OZZY OSBOURNE: 'I'm Frightened Of Not Having Anything To Be Frightened Of'

Alison Roberts of the Evening Standard recently conducted an interview with Ozzy Osbourne. A few excerpts follow:

On being sober for about two years:

"I don't like to harp on about how long it's been because next week I'll be lying in a f***ing bar out of my brain with someone taking a picture of me. It's happened before."

On the 1989 incident when he, blitzkrieged by alcohol, actually attempted to strangle his wife:

"One of my daughters — Kelly — is 22, and she was just born when I first wanted to get help, so it's taken me all this time to finally do it. I mean, you can guarantee one of three things if you drink like I did: death, if you're lucky, insanity or jail.

"I used to black out a lot. And my biggest fear was waking up in a police cell and having an old lady say to a police officer, yes, that's the guy who ran my husband down, or that's the guy who hit my son over the head with an axe. It used to terrify me ... And then it happened — that day when I woke up in this little single cell with human shit up the walls - and I thought, what the f*** have I done now? Has one of my practical jokes backfired? So I asked a police officer. I said: 'What am I here for?' I hadn't got a f***ing clue. It's the most horrific feeling. He read me a piece of paper, and said, 'You're charged with attempting to murder Mrs. Sharon Osbourne.' I can't tell you how I felt. I just went numb.

"But even that didn't stop me. It was only when I got sick and tired of feeling sick and tired that I finally got my shit together."

On attending AA meetings:

"At the beginning I was thinking, this is me, Ozzy, do I really want to go and sit in a room full of drop-outs? And my sponsor says to me, when you were drinking, did you ever go to inferior bars? And of course I did, if there was a drink at the end of it. Nothing stopped me going to bars."

On how he'd describe the Higher Power he's asked to call upon at those 12-step AA meetings:

"I suppose it's God, for want of a better word, but I don't read the Bible. Have you ever tried reading that thing? I wouldn't have wanted to be alive in those days, when Adam lived to be, like, 1,000 years old. I can't do it, being dyslexic. By the time I finished page one, I'd be dead."

On shopping with Sharon in Beverly Hills:

"I hate it. I f***ing hate it. If I want a black shirt, I'll find out my size and go and get one. Sharon has to look through every shirt in the shop. I end up losing it. An assistant will come up to me and say, 'Mr. Osbourne can I interest you in this lovely pink coat?' Me? Pink? The Prince of Darkness, in pink?"

On growing up in working-class Aston, Birmingham, one of six children whose dad worked nights in a factory:

"I used to dream a lot. I joined a band because I loved THE BEATLES and it was a good way of being with the lads. We'd be on the road with two bob between us. Someone would say, 'What shall we do with it? Four lots of chips, or 10 No 6?' And we'd always vote for the fags."

On his current preferred method of self-abuse — television:

"I'm a TV addict, if anything. I'm drawn to the destruction of mankind, all that stuff on the Discovery Channel — I call it the Hitler Channel — the wars, bombs, all that dark stuff. I must have watched 'The World at War' 5,000 times. I suppose I'm one of those people who likes to see a car crash. I've always been like that."

On how he deals with all those dark thoughts now that he's sober:

"The sobriety is not so much for me as for my children and for my grandchildren. But I'm still one of those people who get worried sick if they don't have anything to be frightened of. It's a circular thing. I'm frightened of not having anything to be frightened of. I still have demons. I still get terrible stage fright."

On whether he will ever stop:

"If there comes a time I can't fill arenas and I'm down to playing clubs and bars. When I was 21, I thought I'd be dead at 40 — but that ain't so cool when you're 39-and-a-half. My memory's a bit dozy and I set off metal detectors, but when the Big Man upstairs wants you to stop, you'll stop. And he hasn't wanted me to yet."