Today In Pop Culture: Eat Fresh With Ozzy Osbourne

By Jeffery X Martin

Modern-day 21st century heavy metal is boring. Yeah, I said it. Boring. There’s no flair, no theatricality, no sense of something greater than itself. Bland long-haired boys with guttural voices and quadruple-kick drums, honking and snorting their way through what they loosely refer to as “songs” while the audience punches each other and waits for the breakdown.

The Eighties, though? That was the time. That was the Golden Age of Heavy Metal. Bands were real bands, and wore codpieces without shame or cause. There were pyrotechnics and crazy visual effects. The stage was a giant Satanic playground, with pentagrams flying like boomerangs everywhere. It was goofy and joyous, and sometimes it went a little too far.

The year is 1982, and on a winter’s night on Des Moines, Iowa, Ozzy Osbourne bites the head off a bat during a performance.

Former frontman for Black Sabbath, Osbourne was as celebrated for his music as he was for his outstanding tolerance for illicit substances. The odds that Ozzy was tripping balls that night in Des Moines are really high.

The story goes that Ozzy thought, well, never mind. Let’s just let Ozzy tell the tale.

“Immediately, though, something felt wrong. Very wrong. For a start, my mouth was instantly full of this warm, gloopy liquid, with the worst aftertaste you could ever imagine. I could feel it staining my teeth and running down my chin. Then the head in my mouth twitched.”
–Ozzy Osbourne, I Am Ozzy

The bat also managed to bite Ozzy. He had to be treated for rabies. Rabies is usually treated with injections delivered into the abdomen. And yet, the Ozzman kept on trucking.

He had already bitten the head off a dove during a business meeting. He was later arrested for public urination after taking a whiz on the Alamo. For many parents across the already Satan-sensitive United States, Ozzy was the Devil Incarnate.

Now, that’s a job. Roaming around the country with a rock and roll circus, frightening adults and thrilling children? I’ll take that over being a door-to-door insurance salesman, any day. Man, rock and roll used to be fun.

Is this your ball I found on my lawn?

It’s mine, now.