NEED TO KNOW
Ozzy Osbourne looked back on a dark period in his marriage before his death.
In his posthumous memoir Last Rites, which was published on Oct. 7, the late Black Sabbath rocker reflects on the night he was arrested for nearly murdering Sharon Osbourne in September 1989.
In the book, the “Crazy Train” singer wrote that he had been on a bender, mixing vodka with crushed-up painkillers, at the time of the incident.
“It was too much. I’d gone too far. I was out of control. Me and Sharon had been arguing for a while over little things,” Ozzy wrote. “Just the usual s— about feeling overworked, ’cos those were the days when I took touring for granted.”
That night, his frustrations exploded into “something much bigger,” wrote Ozzy, who in his substance-charged haze, began to choke his wife.
“I don’t believe in a devil with a tail and little red horns, but I’m pretty sure he was with me that night. The first I knew about any of it was when I woke up on the floor of a jail cell at Amersham police station with the worst hangover of my life,” he wrote, adding that an officer told him he had been booked for attempted murder.
In the book, Ozzy continued, “My first thought was, ‘F—, I must have driven drunk.’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘You tried to kill your wife.’ It was like a bad dream. When he read me the charges, I couldn’t believe it. ‘Maybe I really am insane,’ I remember thinking.”
At the time, Ozzy was released on bail under the condition that he goes to rehab — and he did for six months. Sharon, 73, didn’t contact him for five months, then she showed up one day to say she dropped the charges.
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“She said she didn’t believe the sober-world version of me was capable of murder. But she never wanted to see Ozzy from the drunk world ever again,” he wrote. “A year later, I was standing in Lemmy [Kilmister]’s flat in West Hollywood, tears running down my face, as I read his lyrics to ‘Mama, I’m Coming Home.’ Sharon, I’m sorry. And thank you for giving me another chance when almost anyone else would have walked away.”
Ozzy and SHaron also opened up about the incident in the 2020 documentary Biography: The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne.
“It was probably the most frightened I’ve ever been,” Sharon said in the film. “I hated being without him … Ozzy was very frightened when he came out and when he was in his house, he definitely watched what he was doing. He frightened himself.”
Last Rites, which was finished days before Ozzy’s death, covers the last seven or so years of Ozzy’s life, including his health struggles and his fight to get back on stage one last time for the Back to the Beginning farewell concert in his native Birmingham.
The rock and reality TV icon died on July 22 at age 76. He is survived by Sharon; their kids Aimee, Jack and Kelly; and his older children Jessica, Louis and Elliot.
If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.
