 "Ozzy Osbourne bit off a bat on stage. The story behind one of rock history’s wildest moments")
“He’s joined the bat.”
The music world plunged into mourning on Tuesday (July 22) as news emerged that Ozzy Osbourne, who rose to fame as a pioneer of heavy metal music and later became a reality television icon, passed away at the age of 76.
His family and friends mourned the loss of their ‘Prince of Darkness’ as he was often referred to owing to his jet black onstage persona, decadent aura and lyrics that seemed obsessed by the occult.
“It is with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning. He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time,” read a statement from his family.
Members of his band, Black Sabbath, also mourned his lost with Tony Iommi, the band’s guitarist, writing on Instagram, “It’s just such heartbreaking news that I can’t really find the words, there won’t ever be another like him. Geezer, Bill and myself have lost our brother.”
Bill Ward, the band’s drummer, posted a photo of himself with Osbourne on social media, writing: “Where will I find you now? In the memories, our unspoken embraces, our missed phone calls … no, you’re forever in my heart.”
While Ozzy will forever be remembered for his contributions to the music, he will also go down in history as being the rock star who did it all and much, much more. After all, who else can claim to have bitten the head off a bat while performing on stage? No one, but Ozzy!
Impact Shorts
More ShortsBut what’s the story behind rock-and-roll’s most, well, rock-and-roll stories?
When Ozzy got batty!
It was the night of January 20, 1982. Ozzy, who had recently been fired from his band, Black Sabbath due to his erratic behaviour that was generally fuelled by alcohol and drugs, had decided to go solo and was on tour for his second album, Diary of a Madman.
As part of his tour, he arrived at the Des Moines Veterans Memorial Auditorium in America’s Iowa. All was going well and the rock star was on stage when suddenly 17-year-old fan Mark Neal decided to throw a bat on stage, resulting in Ozzy separating the body of the creature from its head.
But wait, why did the fan throw a bat at the rock star?
That’s because of the tradition that Ozzy had started of him catapulting pieces of raw meat and animal parts into the audience. This became a highlight of his tour and Ozzy fans prepared themselves for it.
That’s how the bat landed up on stage, and Ozzy thinking it was a rubber bat, picked it up and bit into it.
4. Ozzy Osbourne bites the head off a bat in the middle of a concert. pic.twitter.com/II3blr5eq8
— 🎸 Rock History 🎸 (@historyrock_) November 9, 2024
Writing in his 2009 memoir, I am Ozzy, he explained that he picked it up and chomped down on it. “Immediately, though, something felt wrong. Very wrong. For a start my mouth was instantly full of this warm, gloopy liquid,” he recalled in the memoir. “Then the head in my mouth twitched.”
“I didn’t just go and eat a . . . bat, did I?”
Differing versions on the bat story
However, this isn’t the only version of that crazy story. In a 2006 BBC interview, he said that he thought the bat “was one of them Hallowe’en joke bats ‘cos it had some string around its neck”.
“I bite into it, and I look to my left and Sharon Osbourne, (his wife and then manager) gestured no.
“And I’m like, what you talking about? She [says], ‘it’s a dead real bat’. And I’m… I know now!”
In a 2020 documentary, recounting the horrific incident, Ozzy recalled thinking it was fake when it was thrown towards him. “I picked it up, put it in my mouth, crunched down, bit into it, being the clown that I am,” he said. “I had to go to the hospital afterward and get rabies shots, one in each rear.”
He also provided an explanation when he appeared on the _David Letterma_n show.
However, Mark Neal, who had flung the bat on stage, has a slightly different take on the version of events. Neal recalling his side to Des Moines Register said that his younger brother had brought the bat home a fortnight before but, sadly, it hadn’t survived.
By the time he took it to the concert, it had been dead for days, said Neal.
Before the bat incident, came doves
Shockingly, Ozzy’s bat incident wasn’t a one-off. The rockstar was known for some pretty absurd antics. One such incident came, in fact, just nine months ago.
Ozzy and Sharon were scheduled to meet a group of CBS record label executives in Los Angeles. Sharon had this plan of releasing two doves and flashing the peace scene. However, things went very awry.
In his memoir, I am Ozzy, he wrote that he got “p*ssed off” waiting for his cue from wife, bit off the head of one of the birds, and spat it at a publicist.
However, in another interview, Ozzy recalled, “The scam is the bird was dead. We were planning to release it there, but it died beforehand. So rather than waste it, I bit its head off.
“You should have seen their faces. They all went white. They were speechless.”
Ozzy’s other wild moments
These two incidents led Ozzy to have a reputation unlike any other. And Ozzy being Ozzy leaned into it.
According to the book and Netflix film The Dirt, in 1984, while hanging out at a poolside bar with Mötley Crüe, he snorted a line of ants when they realised they were out of cocaine. When asked about it, Ozzy said he had no memory of this incident. “Is it true that I snorted a line of ants? It’s incredibly possible. Do I remember it? No.”
In the early 1980s, Ozzy also shot 17 pet cats that lived with him with a shotgun while being high on drugs. Later recalling the incident, he said, “I was taking drugs so much I was a wreck. The final straw came when I shot all our cats. We had about 17, and I went crazy and shot them all. My wife found me under the piano in a white suit, a shotgun in one hand and a knife in the other.”
Now, as the world mourns his death, it seems his prophecy will come true. He had said that he knew exactly how he would be remembered: “Ozzy Osbourne, born 1948. Died, whenever. He bit the head off a bat.”
With inputs from agencies
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