Ozzy Osbourne Finds Light in the Darkness: “I Have So Much More to Give Before I Go”

The return of the Prince of Darkness to the land of the living came with the appropriate amount of fireworks and pyrotechnics.

The occasion was the closing ceremonies of the Commonwealth Games, held for the first time in Birmingham, England in August 2022. To the now-familiar chords of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” -- played with customary ease by its creator, Tony Iommi -- hometown hero Ozzy Osbourne ascended from below. Rising on a platform on stage left, clad in his usual all-black finery while flames and sparks burst around him, Ozzy held his arms wide as a broad grin came over his face.

“I love you, Birmingham!” he yelled at one point after “Iron Man” gave way to “Paranoid,” his legendary band’s first Top 10 single in the UK. “It’s good to be back!”

That evening, Ozzy was where he is most at home: holding an audience of thousands rapt while singing about a fractured mind in search of solace. But there was no denying the reality of how frail he looked. Rather than stalking the stage, Ozzy remained fixed, clutching the microphone stand tightly as he bounced up and down gingerly. Behind him stood a railing, ready for him to grab onto should he lose balance. Not for the first time, this godlike figure in the world of heavy music looked all too human.

Speaking with Consequence two months’ after that performance -- and one month after his September 2022 appearance as the halftime entertainment at a Los Angeles Rams football game -- Ozzy glows at the memory.

“Just to have that feeling of being onstage was fucking awesome,” he says. “I mean, I was propped up at the back with a metal stand, so I wouldn’t fall over. But it was great. I loved every minute of it.”

In Ozzy’s voice is a note of want; a hunger to be back onstage as soon as possible. Not simply because there’s a new album to promote -- Patient Number 9, his 13th solo effort, was released on September 9th -- but also because, as Sharon Osbourne, his manager, caretaker, and wife of 40 years, bluntly puts it, “[It’s] all Ozzy knows.”

“The writing and the album and then getting ready for the next tour,” she continues. “This is how he’s spent his time since he was 18. To change that rhythm, to change his life, to have to be checked -- his blood pressure, his this, his that -- all the time. It’s a nightmare.”

The cycle of Ozzy’s creative life had already been upended before the pandemic swept through the world and put on hold the promotion of his previous album, 2020’s Ordinary Man. In early 2019, he was diagnosed with a respiratory infection that blossomed into pneumonia. While he was recovering from that illness, Ozzy suffered a fall in his Los Angeles home that exacerbated a neck injury he had sustained years before. The next year, the singer appeared on Good Morning America with Sharon to reveal that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

The passion in Ozzy’s tone when he talks about being in front of his fans while his backing band roars behind him is only amplified by his awareness of how much longer it will be before he can safely do it again.

“It’s a slow recovery,” he says. “The surgery [I had earlier this year] in my spine, my neck, the first surgeon who did it, he fucked it all up, and I had to have other surgeries to put things back again as normal as possible. And when they go into your spine, they cut nerves, so it’s taken a while for the nerves to react to anything.

“I am getting there. It’s a very slow recovery. I’m not good at being sick anyway, and it’s too fucking slow for me. I’ve never been this laid up in my life.”

Rock stars don’t often retire willfully. Which is why he’s currently undergoing intensive physical therapy to get himself as close to 100% as possible.

"I’m determined to get back on the stage again," he says. "I don’t think I’ll be doing fucking nine-month tours anymore. But I don’t even know myself. Right now, I’m still in recovery, and I have a goal. And my goal is to get back onstage. It’s the driving force in me. I miss my audience. I miss doing gigs. I miss my crew. I miss my band. I miss the whole thing."

Adding to that desire to get on the road is a touch of concern about what effect not touring might have on the sales and cultural impact of the two albums Ozzy has released since 2020. Though Ordinary Man and Patient Number 9 both debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 upon release, they could fade from memory fast in our oversaturated media landscape without a true promotional blitz. The shame of that would be worsened by the reality that, with the help of some choice collaborators, Ozzy found a new creative gear on these records, producing some of his strongest solo material in years.

The key figure assisting Ozzy on these recent collections is producer Andrew Watt. The 32-year-old Grammy winner has built up an impressive and diverse resume, working with some of the biggest names in pop (Lana Del Rey, Miley Cyrus) and hip-hop (Cardi B, Future), as well as joining the backing band for Eddie Vedder’s solo tours. Ozzy notes that his daughter Kelly Osbourne, who is friends with the producer, is the one who brought the two men together.

