killed themselves by going to the pub too much. It’s an alcoholics’ culture.
When I was younger, I used to think the whole world was drunk. Then I moved to America and realised it’s just England that’s drunk.
I got off the drugs, too, eventually. Apart from the stuff I take for my tremor and my anti-depressants, I’m a narco-free zone. When I go to a doctor now, the first thing I say is, ‘Look, I’m an addict, I’m an alcoholic, so please don’t listen to a word of my bullshit.’ Tony comes with me to all of my appointments, too, as a kind of insurance policy.
The drugs I’m taking now don’t have many side-effects—unlike the ones I got from some of those other docs I used to go to. Although the anti-depressants have played havoc with my sex drive. I can get a boner, but no fireworks. So I end up pumping away on top of Sharon like a road drill all night, with nothing happening. I tried Viagra, but by the time it kicked in, Sharon was fast asleep. So it was just me and this tent pole in front of me, with nothing to do but watch the History Channel.
When I asked the doctor about it, he said, ‘Oh, you don’t still do that, do you?’
‘It’s the only fucking pleasure I have left!’ I told him.
Mind you, I’ve never felt the temptation to run off with a younger chick, like some guys my age do. I mean, what do you fucking talk about with a twenty-year-old? The real estate market? The situation in Afghanistan? It would be like talking to a child.
I must have been clean for at least four or five years now. I don’t keep count. I don’t know the exact date when I stopped. It’s not a fucking race. I just get out of bed every morning and don’t drink, and don’t take drugs. I still avoid those AA meetings, though. To me, it feels too much like substituting an addiction to booze with an addiction to the programme. I ain’t saying it’s unhelpful, ’cos it can be very helpful. But the change had to come from me.
Therapy’s helped a lot, mind you, even though I didn’t understand it at first. I made the same mistake as I had with rehab—thinking it would cure me. But it’s just a way of relieving a problem by talking about it. It helps because if you ain’t talking about something it stays in your head and eventually you get whacked out on it.
I have a sponsor, too: Billy Morrison, the guitarist from Camp Freddy. I met him through AA. If I ever get the feeling that I should have a joint, ’cos it would help me write a song or whatever, I pick up the phone to Billy. And that defuses the thought. He’ll say, ‘A joint might feel good for the first two minutes, but by the end of the day you’ll be throwing bottles of Scotch down your neck.’ It’s a good system because it’s the secrets and the lies that get you drunk again.
I couldn’t be a sponsor, though. I have too much of a problem trusting people, and, like I said, I don’t go to the meetings, so I’ve never worked my way through the twelve steps, like you’re supposed to. It’s not the God thing that puts me off, because you don’t have to believe in God to do the programme. You just have to accept that there’s a higher power—it could be the lamp in the corner of the room, for all they care. Some people use nature, the ocean, their dick—whatever comes to mind.
The thing about being clean is, if I fell off the wagon now there’s a good chance I’d die.
Your tolerance falls off a cliff when you quit. A couple of drinks, and I’d be fucked. So I don’t go out much when I’m not on the road. I don’t need to: I’ve got my wife, I’ve got my friends, I’ve got my dogs—all seventeen of them—and I’ve got my land. And you should see our new house up in Hidden Hills. Talk about a rock-star mansion. When I’m lying in bed, all I have to do is press a button and this giant flat-screen TV rises out of the floor and dangles above my head. And the bogs—fucking hell, man, I wish my old man could have lived long enough to try out one of my bogs. I grew up having to piss in a bucket ’cos there was no indoor shitter, and now I have these computerised Japanese super-loo things that have heated seats and wash and blow-dry your arse at the touch of a button. Give it a couple of years and I’ll have a bog with a robot arm that pulls out my turds, so I don’t have to strain.
It ain’t a bad life, put it that way.
