New Book Delivers Last Rites for Ozzy Osbourne

When it comes to autobiographies, you pretty much have to take them with a grain of salt.  How many people, when recounting the stories of their lives, will be entirely truthful? Maybe a bit of lying by omission?  Some vigorous spinning during the telling of a tale so as to make the protagonist of the story shine even brighter or, at the very least, not look so bad?

Such is human nature.  But it’s not Ozzy Osbourne’s nature, as demonstrated in his posthumously published memoir Last Rites (Grand Central Publishing, 368 pp., $30), which focuses on his last several years prior to shuffling off this mortal coil.  And that’s a Shakespeare reference, by the way, not a cheap Parkinson’s joke.

Osbourne’s cowriter Chris Ayres worked with the Prince of Darkness on his previous book I Am Ozzy and an advice manual, Trust Me, I’m Dr. Ozzy.  Granted, the notion of anyone taking counsel from Osbourne seems absurd, until you consider that, on “The Osbournes” reality show, he often times seemed to be the least nuts person (though most difficult to understand) in his wacky clan.  Aside, that is, from his daughter Aimee Osbourne, who declined to be a part of the televised fiasco.

As a result of these experiences, Ayres has developed a method of transferring Osbourne’s distinctive speech patterns to the page.  While this is the basic job of a ghostwriter – to assemble an actual book and make it sound as if the author is having a friendly chat with the reader – in Last Rites, Ayres frequently quotes Osbourne too literally, with every “because” rendered as “’cos” and more uses of “ain’t” that you can shake a bat’s head at.  Sure, Ozzy was not the most educated of men, but he sometimes comes off as a bit of a cretin, much like the old codger with a load of sticks on the cover of Led Zeppelin IV might sound if you encountered him while investigating a bustle in your hedgerow.

A device employed with some frequency is Osbourne’s vocal approximations of musical passages.  Carl Orff’s cantata Carmina Burana?  According to Osbourne, that one goes “DUH, DUH, DUH-DUH!!/ DUH, DUH, DUH-DUH!! / DUH-DUH-DUDH / DUUUUUUH DUUUUUH DUH DUH!!!”  The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me”?  That would be “DUH-N-N-NUH! / DUH-N-N-N-NUH!”  One of his father’s Al Jolson records?  “PPFFTTHHHHHH.”

Still, Ayres has managed to string Osbourne’s reminiscences into a reasonably coherent narrative.  While much of the book is occupied with the litany of health issues that plagued Osbourne during his final years (he had to sit in a sinister-looking throne for his last stage appearance in July of this year), it does provide the author with opportunities to muse on his childhood, a squalid existence in the town of Birmingham, located in England’s Midlands. Also included are recollections regarding the early days of his band Black Sabbath.

Osbourne was never one to be coy about his drug consumption, and Last Rites details his dalliances with alcohol, cocaine, opiates, various pharmaceuticals and steroids (for his voice), along with some of his later “addictions,” such as Yorkshire tea, Wordsearch books, “English sweeties,” doodling and exercise machines.  I am certainly glad that Osbourne managed to conquer most of his demons, and I suppose that everyone needs a hobby, but damn, that was some old lady shit, Ozzy!

Along those lines, any reader of Last Rites would feel cheated if the book did not contain at least a few good rock and roll stories.  Like the time in 1981 when Sharon Osbourne thought it would be a good idea for Ozzy to pull a couple of doves out of his pockets and release them during a meeting with Epic, his new record company. 

Ozzy wasn’t keen on the scheme (“the birds kept shitting in my jacket pocket”), and when all the label executives were gathered and he had his big moment, an admittedly inebriated Osbourne recalled Sharon’s advice: “This is your one chance to make an impression.  You need to give them a show.”

As Osbourne recalls, “[A]fter a couple of minutes of listening to all their fake bullshit, I pull out one of the doves – just like we had agreed – and say, ‘peace’ or ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ or whatever.  Aww goes the room.  Then I took a deep breath, smiled for the camera, and bit the dove’s head off.

“The place went absolutely fucking nuts.  People screaming.  Crying.  Throwing up.  Calling for security.  Calling for the cops.  At this point, I’d thrown the dove’s body down on the conference table, but I still had its head in my mouth, so then I popped it out and smiled again for the camera.  I had blood and bird shit and feathers all over me, it was absolutely horrendous.  To this day, I have no idea what I was thinking…”

But, as happened frequently in Osbourne’s checkered career, he came out of the incident standing upright after falling down a flight of metaphorical stairs.  The stunt generated a ton of press, and, with Osbourne’s new record already in the distribution network, the record company couldn’t do much except issue a stern “if you ever…” warning to the despicable dove decapitator. 

Bottom line?  Last Rites is not the book that I Am Ozzy is.  But there are a couple of reasons for this.  By virtue of being first in line, I Am Ozzy had the distinct advantage of being able to tell the best of the many “boy, that Ozzy is one crazy bastard” stories, including the time that he (unknowingly) whizzed on the Alamo.  And let’s face it, hearing a septuagenarian kvetch about his aches and pains is not really much fun, though to be fair, Osbourne had more than his share of excruciating accidents and other miscellaneous misfortunes during his last decade.

Eventually, Last Rites, like its protagonist, just runs out of steam. It is, ultimately, the literary equivalent of Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.”  In Osbourne’s case, it goes something like, “Back then, I drank some beer / And did some blow, yeah that’s for certain / Yeah I say, fuckin’-A / My thoughts and  dreams  have been invertin’ / I’ve lived a life while high / And snorted off each and every mirror / You, you can just fuck off / That is the Oz way.”

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