“Kelly came in one day, and she says to me, ‘Dad, would you like to do an album?’” Ozzy recalls. “And I said, ‘How the fuck am I going to do an album? I’m crippled.’ And she says she’s got this friend, Andrew Watt, and he’s a very easy guy to work with, and I said, ‘I’ll give it a shot.’ So, I went to his house and it was meant to be.”

Their collaboration came at just the right moment for Ozzy. He had put his solo work on hold for the better part of the 2010s after reuniting with Black Sabbath, the heavy rock behemoth that introduced the singer to the world back in 1968. The group released the Rick Rubin-produced album 13 in 2013, and went on an extended world tour three years later. When the dust settled on that run in 2017, Sabbath was put to rest once and for all.

These days, Ozzy is in the position many artists of his age reach: trying to balance an internal drive to move forward as an artist and performer with the realities of his age. Even before his surgeries and the Parkinson’s diagnosis, he was slowing down physically and using a cane to move around (though few people can make a walking stick look as badass as Ozzy does).

To help Ozzy along, Watt took a page from Rubin’s playbook for working with legacy artists. For Ordinary Man, the producer filled out the sessions with younger players and collaborators, many of whom count Ozzy and Sabbath as major influences. Most of the songs on the record were co-written with Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith and Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan, and there were guest appearances by Slash, Tom Morello, and Charlie Puth.

Capping this off was Watt introducing Ozzy to Post Malone. The trio collaborated on “Take What You Want,” a track for the rapper’s 2019 album Hollywood’s Bleeding that wound up giving Ozzy his first Top 10 single in the US in over 30 years and introducing him to a new generation of listeners. The fruitful sessions also yielded “It’s a Raid,” a duet with Malone that landed on Ordinary Man.

When that record was released, Ozzy was already talking about working with Watt again -- something made even more feasible with the pandemic scuttling the artist’s touring plans. Though everyone involved was filled with fresh inspiration, the sessions were fraught due to the self-imposed restrictions that were in place to keep Ozzy healthy.

“That was a huge challenge,” Watt says. “Getting testing done. Making sure everything was safe for him. I got COVID pretty bad in the beginning. There were days when LA was really bad, and we’d have to be sitting in the studio wearing masks. How are you supposed to sing with a mask on? It didn’t make it feel like a real creative time once you get rolling to just have to stop and then find that fire again. That was tough.”

Patient Number 9 shows no evidence of any such strain. The songs have the crisp and punchy attack of modern hard rock and are mastered to burst forth, whether they’re heard through earbuds or the speakers on a high-end stereo setup. The blackness at the heart of so much of Ozzy’s work is still ever-present, from the man tortured by memories of a troubled childhood on “Parasite” to the bleak look at our modern age that permeates “Dead and Gone.” At the same time, Ozzy sounds completely energized and even a little playful, as with the winking “Degradation Rules” (“Degradation rules/ Beating on your jewels”).

Pumping even more blood into the proceedings was a revolving all-star cast of musicians and guests. Some of that had to do with Ozzy’s apparent frustration with the guitar sound on Ordinary Man ("I made sure on Patient Number 9 that I got different guitar players”), which led to him and Watt bringing in different musicians to add their unique stamps to the songs.

“I got to play all these rhythm tracks and write these rips,” Watt says by phone, “and then dream up, like, ‘Hey, it would be really cool to have Eric Clapton play the solo on this.’ I would float all these ideas to Ozzy and he loved them. Sharon helped get these people to actually hear his stuff and then do it. It was really fun.”

Clapton does indeed pop up on Patient, lending a perfectly watery solo to the power ballad “One of Those Days.” Also getting in on the record’s collaborative fun were another former Yardbird in Jeff Beck, as well as Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready, and Ozzy’s regular comrade Zakk Wylde. For longtime fans, though, it was the appearance of Black Sabbath’s Iommi on a pair of tracks that caused waves of excitement when the album was announced earlier this year.

“Tony came through great,” Ozzy says. “I know his playing. He wouldn’t just send me any riff. What he sent was fucking brilliant and would have made a great Black Sabbath track.”

Patient Number 9 also features some of the last recorded work of Taylor Hawkins, the Foo Fighters drummer who died at age 50 in March 2022. His familiar loose yet rigid playing rips through a trio of tracks on the album, and he received a writing credit for each one. While Watt is still too emotional to discuss Hawkins’ work (“Tough for me to talk about,” he says, “He’s one of my best friends and brothers”), Ozzy is a little more measured when asked about the drummer’s contributions.