And I keep myself busy. For example, I’m going to take my driving test again. I mean, I’ve been driving for the best part of forty years—but never legally and usually drunk. So I might as well do it properly before I pop my clogs. Mind you, my driving instructor wants me to learn in a car with two steering wheels. Bollocks to that. I said to the guy, ‘We’re doing it in my Range Rover or we’re not doing it at all.’ But after the last lesson we had, I wouldn’t be surprised if he turns up next week in a crash helmet. He thinks I’m crazy, that bloke. Every time I go around a corner, he flinches like I’m gonna play chicken with an eighteen-wheeler.
I suppose it’s understandable, given the crazy things they’ve said about me over the years. ‘He bit the head off a bat.’ OK. ‘He bit the head off a dove.’ Fair enough. But I ain’t a puppy-killer, or a Devil-worshipper, or someone who wants his fans to blow their heads off. It haunts me, all that crazy stuff. People embellish the stories, y’know? It’s like kids in a school-yard: one of them says, ‘Johnny’s cut his finger,’ but by the time it’s reached the other side of the playground, Johnny’s cut his fucking head off.
Nowadays, when I’m at home, I draw pictures while listening to old Beatles albums on my headphones. They’re just doodles, really. I ain’t good at it. I just do patterns and fuck around and make crazy shapes in bright colours—like sixties Pop Art. It keeps me out of trouble. Oh, and I collect Nazi memorabilia. I’ve got flags, SS daggers, leather overcoats, everything—but I don’t get many chances to put up the swastikas, not with a half Jewish missus. Most of the stuff I buy eventually finds its way to Lemmy, who’s even more into it than I am.
You should see his house, man. It’s like a museum.
These days, I spend much more time with my family than I ever did when I was drinking.
Aimee, Kelly and Jack are doing great. And I see Jess and Louis all the time now, too. They both got Thelma’s brains: Jess is a surveyor and Louis got a law degree. Between them, they’ve given me four grandchildren, which is a crazy thought. And I still talk to my older sister Jean every Sunday. ‘Anything to report?’ I always ask her. ‘Everyone doing OK?’
Things are OK with Black Sabbath, but at the moment there’s an issue over who owns the name. My position is that we should all own it equally. We’ll see what happens, but I hope it gets resolved, ’cos I have the greatest respect for Tony Iommi. I haven’t spoken to Geezer for a while—he’s still always got his nose in a book—but I’ve kept in touch with Bill. He’s been clean and sober for twenty-five years now. And if you’d known him a quarter of a century ago, you’d know that’s nothing short of a miracle.
As for me, I just want to spend the rest of my days being a rock ’n’ roller. I certainly don’t want to do any more telly, except for a few ads here and there, as long as they’re funny.
Y’know, I used to get upset by people not understanding me, but I’ve made a career out of it now. I even ham it up a bit, ’cos it’s what people expect of me.
I suppose the one ambition I have left is to get a number one album in America. But if it doesn’t happen, I can’t really complain. I’ve managed to do just about everything else. I mean, I’m so grateful that I’m me, that I’m here, that I can still enjoy the life that I have.
If I don’t live a day longer, I’ll have had more than my fair share. The only thing I ask is that if I end up brain-dead in a hospital somewhere, just pull the plug, please. But I doubt it’ll get to that. Knowing me, I’ll go out in some stupid way. I’ll trip on the doorstep and break my neck. Or I’ll choke on a throat lozenge. Or a bird will shit on me and give me some weird virus from another planet. Look what happened with the quad bike: I’d been taking lethal combinations of booze and drugs for decades but it was riding over a pothole in my back garden at two miles an hour that nearly killed me.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t worry about that kind of heavy-duty stuff on a daily basis. I’ve come to believe that everything in life is worked out in advance. So whenever bad shit happens, there ain’t nothing you can do about it. You’ve just gotta ride it out. And eventually death will come, like it comes to everyone.
I’ve said to Sharon: ‘Don’t cremate me, whatever you do.’ I want to be put in the ground, in a nice garden somewhere, with a tree planted over my head. A crabapple tree, preferably, so the kids can make wine out of me and get pissed out of their heads.
As for what they’ll put on my headstone, I ain’t under any illusions.
If I close my eyes, I can already see it:
