The first and last time I saw Ozzy Osbourne’s private parts was at the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham, Michigan, in July 1998. A magazine had flown me and photographer Hugo Dixon to meet Ozzy on his day off from the Ozzfest tour.
The interview involved him answering readers’ questions, which we’d printed out as props for the photo shoot. Knowing Ozzy was a huge Beatles fan, we’d shown his people an example of the same interview with Ringo Starr.
Ozzy welcomed us into his hotel suite, didn’t ask our names or where we were from, but began talking as if he’d known us forever. He couldn’t decide what to wear for the shoot, though, and at one point Sharon suggested a black flowery shirt.
“Fuck off, I’ll look like Robert Plant,” he huffed, before choosing a plain black top and removing his black trousers to put on an identical pair. He had no reticence about undressing in front of us. We’d been invited into Ozzy’s world, and it was a level playing field.
Ringo had been photographed fully clad and sitting in an armchair. But Ozzy agreed to be photographed on the lavatory. Without warning, he dropped his trousers and underpants and shoved a handful of readers’ letters towards his bare backside, like toilet paper. “Fucking hell,” he deadpanned. “I bet Ringo didn’t do this.”
To make the toilet paper routine look convincing, Ozzy lifted his buttocks, which caused his genitals to plop into view. Unlike many male rock photographers, Hugo was a softly spoken gentleman and looked aghast. “Oh dear,” he purred. “Can ya see my bollocks?” Ozzy asked. “Sorry.”
There then followed a few seconds of Ozzy shifting position to protect his modesty. Once achieved, he ran through the full gamut of Ozzy facial expressions: demonic stare, demonic grin, demonic leer and a look of bemusement, as if we’d – Yes! – just caught him on the toilet.
Once the shoot was done, he shuffled off the pan and pulled up his pants as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world to do in front of two complete strangers.
There was no side to him. Ozzy was guileless, occasionally childlike and always amusing. He also seemed bemused by his success, as if he half expected to be told the gig was up. “I dunno what the fuck I’m doing,” he told us, with an earnest, quizzical look.
He was the same when I met him again, in April 2002, at the Osbournes’ family home in Beverly Hills. The Osbournes reality TV show had launched in the UK, and I was there to interview Sharon, but Ozzy gate-crashed the conversation. At one point we sat in the kitchen eating baked beans on toast while his wife had her photograph taken wearing Dracula fangs.
“Smell this,” Ozzy said, reaching into a bowl on the counter to retrieve a lump of shrapnel. “It’s from a bombsite, and it smells like my childhood.”
I inhaled the scent of burnt metal and World War Two, while Ozzy looked wistful. He was now a TV star, and had become a household name in households that didn’t have a copy of Vol 4 or Diary Of A Madman. He didn’t know who I was, but since he’d let TV cameras into the house there was always some stranger traipsing around the place, so he didn’t bother asking.
Later that afternoon we accompanied the family to the Hollywood Walk of Fame for the unveiling of Ozzy’s star. Hundreds lined the streets as we waited in the back room of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Marilyn Manson and Robbie Williams were there to introduce him and made for an odd couple: the goth praying mantis, and the exiled British boy band star, who’d just moved to LA and was hanging out with Ozzy and Sharon’s daughter Kelly.
The audience was also an uneasy mix of Ozzy diehards and ordinary people who knew him only as that long-haired English dude who swore a lot and shouted “Sharaaaaaahn!”
One section was more vocal than the other. “Uzzy! Uzzy!” bellowed one topless devotee who had the great man’s face tattooed across his chest. Reading the room, Robbie Williams canned his planned speech and led the audience in chanting Ozzy’s name as well. “Who the fuck are you?” the topless, tattooed fan roared at Williams, furious at having his chant hijacked.
Finally, Ozzy took to the podium. “I’m so overwhelmed that you turned up to see my ol’ butt,” he said, though this time he kept his trousers on. “Once again,” he added, looking bemused by all the people and the applause, “I love you all.”
Once again, I had the impression he thought it could all end tomorrow and he’d find himself back in his childhood home of Aston, Birmingham – a long way, physically and spiritually, from Beverly Hills, or even Birmingham, Michigan.
As clichéd as it sounds, I don’t think Ozzy ever fully lost sight of who he was or where he came from – and I don’t think he ever forgot the smell of that bombsite.
