Ozzy Osbourne Has Definitely Fallen Off the Wagon, May Have Also Fallen Off the Sharon

Over the weekend, rumors began to circulate that Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne were separating and might be heading for a divorce. I didn’t write about it yesterday because, well… as irritating as I find Sharon to be and as much as I loathe the joke Ozzy has become, I don’t actually wish them any ill will. A divorce can be heartbreaking, not just for the couple, but for their entire family. I would need at least seven to ten days before I felt comfortable making light of such a situation.

But then last night Ozzy went and posted this message on his Facebook page, and this can’t really be ignored no matter how sensitive a subject it may seem:

Of course, the easy joke to make here is that Ozzy did most of his most famous work while on booze and drugs, and that this therefore actually bodes very well for the quality of the Black Sabbath’s new album, and it’s not like his behavior when he’s not fucked-up is so sane, and that if Ozzy should apologize to his fans for anything, it’s all the shitty albums he made while he was sober.

But I don’t really believe any of that stuff. It’s important to remember that guys like James Hetfield and Ozzy’s own protégé Zakk Wylde wrote some incredibly bad music while he they were still alcoholics, so the whole partying = great art formula doesn’t really work as well as people like to kid that it does. There really hasn’t been any evidence in the past eighteen months that Ozzy’s decaying voice sounded better with the aid of drugs and alcohol. And since there’s no way in hell Rick Rubin is going to allow him to sound bad on the new Sabbath album, its quality is really going to come down to whether or not Tony Iommi wrote memorable riffs. And besides, sobriety clearly has not taught Ozzy how many periods are in an ellipsis. Although this seems to be a fairly common issue in the metal community.

I guess what I’m saying is, this whole drama makes for reasonably interesting gossip, but doesn’t actually mean much to us as metal fans in the scheme of things. That being said, it is amazing that Ronnie James Dio, who didn’t have a reputation for wanting to party all the time party all the time party all the time, died, while Ozzy Osbourne, who has apparently ingested more drugs and alcohol than any other ten rockstars combined, is invincible. What I wouldn’t give to have his genes!

Actually, I take that last part back.