Osbournes Music: The First American Family

This text was originally published by Rolling Stone USA, by Erik Hedegaard, on May 9, 2002, and can be seen here.

Everyone loves The Osbournesthe new reality show of MTV Starring Ozzy Osbourne53 years old (the guy who gave us the Black Sabbathand Heavy Metal!), Your Wife Sharon and two of their three children – Jack16 years old, and Kelly17. It is the biggest instant hit in the history of MTV In its 21 years of existence, attracting an audience of 6 million people who are not tired of the family’s follies: the fights, the profanity, the delusions of the patriarch once numbed from drugs.

But watching the program is a disconcerting experience. Like anyone else, I find hilarious; But when the half -hour episode ends, I see myself standing, walking through the room like the Ozzywith mouth open. For a while, I thought it was because I couldn’t understand why Ozzy would expose that way. Certainly, with an estimated personal fortune of $ 57 million, he doesn’t need the money. In a press conference, Ozzy He suggested that he did this to expand certain limits and understandings. “What is a functional family?” He asked.

I know I’m fucking dysfunctional, but what are the guidelines we all have to follow? The Waltons?

Maybe it’s a good argument, but I couldn’t swallow. Because, in the 1,200 square meter toy mansion of Osbournes In Beverly Hills, who sends is the Sharonnot the Ozzy. Like one’s own Ozzy said more recently: “Suddenly, I was already doing the program. It was not my idea. Sharon It’s my boss, you know? ”. In fact, besides being his wife, she’s also her businesswoman – and a big figure in the music industry. Legend has it that she once was so furious with a prosecutor who gave a knee in his testicles.

But what would she have to want to share with the world the most intimate moments of her family? Then the snap came to me: for deep love to Ozzy. He is a former deputy, and former deputy need to stay busy, otherwise they risk falling. With twelve cameras in the house, six days a week, a serious relapse would be, with luck, out of the question. So this question was answered.

And yet something still bothers me. They have said to him, “You’re becoming a parody of yourself,” and he replied, “I’m not turning anything but what I am. What you see is as it always was.” I wondered it and wondered if it could be true.

In early 2000 spring, I had the opportunity to spend a few days with the family Osbourne. When I met Ozzy For the first time, in the offices of Ozz Records In Beverly Hills, he was practically the same character that appears on TV. He entered wandering, wearing a black shirt and black sweatshirt with cord (one of the forty he has), his hair falling in front of his eyes. He was curved, his tattooed fingers were shaking, and the sixth sentence he told me was something like this:

I am one of those guys who wake up in the morning and already have a bitch problem: I’m looking for something to kill or explode or some fucking. My head is total chaos, and my nerves are already beginning to tremble…

He smiled, then walked to caress one of the family dogs, the Minniea tiny lulu-da-vomarania, leaving me sitting there in the middle of a cloud of its delicious perfume (Czech & Speake, No. 88, ninety-two dollars the bottle), a little fun-just as I sometimes have fun watching him at MTVasking for help from Jack to find out how the “damn” remote control of TV works, or telling the Kelly That if she doesn’t want to go to the “vagina doctor,” then she just shouldn’t go to the “vagina doctor.”

I liked him right away, and I was more than satisfied with how he and his family included me in everything they did. In fact, one afternoon I even accompanied the whole group – including the daughter Aimee – In a meeting with a TV executive to discuss a sitcom style series that may be starring Osbournes. That was well before the agreement with the MTVand the program in question would be semificial. At the time, Jack I had already called the idea “disgusting”, Kelly said it was a “tacky”, and AimeeAt the age of 18, he stated that he did not want to get involved at all. All questioned the executive about the constant profanity of the family. He replied that all improper words would simply be censored with a beep. “So if the Ozzy You’re talking, there may be, like, fifteen beams in a speech, and that would be funny! ”

“Ok,” he said Sharon. “We can’t pretend to be people we are not. Ozzy?

“What?” Ozzycoming back from some daydream.

“Speaking things like: ‘Ah, pull life; ah, damn; ah, you’re silly’.”

Ozzy He blinked at her and shouted, “It’s going to fuck yourself!”

Later, back home, Sharon said the Jack: “The question about the Ozzy It’s just that he can’t pretend to be something he is not. He is unable to do average. ”

Then Jack had an idea. “Do you know what I think we should do?” He told his father. “We should call a film team to come here at home over the weekend and show how we really are. Like one The Real Worldbut with us ”.

“Ah, that would be a fucking program,” he said Ozzy. “You have to go to TV. All weak hearts have to watch.” He thought a little more. “Hmm,” he said at last. “Good idea, Jack. ”

And that’s basically how the idea came up. In July 2001, the MTV exhibited a very successful episode of CRIBS with the family, and Sharon Osbourne presented the idea of Jack for the channel, despite the objections of Aimee. In truth, Aimee He always had conflicting feelings about his father and his reputation. “I find it so annoying when people ask me if my dad eats bats,” she told me. “At school, almost every day, any idiot was going to ask me, ‘So you really eat bats?’ And I answered, ‘Yeah, all the time. You should go home, let’s have a bat barbecue at the weekend.

