As anyone who remembers MTV’s The Osbournes can attest, Ozzy Osbourne, who died Tuesday at 76, had a way with words. It didn’t matter if he was walking offstage after playing to 50,000 fans or sitting at his house struggling to work the TV remote, the metal pioneer always managed to come up with a turn of phrase that was both hilarious and unexpectedly wise. That’s why the family rejected an early idea to have The Osbournes be a scripted sitcom as opposed to a reality show.
“You know what I think we should do?” a teenage Jack Osbourne told his father in 2000, as Rolling Stone‘s Erik Hedegaard looked on. “We should have a crew come out to the house for a weekend and see how we really act. It’d be like The Real World but with us.”
“Oh, that would be a fucking thing,” Ozzy said back. “Good idea, Jack.”
It was a very, very good idea that forever changed all their lives. But the MTV cameras captured only a handful of the pearls of wisdom that Ozzy has offered over the years. Here are 17 great lines from the brilliant mind of John Michael “Ozzy” Osbourne.
“The thing about life that gets me crazy is that by the time you learn it all, it’s too late to deal with it. It should be the other way around. We should be born with all this sense and knowledge, and then get stupider as we get older.” (Via Rolling Stone)
“I’m just Dad. It’s kind of a fucked-up life, really. A rock star is supposed to say, ‘Get me the Vicodins!’ Or, ‘Run me a bath in fucking Perrier water!’ I get fucking dog shit up to the elbows and an earful of fucking abuse.” (Via Rolling Stone)
“Viagra’s a great sleeping drug. I take Viagra, and Sharon goes right to sleep.” (Via Guitar World)
“I got rabies shots for biting the head off a bat but that’s OK – the bat had to get Ozzy shots.” (Via The Guardian)
“Sometimes I’m scared of being Ozzy. But it could have been worse; I could have been Sting.” (Via YouTube)
Editor’s picks
“Being sober on a bus is, like, totally different than being drunk on a bus.” (Via Birmingham World)
“I love a good old kip — an afternoon nap — it’s the best thing in the world. Whether you call it escaping reality or what, it’s fucking great. At least you wake up with your head still on your shoulders, and you haven’t fucked somebody else’s wife.” (Via Rolling Stone)
“Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols once said to me, ‘I hated the Beatles.’ To me, that’s like saying you hate air.” (Via Rolling Stone)
“I’m the flavor of the month. I know I’m this year’s version of Roseanne Barr. I know the bubble will burst, and I’m going to be yesterday’s news. But I’m not letting any of this get in the way of my music. I can still rock like a son of a bitch.” (Via Rolling Stone)
“One minute, we were a rock band doing coke. The next, we were a coke band doing rock.” (Via Rolling Stone)
“My son, Jack, gets pissed off sometimes. He said to me one day, ‘Dad, the difference is whether people are laughing with you or at you.’ I said, ‘As long as they’re laughing, it doesn’t matter.’” (Via Rolling Stone)
“But if I feel this show is fucking my family up — if I find my son freebasing — I will say, ‘You can kiss my ass. I don’t want to have a TV show and bury two kids at the end of it.’ The most important thing for me is the love I have for my family. I love them more than life itself.” (Via Rolling Stone)
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“Randy [Rhoads] was too young and too nice a guy to die. It’s always the assholes in the world who live to 199.” (Via Rolling Stone)
“I guarantee that if I was to die tonight, tomorrow it would be, ‘Ozzy Osbourne, the man who bit the head off a bat, died in his hotel room…’ I know that’s coming. But I’ve got no complaints. At least I’ll be remembered.” (Via Rolling Stone)
“I hate vacuum cleaners. They make the most nauseating fucking racket in the world, like a dying wildebeest being dragged up and down the corridor.” (Via Rolling Stone)
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“We couldn’t conjure up a fart. We’d get invitations to play witches’ conventions and black masses in Highgate Cemetery. I honestly thought it was a joke. We were the last hippie band — we were into peace.” (Via Rolling Stone)
“I’m not in the band anymore because of musical differences. They were musical. I was different.” (Via Rockportraits)
