As daughter Kelly laments in the TV show, Ozzy Osbourne is most notorious for chomping the head off a bat.
This and other legends have shadowed the Prince of Darkness for years. But how much is fact, and which parts are fiction?
Even Ozzy has a hard time keeping it all straight. But here’s what our research shows:
FACT OR FICTION?
The former Black Sabbath frontman once went on a chicken-killing rampage.
Fact. In 1976, while at home in Birmingham, England, Ozzy became angry and shot a bunch of chickens in a backyard coop, reports RollingStone.com.
FACT OR FICTION?
He discovered what it sounds like when doves cry.
Fact. In yet another moment of aviary excess, the Ozzman celebrated a new CBS Records deal in 1981 by showing up at a Los Angeles gathering of label executives with two doves as a peace offering. But he was so smashed, he bit the head off one of the birds.
FACT OR FICTION?
He removed the head from a bat using his teeth.
Fact. Ozzy’s “Diary of a Madman” tour shtick in 1982 included throwing raw meat into the audience. The audience would, in turn, throw gross things back at him. At a show in Des Moines, Iowa, a fan tossed Ozzy a live bat. Thinking it a rubber toy, Ozzy bit into it. The result: rabies shots and rabid album sales.
He doesn’t recall how the creature tasted.
“It’s such a long time ago, I can’t even remember. It wasn’t great, let’s put it that way,” Ozzy told Bizarremag.com.
FACT OR FICTION?
He tried to make a Urinetown of the Alamo.
Fact. In 1982, Ozzy was banned from San Antonio, Texas, after he urinated on a part of the Alamo, which landed him in jail on charges of defacing a national monument. He didn’t return for 10 years, after donating $20,000 for restoration of the Alamo, according the Virgin Encyclopedia of Pop Music.
FACT OR FICTION?
He raised the anties up his nose.
Fact … or is it? While it’s rumored that the reformed drug user once snorted a line of ants by a pool, even the rocker has forgotten the truth of the matter.
“I don’t remember doing it, even though a lot of people tell me I did. I was f—ed up, man,” he told Bizarremag.com. “That was when I was touring with Motley Crue in the early 1980s. It’s a wonder I didn’t die.”
