In an interview with Billboard, Ozzy Osbourne briefly joked about the one question he hates being asked and, yes, it has to do with bats.
In the video further down the page, Billboard chats with Osbourne about his highly-decorated, star-studded new album, Patient Number 9, which has earned four Grammy nominations. The four-and-a-half-minute clip opens on a light-hearted note where the legend confesses that he hates having to answer the question, “What do bats taste like?”
“It’s like… for fuck’s sake,” he adds in frustration before the video continues with a formal introduction and the remainder of the Q&A.
Ozzy has good reason to be annoyed by this, too. It’s not a pleasant memory, although the incident is among the most iconic tales in rock ‘n’ roll debauchery and Ozzy does have a plush bat toy with a detachable head up for sale.
“It’s not the way I want to be remembered [but] I know I’ll be the man that bit the head off the bat. That will be my epitaph. It won’t be, ‘Here lies Ozzy Osbourne… he did a bit of good,’ it’s going to be, ‘The bat-biting lunatic,’ which… I don’t care,” he lamented in 2020.
Also… he’s already answered this question in his book!
Here’s a bit of the backstory on it all:
While performing in Des Moines, Iowa on Jan. 20, 1982, the “Prince of Darkness” committed one of the most infamous acts in rock and metal history.
In his memoir, I Am Ozzy, he recalls how audiences would routinely toss animals and animal parts onstage, which then shifted toward a trend in plastic/fake toys being lobbed onstage. Mistaking a live bat that was thrown onstage for a toy one, Osbourne recalls, “Then I did what I always did when we got a rubber toy onstage — CHOMP.”
“Immediately though, something felt wrong. Very wrong” the book continues, “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,” Osbourne notes, going on to describe the sudden wave of realization that came rushing over him as he learned in that moment that he had actually bitten the head off of a live bat.
It’s also stated in I Am Ozzy that the singer was brought to the hospital following the incident and a doctor suggested that perhaps the bat was “stunned” as a result of being at the concert, leading Osbourne to mistake the motionless creature for a toy.
It’s safe to say that if Osbourne does manage to go ahead with his 2023 tour dates, there will be no bat-biting. Those long-postponed tour dates appear to be in potential jeopardy, however, as the singer recently told Sirius XM that, six months after his spinal surgery, he still “can’t fucking walk much now.” Even so, he hopes to be able to return to the stage again.
Ozzy Osbourne Interview With Billboard
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