
They were fucking crazy. Which obviously I took as a challenge. Just as I had with John Bonham, I felt like I had to out-crazy them, otherwise I wasn’t doing my job properly. But they took that as a challenge. So it was just wall-to-wall action, every minute of every day. The gigs were the easy part. The problem was surviving the bits in between.
The funniest thing about Motley Crue was that they dressed like chicks but lived like animals. It was an education, even for me. Wherever they went, they carried around this massive flight case full of every type of booze imaginable. The moment a gig was over, the lid would be thrown open, and the hounds of hell would be set loose.
Every night, bottles would be thrown, knives would be pulled, chair legs would be smashed, noses would be broken, property would be destroyed. It was like bedlam and pandemonium rolled into one, then multiplied by chaos.
People tell me stories about that tour and I have no idea if they’re true or not. They ask,
‘Ozzy, did you really once snort a line of ants off a Popsicle stick?’ and I ain’t got a fucking clue. It’s certainly possible. Every night stuff went up my nose that had no business being there. I was out of it the whole time. Even Tony Dennis got carried away. We ended up calling him ‘Captain Krell’—Krell was our new name for cocaine— because he tried doing a line once, although I don’t think he ever did it again. Our wardrobe chick even made him a little suit with ‘CK’ written in Superman letters on the chest.
We all thought it was hilarious.
One of the craziest nights of all was in Memphis.
As usual, it started as soon as we finished the gig. I remember walking down the corridor backstage to the dressing-room area and hearing Tommy Lee say, ‘Hey dude, Ozzy. Check this out!’
I stopped and looked around to see where his voice was coming from.
‘In here, man,’ said Tommy. ‘In here.’
I pushed open a door and saw him on the other side. He was sitting on a chair with his back to me. Nikki, Mick, Vince and a bunch of roadies were all standing around, smoking fags, laughing, talking about the show, drinking beer. And there, in front of Tommy, on her knees, was this naked chick. She was giving him the mother of all blowjobs.
Tommy waved at me to come closer. ‘Hey, dude, Ozzy. Check it out!’
So I peered over his shoulder. And there it was: his dick. Like a baby’s arm in a boxing glove. The fucking thing was so big, the chick could only get about a third of it in her mouth, and even then I was surprised there wasn’t a lump sticking out of the back of her neck. I’d never seen anything like it in my life.
‘Hey, Tommy,’ I said. ‘Can you get me one of those?’
‘Dude, sit down,’ he said. ‘Take your pants off, man. She’ll do you after she’s done me.’
I started to back away. ‘I ain’t gonna get mine out with that thing filling up the room!’ I said.
‘It would be like parking a tugboat next to the Titanic. Have you got a licence for that, Tommy?
It looks dangerous.’
‘Oh, dude, you don’t know what you’re miss—Oh, oh, oh, ah, urgh, urgh, ahhhhhh…’
I had to look away.
Then Tommy jumped up, zipped up his fly, and said, ‘Let’s get some eats, dude, I’m starving.’
We ended up in this place called Benihana—one of those Japanese steakhouse joints where they make the food on this big hot plate in front of you. While we waited for the food we drank beer and chasers. Then we got a jumbo-sized bottle of sake for the table. The last thing I remember is getting a massive bowl of wonton soup, finishing it, then filling the bowl to the brim with sake and downing it in one messy gulp.
‘Ahh!’ I said. ‘That’s better.’
Everyone just looked at me.
Then Tommy stood up and said, ‘Fuuuuuck, let’s get outta here, man. Any second now, Ozzy’s gonna blow.’
Then black.
Complete black.
Like someone yanking the cord from the back of a TV.
From what the others told me later, I got up from the table, said I was going to the bog, and never came back. To this day, I have no memory whatsoever of what I did for the next five hours.
But I’ll never forget waking up.
The first thing I heard was the noise:
N E E E E E E E E O O O O W W W W O O O M , N E E E E E E E E O O O O W W W W O O O M , Z Z Z Z M M M M M M M M M M M…
Then I opened my eyes. It was still dark, very dark, but there were thousands of little pin-pricks of light everywhere. I thought to myself, What the fuck’s going on? Am I dead or what?
And still this noise:
N E E E E E E E E O O O O W W W W O O O M , N E E E E E E E E O O O O W W W W O O O M , Z Z Z Z M M M M M M M M M M M …
Then I could smell rubber and petrol.
Then I heard an air horn, right next to my ear.
BLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHMM!!!!!!!!!
I rolled over, screaming.
Then blinding lights—maybe twenty or thirty of them, as tall as an office block—coming towards me. Before I could pick myself up and run, I heard this terrible roaring noise, and a gust of wind blew sand and grit in my face.
I’d woken up on the central reservation of a twelve-lane free-way.
How or why I was there, I had no idea. All I knew was that I had to get off the freeway before I died—and that I had to take a piss, because my bladder was about to explode. So I waited for a gap in the headlamps, then legged it across all these lanes, still too pissed to go in a straight line. Finally I made it to the other side, having just missed a motorbike in the slow lane. I jumped the fence, ran across another road, and began to search for somewhere to take a slash.And that’s when I saw it: a white car parked in a lay-by.
