Ozzy Osbourne Reveals He’s Done Performing If Health Issues Persist
Ozzy Osbourne has revealed he may never perform again after a botched spinal surgery left him with serious balance issues. In July, Osbourne canceled a headlining set at the upcoming Power Trip festival, which would have seen him appear alongside Metallica, AC/DC, and Guns N’ Roses. Though the former Black Sabbath frontman holds out hope that his health issues may improve and allow a return to the stage, he told Rolling Stone UK that he’s made peace with the alternative.
“I’m taking it one day at a time, and if I can perform again, I will,” Osbourne reflected. “But it’s been like saying farewell to the best relationship of my life. At the start of my illness, when I stopped touring, I was really pissed off with myself, the doctors, and the world. But as time has gone on, I’ve just gone, ‘Well, maybe I’ve just got to accept that fact.’
“I’m not going to get up there and do a half-hearted Ozzy looking for sympathy. What’s the fucking point in that? I’m not going up there in a fucking wheelchair,” said the singer, who once admitted to urinating himself on stage for the sake of convenience. “I’ve seen Phil Collins perform recently, and he’s got virtually the same problems as me. He gets up there in a wheelchair! But I couldn’t do that.”
Though Osbourne made two live appearances last year, one in England and another in Los Angeles, the sets never lasted beyond one or two songs. The physical demands of performing were immensely taxing for the singer, and he required partitions on stage to lean on if necessary.
“It’s really knocked me out,” he said of the initial surgery that instigated his health concerns. “The second surgery went drastically wrong and virtually left me crippled. I thought I’d be up and running after the second and third, but with the last one, they put a fucking rod in my spine. They found a tumor in one of the vertebrae, so they had to dig all that out too. It’s pretty rough, man.”
Osbourne seems to be giving a lot of thought to his mortality of late. Elsewhere in the interview, the singer dissected his thoughts on death, figuring that he has perhaps a decade of life left in him.
“I don’t fear dying, but I don’t want to have a long, painful, and miserable existence. I like the idea that if you have a terminal illness, you can go to a place in Switzerland and get it done quickly,” the rocker explained. “At best, I’ve got ten years left and when you’re older, time picks up speed.”
Osbourne concluded: “I’ve been doing a lot of reflection while I’ve been laid up, and all my drinking partners, I’ve realized they’re all fucking dead!” he laughed. “I should have been dead way before loads of them. Why am I the last man standing? I don’t understand any of it.”
