At first glance the home looked like any other in the discreet corner of millionaire’s playground Beverly Hills: an elegant Mediterranean-style mansion partly hidden by tall palms and a high curved wall.
On closer inspection, a brass plaque was visible on the heavy, eight-foot wooden gates. In Munsters-inspired gothic text, the inscription warned: ‘NEVER MIND THE DOG. BEWARE OF THE OWNER’ – a nod to the wild past of John ‘Ozzy’ Osbourne.
The house was familiar to millions as the home of Ozzy and his foul-mouthed family – reality TV’s answer to The Simpsons.
And it was there that Ozzy entertained MOJO magazine in 2003.
On a sunny summer afternoon the place was unusually quiet. Sharon, Ozzy’s wife and manager, was in New York on business. Also absent were their kids – son Jack, 18, and daughters Kelly, 17, and Aimee, 20.
In the kitchen, where so many arguments had raged during two seasons of The Osbournes docu-soap, Tony Dennis made coffee. A slim, fair-haired Geordie, Dennis had served for 21 years as Ozzy’s assistant.
He carried the coffee pot into the adjacent sitting room, where Ozzy was fiddling with a CD player.
Clad in black t-shirt and sweatpants, Ozzy gestured for MOJO to join him on a large, wine-red velvet sofa. “Have a seat,” he said, his thick Brummie slur punctuated with a stammer. “I’ll play you some of my new stuff.”
This den, christened ‘The Bunker’ by Sharon, was filled with Ozzy’s favourite things.
On one wall was a lithograph of John’s Lennon’s handwritten lyrics to Imagine. On a shelf was a photograph of Ozzy with Paul McCartney, taken when they met at Buckingham Palace for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee concert on 1 June 2002. The picture was signed: ‘Hey Ozzy – you’re cool! Rock on! Love, Paul McCartney.’ Its solid gold frame cost $42,000.
On top of the speaker cabinets a set of Osbournes dolls quivered as the music began at deafening volume – a mini-symphony with a massed choir singing of “Mother Russia”.
“I’m writing a rock opera about the life of Rasputin,” Ozzy said.
With his eyes obscured by the blue lenses of his round Lennon specs, it was impossible to tell if he was joking.
“I've dreamed of doing this for 20 years,” he added, echoing Spinal Tap’s long-held ambition of crafting a musical based on Jack The Ripper.
Only when Ozzy began to sing along to his own guide vocals was it apparent that he was entirely serious.
Rasputin, he claimed, would be a stage production, his role not as performer but as co-writer and arranger.
One of the songs, Before The Dawn, was sung by daughter Aimee. Another featured balalaikas. At the very least, Ozzy was presenting a more rounded portrayal of Rasputin that did Boney M.
“They called him The Mad Monk,” Ozzy explained. “On one hand he was a holy man, and on the other he was having fucking orgies.”
Demonised by enemies within the Russian imperial court, Rasputin met a brutal end in 1916: drugged, poisoned, beaten and shot, he was finally drowned when thrown into the Neva river at Petrograd.
Ozzy felt a certain kinship with his subject. “He became a scapegoat,” he said. “It’s a perfect scenario for what Ozzy is about.”
He took a gulp of coffee from a mug the size of a soup bowl.
“I’m not Ozzy Lloyd-Webber,” he reasoned. “One of the songs is like something from Fiddler On The Roof, but there’s some heavy rock stuff too.
“I know in my soul that this is one of the greatest things I’ve ever done in my life. And this is the first thing I’ve done stone cold sober.
“I never thought I could do anything without a smoke of a joint or a glass of ale, and that’s bollocks.”
It was in that very room that Ozzy had quit the booze. Not for the first time, but, he hoped, the last.
“I’ve been on and off the drugs and alcohol so many times I feel like a fucking fiddler’s elbow,” he said. “But I can honestly say today that I’m done.”
For an hour or more, Ozzy talked about various elements of his life.
“I’ve been known to do some pretty nutty shit,” he said. “There’s no doubt about it – I am fucking nuts. I’m not becoming a mystical fucking guru, but if there is a God or a great creator, I believe they map your life out.”
He also talked about parenting.
“When I was a kid my mother and father never told me they loved me or that they were proud of me. So all I’m doing is what I would have liked.”
Ozzy freely admitted to his various physical and mental disorders, among them ADHD, chronic dyslexia an an hereditary tremor compounded by Parkinsonian syndrome caused by years of cocaine abuse. The latter, he said, accounted for the shaky walk and stuttering speech.
He ended the conversation on a positive note.
“I am blessed," he smiled. “If you asked how much money I’m worth, I honestly couldn’t give you an answer. I do it for Sharon and kids, anyway.
“The overriding thing that comes across [on The Osbournes] is that we all love each other. Jack asked me, ‘Dad, do you think people are laughing with you or at you?’ I said, ‘Son, as long as they’re laughing I couldn’t give a fuck!’
“I’m in the entertainment business. If they’re laughing at me, great – at least they’re not crying.”
Having been demonised for so many years – if not to the extent of his hero Rasputin – Ozzy viewed his recent audience with the Queen with bemusement.
“The Queen said to me, ‘I hear you’re quite the wild one.’ I didn’t know what to say.”
With an echo of another hero, John Lennon, he added: “I’m just Ozzy Osbourne from Aston. A working class hero.”
On that note, Ozzy rose from his seat and shuffled across to a black door in a corner of The Bunker.
“Do you know what I call the pinnacle of success?” he said, beckoning. “Come and see this.”
He opened the door to reveal his very own private loo – black urinal and washbasin, with a stuffed bat in a glass case on one wall.
Pissing contentedly, he looked back over his shoulder and grinned.
“Spend a day in my head,” he said, “and you’d realise how crazy I really am.”
Rasputin, the rock opera, never made it to the stage. But no matter.
Even back then, in 2003, Ozzy Osbourne had done enough.
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