Ozzy Osbourne ponders retirement

In the interests of my ego and your entertainment, I'm working on repurposing some of the entertainment journalism I did in the 1990s. Most of these articles were originally published in the Oakland (Calif.) Tribune, and none are otherwise available in electronic form, as far as I know. Seems like fans might like a glance back at what their musical heroes were thinking back when.

This interview with Black Sabbath frontman and heavy metal god Ozzy Osbourne originally ran in June 1992, when a tired Oz was ready to call it a day and retire. We all know how that worked out.

There may be an extra touch of emo­tion in Ozzy Osbourne's voice these days when he sings "Mama, I'm Coming Home."

After more than two decades of a seem­ingly endless cycle of concerts and re­cording sessions, Osbourne is going home to England at the end of his current tour, which stops Saturday at the Cow Palace.

And the heavy-metal icon swears that home is where he'll stay.

"It's time to slow it down," the Cockney-­accented rocker says over the phone in the first interview of his farewell tour.

"I'm 43 years old; I don't want to be jumping around on stage like a lunatic anymore. I want to go home sometime.

"And I suppose part of it is the Elvis syn­drome. I don't want to end up like that."

Osbourne says that while he'll continue to make albums and perform an occasional concert, he wants to get off the treadmill of three-month recording sessions and nine-­month concert tours.

"My life is run by the record industry, and I'm sick of it," he sputters. "I want to have a little control over my life, instead of being sold like a can of beans. "

Discovers domestic life

Beyond world-weariness, there's a more basic reason why Osbourne wants to finally unpack his suitcase. After decades of epic debauchery, he's sobered up and discovered that domestic life offers pleasures rock 'n' roll can't duplicate.

"Since I've cleaned up my act, I'm enjoying being a parent," says the father of three. "I've realized I have responsibilities as a father and a husband."

The king of gory shock-rock sounds absolutely puritanical, in fact, as he re­counts a recent shopping trip.

"I went to Toys R Us to find something for my 6-year-old, and I couldn't believe the toy guns they had. When I was a kid, you could tell they were toys, but these were so bloody realistic. I really found it quite disturbing."

This is the same man who, as a founding member and lead vocalist of Black Sabbath, introduced Satan worship to rock 'n' roll?

Osbourne says he's really a fairly ordi­nary guy who happened to stumble into an image as rock's High Priest of Hell.

Shortly after Sabbath formed in 1968 in Osbourne's hometown of Birmingham, En­gland, the band started rehearsing across the street from a movie theater, he recalls.

That's when inspiration hit.

"We'd see people Iining up for these horror movies, and we'd think how odd it is that people will pay money to get the (bleep) scared out of them. So we decided to try to make music that sounds the way those movies look.

"All we really did was put Halloween to music."

The formula paid off. While Black Sabbath had only one Top 10 hit (1970's "Paranoid"), the group's albums routinely sold in the millions. Concerts packed with upside-down crosses and other nether-worldly images solidified the band's following, making Sabbath the undisputed godhead of heavy metal.

"Completely psycho"

Osbourne continued the act when he started a solo career in 1979. Albums such as "Diary of a Madman" and "The Ultimate Sin" cast the pudgy singer as a devil-worshipping lunatic, an image reinforced by questionable antics such as biting the head off a live bat during a 1981 concert.

"I was completely psycho," Osbourne says. "You've got to have a split personality to survive in this business.

"The problems started when I began to take the stage Ozzy home. My family would run away from me because I was this raving lunatic running about the house."

Persistent drug and alcohol abuse further loosened Osbourne's fragile grip on sanity. The singer once boasted of using LSD on a daily basis for more than two years during Sabbath's heyday.

Osbourne finally climbed on the wagon last year, accompanying his new sobriety with psychological counseling and a complete medical workup.

"I've been trying for years to quit, and I failed again and again," he says. "I don't know why it worked this time, and I don't care.

"I'm not going to tell you sobriety Is the greatest thing. Life still sucks some days. But my life has turned around 180 degrees."

Osbourne says he's still in therapy and is taking medication to counter the brain damage caused by decades of drinking and drugging, Doctors say his short-term memory may never recover.

The chemical freedom has been good to the singer, as was evident when the fit-and-trim Ozzy made his debut in the video for "No More Tears," the title track of his current album. The sleek, energetic figure who cavorts about the set looks at least a decade younger than the portly spectacle who used to sweat through every song,

Osbourne says it was a simple matter of taking the time and energy he used to squander getting drunk and using it to get fit.

"I've got more energy than ever," he says. "I definitely am not going to become a boring old (gasbag)."

One thing Osbourne hasn't left in the past is his status as rock's favorite legal scapegoat. The singer says his lawyers are still pelted regularly with claims that his demonic lyrics prompted someone to go over the edge.

None of the cases has gotten as far as a 1986 lawsuit, in which the parents of a Los Angeles teen-ager failed to persuade a jury that Osbourne's music inspired their son to kill himself. But the singer says he's still disturbed every time anew claim pops up.

"I get hit with stuff all the time -- someone had a nosebleed while they were listening to 'Iron Man,' so it's my fault and I've got to pay $13 million."

Double standard

"I find it very frustrating, this double standard people have for rock 'n' roll. Everyone accepts Stephen King as someone who just writes these horror novels. But I do the same thing with music, and they say I'm possessed, that I want kids to kill themselves and turn into devil worshipers."

Osbourne says he won't be sorry if his legal problems fade as he settles into the quiet life, but he expects to miss the "glory" of appearing before thousands of screaming fans night after night.

While he will continue to be active in music, perhaps as a producer, he says his current swing across North America will be his last full-blown tour.

Still, he vows he won't tolerate any sticky senitmentality at his upcoming shows.

"If I see one person crying, I'll throw a bucket of water on him," he snarls. "I want this to be a wake. I want to go out with as big a bang as I came in with."