Poignantly, Ozzy Osbourne’s death in July occurred just 17 days after Back to the Beginning, the heavy-metal extravaganza and last ever Black Sabbath gig that sealed his national treasure status. Taking place in Villa Park, a stone’s throw from Osbourne’s childhood home, it tied the loose ends of a career that began in 1967; the 76-year-old’s near-instant demise following it was as poetic as his life had never been.
You wouldn’t know any of this from Last Rites, his third autobiography. Instead, the ending finds Osbourne marooned in his Buckinghamshire mansion, post what was always scheduled to be his final concert, but very much alive.
Osbourne reminisces about the Birmingham show, plots to meet up with Guns N’ Roses’ Axl Rose and ponders a new solo album. Oh, and he’s also mulling over his Parkinson’s disease, arrhythmia, blood-clotting, emphysema, 80 per cent blocked heart and near-absence of mobility against a backdrop of a body already ravaged by years of addiction to legal and illegal drugs, to alcohol, to sex and to apples.
“Not just any apples, mind you. None of that Granny Smiths bullshit. They had to be Pink Ladies. Some nights I was eating 12 of ’em. I hired a guy to buy them. I didn’t want ’em delivered in case I got brown ones or ones with dents in”.
