Ozzy-To-English: Transcript/Translation of our Feb 15 interview

Hopefully, this translation will help…

Craig – …what’s going on Ozzy?

Ozzy –How you doing?

Craig – As of last week, your book “I Am Ozzy” is on the NY Times Hardcover Nonfiction Best Seller’slist at #2.  And #3 on the Wall Street Journal’s list.  You’re even scheduling additional book signings on the west coast…are you excited about how the book has been going?

Ozzy – Oh yeah, it’s been received very well, I think, the uh New York Best Seller’s List, there, which is great.

Tommie – Ozzy, I’ve read the book, it is brilliant, and you mention many of the crazy things that have gone on in your life and have been written about you in the press…about the bat, about the dove, about the Alamo…and uh…it’s finally nice to get the truth, to get your side of everything.

Ozzy – Yeah, I mean there’s the bat, there’s the dove, there’s the Alamo but there are also other stories you know…I don’t want to talk about it because if I tell you about the stories then you won’t buy, you won’t read the book.

Tommie – Ozzy, you’re People People…you came up from the English working class, you weren’t privileged at all growing up…and now you’ve met people like Prime Ministers…Presidents…Queens…

Ozzy – That’s amazing.  I met President Bush, which I don’t think…(laughs)…it was one of the…well, don’t forget: the President who was least liked in history, or…but, yeah, I met them.  I met the Queen.  I met the Prime Minister of England, which also wasn’t a great…Rock & Roll moment for me.   I met a lot of people…I met, basically, I met one of my heroes, Paul McCartney.  He’s a very nice man, he’s very accommodating…very nice guy.

Craig – Now of course your musical achievements aside, a lot of Americans were  really introduced to you and a whole new generation grew up watching you on “The Osbournes” MTV show.

Ozzy – Yeah yeah, um, but I’m not, I don’t like, um, my wife, um, my daughter didn’t do the TV, so…Jack was (???) looks like he’s going to be working behind the camera instead of in front of it.  But yeah, it was an unexpected nice surprise in my career.  Our careers, rather.

Tommie – We’re talking with The Prince Of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne this morning…the book is called I Am Ozzy, and in it Ozzy talks about a lot of the jobs he’s had over the years.  You used to work in a slaughterhouse, for example…of course you became a big rock star after not being sure if you were even going to be able to be a singer…but is being a father your favorite job of all time?

Ozzy – Well it’s the hardest, you know, I don’t know if “favorite”…you don’t go “oh no, my wife’s having a baby…ohhhh…”…I’m lookin’ at…you’re lookin’ at the kid like “get on with it”, you know?  It’s hard.  Being a parent in my opinion is one of the hardest jobs in the world, you know, because you never know whether you’re giving them good information or not.

Tommie -  Ozzy as I read your book and realized just how far you’ve taken your addictions to the edge and beyond for so long, I couldn’t help but wonder: how is it that you’re even still alive?

Ozzy – Well…good question…I think I’m gonna sell my body when I die to medical science…they might find some some…talking points somewhere.  I mean, it’s uh…I’m not bragging about that…but, you know, just because I didn’t die doing all that, tell me I didn’t have some rare survival gene you know.  I’m just lucky, you know?

Craig – Now, you say in the book Oz, that you’ve always been drawn to the dark side of things.  Now, as you get older…is it easier or harder to stay away from that kinda stuff?

Ozzy – Well it’s always interesting…dark things, you know, all my life, I mean…I’m not a Satanist, I’m not a Nazi.  I’m not any of that you know.  I’ve always been drawn to…I’m very interested in World War Two, you know.  (mumbling) When I was a kid we used to play in bomb sites, not realizing…they were called bomb sites but we didn’t know what a bomb site meant, you know…we used to go and play in the craters, they were.  I was born in 1948 which is like a few years after the war had finished…I was very much in a war footing when I was a younger guy, and it’s strange.  In fact, when I went to my school, we used to have to stand in class lines and stand at attention, you know…the school “attention!” you know, a military thing.

Tommie – Ozzy joining us on the Tommie and the Bartender program…Black Sabbath started out as a Blues/Jazz outfit back in the day, Ozzy…how did you guys become the groundwork for heavy metal?

Ozzy – Tony Iommi was a good guy for the riffs, used to come up with great riffs, you know?  (mumbles) …we used to rehearse across the road from a movie theatre, and one of them, maybe it was him, just said, um, “isn’t strange the way people pay money to go and see horror and scary films…what if we like start writing scary music?”  And it went from there, you know?