So when Aimee He decided to leave the house during the four months of filming, no one in the family was surprised. And finally, in the past autumn, the fun – or whatever you want to call “fun” – began.

“I’m just the father,” he said Ozzy recently. “It’s a half -fucking life, in real. A rock star should say, ‘Bring my vicodins!’ or ‘prepare a perrier water bath!’ I stay with dog shit to elbow and a curse of cursing in the ear. ”

According to the rules established by the OsbournesHowever, there are certain things that TV audience will never see. You will never see Ozzy sitting in the toilet, nor will he see him doing with Sharon Which may not even seem natural in the room. Fine by me. But while watching the program and thought about Ozzy that I met, I also started thinking about what more The audience was not seeing – and it started to bother me more and more.

Two years ago, Ozzy was addicted to cigarettes; It was his last remaining addiction. He regretted it and said the Sharon that had stopped, but we spent many hours together smoking – just to erase the cigarettes quickly when the Mom Sharon I entered the door. She was never fooled. Looked straight to the Ozzy and required smelling his breath. “You asshole!” She shouted once. “Son of a bitch, son of a bitch!” And the two fell into the laugh.

I loved these moments because they spoke of transgression and forgiveness – things always missing. But I also loved it when it was just the Ozzy roaming around the house, biting a piece of chorizo sausage and making soliloquies about the art of extraordinary life he had. Growing up in England as a severe dyslexic, dropped the school and became a small thief, but had love for music. In 1969, it helped found the Black Sabbathhe sang heavy songs on paranoia and became a star. But in 1978, the band fired him because it was basically a fucked beyond the account.

After that, he thought of killing himself – until he met Sharon (whose father, with mobster way, was his manager at the time), and she took over the reins of his career. With her help (and some broken pans in his head), added to the Ozzy By scandal (such as biting bats, etc.), he sold about 70 million solo records and became the face of the huge successful heavy metal tour known as Ozzfest.

“Dreams are what really matters,” he said one morning.

I am the living proof of that. But I didn’t go out unharmed, and it’s not fun to look back. There is a lot of guys who couldn’t get here. The list is endless – guys who suicide, overdose, shot themselves, drowned, fell from somewhere, died in a car accident, or simply did not wake up – they choked on their own vomiting, frozen to death, burned alive. For each Ozzy Osbournethere are about ten bodies: Bon Scott, John Bonham. Randy Rhoads.

RHOADS It was the best friend of Ozzy and guitarist from Black Sabbath. In 1982, while Ozzy and Sharon they slept on the parked tour bus, RHOADS It flyted the area on a small plane, which eventually crashed and exploded.

“I’ve revolved this a thousand times in my head”, Ozzy He told me. “If I had woken up, I would probably have risen on that plane, sitting on the wing fucking.”

He thinks about it all the time. And, from time to time, one of the children asks Sharon What happened that day. AND Sharon He explains: “The plane hit the bus, cracked the structure and crossed to a house. It was a nightmare. The house caught fire.”

“Didn’t you have a deaf guy in the house?” Jack.

“Yes, I had, Jack. And his father ran inside and took him from there. It was horrible. And a week later, he was already doing auditions with new guitarists. “

“Why?”

“Because your father was so shocked that I knew that if we didn’t move, the Ozzy It would be over “.

Witnessing this conversation is something that really thrills. I saw the eyes of Jack Shine as they imagine their father as a hero, and it was a beautiful moment. This is all part of the rich (and intense) family history Osbourne. At certain times, it was a terribly dark story: in 1989, for example, Ozzy “Completely drunk,” he tried to hang Sharon with your own hands. But it was also a miraculous trajectory, difficult even to understand: she forgave him.

Second Brian Gradenpresident of entertainment of MTVhowever, the 6 million viewers of the program will never have the chance to move with the heroism of Ozzy nor with the unshakable devotion of Sharon. “We see the program as a half hour of entertainment that takes place in the present,” he told me. “So, no, I don’t think it’s going back to the past. Besides, Osbournes They are not like that. They live the now. ”

But of course this is not exactly true. The program is what it is: a comedy, that’s fine. But the Osbournes They have a past about which they talk at least once in a while, and it bothers me that someone wants to believe different. They are more than what you see in MTV. Much more.

“The truth is that,” Ozzy He said a few weeks ago, “sometimes I watch this TV show and get sad.” He tried to explain what he meant, but, as sometimes happens with Ozzythe words failed, and it was only the feeling of being sad with the program. When I’m not laughing, I feel the same.

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