“I met Taylor for about an hour and a half one day at the studio,” Ozzy says. “He seemed a very nice man. Apart from that, I don’t feel it’s my place to say anything. What I did see of him, I liked... It was very sad.”

There is a sense of finality to Patient Number 9, even if Ozzy dare not admit it. “God Only Knows,” the penultimate track on the record, wrestles with the last moments in a person’s life, asking what comes after our final breath and realizing too late that the little grievances in life really don’t matter much at the end.

The song seems about as close as any of us are going to get to understanding what is going through Ozzy’s mind as he approaches his 74th birthday in December, and continues to face the dull truth that he has more days behind him than ahead of him. When talking to him, he doesn’t seem at all ruffled about his ultimate fate.

“The most valuable thing I have now is time,” he says. “I don’t think I’m going to be around forever. And that’s why I want to make more records. I have so much more to give before I go. If I didn’t have anything worth doing, I wouldn’t do it.”

There’s still much to be done. In addition to the work Ozzy is putting in to get back in fighting form for a European tour with Judas Priest that’s on the books for next summer, he and Sharon are also set to relocate to England by the end of 2022. It’s a substantial move, as the couple have been in Los Angeles for the better part of four decades, and they will be leaving behind their three adult children and their grandkids. (“To be honest with you, if I had my way, I’d stay in America,” Ozzy admits. “I’m American now... to be honest with you, I don’t want to go back. Fuck that.”)

But they both insist that it was a necessary step after Sharon was criticized for defending her friend Piers Morgan online and on the CBS morning show The Talk following some problematic comments he had made about Meghan Markle. (Sharon left the show soon after.) The decision, according to Sharon, was made even easier by the fact that “California is not what it once was.”

“When I first came here, I thought I was in heaven,” she says. “In the ‘70s, if you loved music, this was the place to be. It’s not that hub anymore. It’s not exciting anymore. It hasn’t gone sideways, it’s gone down. It’s not a fun place to live. It’s dangerous here. Every big city’s got crime, but I don’t feel safe here. Neither does Ozzy.”

That last small statement speaks volumes about the couple’s relationship. Their 40-year marriage has survived a lot. His drug and alcohol abuse. His infidelities. Their regular quarreling. Her willingness to speak her mind no matter what the repercussions or who she slags off. The notorious incident in 1989 when Ozzy, in a fit of drunken rage, tried to strangle his wife. The list goes on.

Yet after the dust settles, they remain committed to and supportive of one another. It’s born out in moments like the recent viral video of the couple slow dancing at her 70th birthday party, or when Ozzy discusses how Sharon was treated by CBS and The Talk.

“It broke her heart,” he says. “It was wrong what they did to her. It really was. I thought [her co-host] Sheryl Underwood would stick up for her. She’s her friend. Little did I know it was her who dropped the bomb. Sharon was set up and it was wrong. It was really wrong.”

The easy read on the Osbournes’ return to the UK would be that the couple is headed back to their ancestral homeland to quietly see out their final years together. It’s an angle that may come into play when the BBC finally unveils the 10-episode reality series they are filming about the move. But there’s likely more practicality behind it all than anything else.

“No More Tours II,” Ozzy's ongoing farewell tour -- which kicked off in 2018 but was interrupted by both his health and the pandemic -- is planned to get back underway on May 3rd in Finland and run through mid-June with what will surely be a triumphal final show at the Resorts World Arena in Birmingham. The wear and tear of travel will surely be much easier to manage if Ozzy can slip back home to recuperate between gigs. The same goes when he’s finally able to replace the grind of touring with the occasional set at some of the big metal festivals in Europe or at a spot appearance at an event in the States.

What should be clear at this point is that Ozzy is not going to go quietly away any time soon. When he looks ahead at his remaining time on this plane, he doesn’t spy a finish line -- just many more pathways and opportunities to continue haunting the worlds of heavy rock and pop culture.

“I watched an interview on YouTube the other day, one of the Beatles, and he was saying when the Beatles decided to stop touring, it was okay for a while, but then you do an album and you miss that audience reaction,” Ozzy says. “It’s kinda what happened with me. I did Ordinary Man, and I went back in and did Patient Number 9, and then you go, ‘What now?’ And that’s what strives me to keep going and makes me want to carry on. ‘You’ve achieved everything. What are you still doing it for?’”

With his trademark humor, he concludes: “Another question I often get asked is what’s my best album. And I always say, ‘Well, I haven’t made it yet.’”