Growing Up OSBOURNE: OZZY's Son JACK Speaks Out

Kerrang! Radio recently conducted an interview with Ozzy Osbourne's son, Jack. The chat is now available for streaming using the audio player below.

Kerrang! Radio: You're obviously an Osbourne and you grew up in a very famous family, what's it like having a very famous father?

Jack: It was strange. I did always know that my dad was famous, but I didn't understand what I think it meant at the time. I just thought that's what dads did, and then when I started going to school, around 4 or 5, you start realizing that not all kid's dads do that. It definitely set me aside from the other kids at school, which I did have a hard time with initially, because kids would come up and say stuff. But I always thought it was fun. I got to go to a lot of cool places and my mum was a big fan of keeping the family together as much as possible, so there would be extended periods when I wasn't actually at school and on the road with my dad, hanging out with Whitfield Crane!

Kerrang! Radio: When you went round to friends houses, did you think "they've not got the same rules that we've got"?

Jack: Going to friends' houses was always interesting. I definitely did notice a big difference between my family and my friends' families. I didn't really dwell on it that much at such a young age. Obviously when I got older I realized, massively, how different things actually were. All my friends' parents had nine to five jobs and dinner was on the table by seven kind-of-thing, and my house was just absolute chaos all the time. But since, I think my parents are some of the only parents that are still together, from all of the kids that I went to school with, so my parents are obviously doing something right.

Kerrang! Radio: When you were really young, your dad went through his worst period.

Jack: I do remember going to school after the whole strangling incident with my dad and mum. That whole thing happened and I remember kids saying stuff to me at school about it, but I think that you think when you're a kid that's normal because you don't know anything else. I did get picked on quite a bit though, people would come and say. It wasn't like my dad was Chesney Hawkes and everyone loved him — my dad was Ozzy Osbourne and people loved to hate him!

Kerrang! Radio: Do you have any memories of your dad being sent away?

Jack: I remember the police turning up and I remember obviously some drama and commotion and yelling and all that, but I don't really remember too much after all that. I just remember sitting on the balcony of the landing looking down at the police cars and the flashing lights and my mum and all that, and the nanny was there. It was a bit full on I think, overload for a kid; you don't really know what it's all about.

Kerrang! Radio: Did things change after that at home?

Jack: I think home life was really a lot of peaks and valleys. There were really good times when it was all mellow and then all of a sudden things would kick off and, I mean it still is that way really, it goes in cycles.

Kerrang! Radio: What sort of people did you have coming to your house when you were younger?

Jack: My dad's not really a massively social person, he doesn't really hang out with too many musicians and stuff, because I think he has a hard time relating to them in the sense of, he doesn't walk around holding himself as this artiste and he's got that very sort of working class mentality when it comes down to music. So when I was young, there wasn't really anyone crazy coming over. Occasionally it was Bon Jovi and Lita Ford. It was basically these big people that my mum used to work with and manage. The reason why they'd be around wasn't really so much for my dad. But in my teenage years, Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie and all those guys, we used to hang out with a lot. That's probably what I remember the most, hanging out with Phil from PANTERA, talking about horror movies. As a kid, that was always fun.

Kerrang! Radio: "The Osbournes" TV show came into your life. Do you remember when that first started, and what your reactions were?

Jack: The idea to do something with MTV popped up in early 2001. Originally, MTV just wanted to meet with me and Kelly, to do VJ stuff. Then we all sat down and it evolved. Back then, you didn't really have reality as to what it is now, it was "let's do a 'Real World' with the Osbournes," and originally that's what it was going to be called, it was going to be called "The Real World: Osbournes". A lot of talks came up and it disappeared and then it would come up again, and there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing from my mum one week and then me and Kelly and dad, and Aimee never wanted anything to do with it.

So one minute it was happening, one minute it wasn't until finally — it must have been late August, early September 2001, because I remember it was right around 9/11 — that we were told that it's definitely going to happen. Because our house was being built at the time and we were living in a rental house, they were allowed permission to go in and start wiring the house up while it hadn't been finished. So they wired it all up for cameras as the house was being built.

Originally it was only supposed to be a pilot, we were supposed to film for three weeks for one pilot episode and then see what happened, and it went from there. But we really didn't know what we were getting into. Things are always peaks and valleys with the family, and I think at that time, it wasn't a good time. I think things were getting pretty crazy again with my dad and I think Kelly and I were becoming a little more aware of how our family might be perceived. It was a bit like, "What are we getting ourselves into?"

Kerrang! Radio: How was that? Even before you get to it being broadcast, how was it just having camera crews around? How did that change your life?

Jack: I remember the first day we started filming at the house; it was the day we moved in actually. The first night we spent there was when the cameras turned were on and it was really quite surreal. Kelly and I just sat there and we were just being filmed. I remember her bedroom had this crazy lip-shaped couch — it was something you could easily see Kelly having — and we just sat there with a friend of ours, just talking. We'd look up and there'd be two camera guys and two sound guys literally on the other side of the room filming with these big lights. We were looking at them and they were looking at us!

Then, after a while, you got to know the production team a little bit better, and the camera guys and sound guys. After a couple of weeks, you barely noticed. It was interesting at school though, because at this time I was in high school, I didn't really tell them about it, but then when they see you getting dropped off at school with a full camera crew behind you waving you off to school they're like, "What is that all about?" And you're like, "Don't ask!"

Kerrang! Radio: Do you remember seeing it when it was first broadcast? Were you surprised at how they edited you?

Jack: I just never thought that what was being filmed would be on TV. For some reason it just never computed that people are going to see this. I just thought nothing of it. I didn't think it was going to go anywhere. I was a huge Tenacious D fan at the time and I kept telling MTV, "We have to get Tenacious D to do the trailers!" And they managed to get Tenacious D to do three trailers where Jack Black and Kyle Gass were dressed up as my dad and Randy Rhoads or Zakk [Wylde]. They did these crazy songs, and it was at that point that I realized, wait a second, this show might have some weight behind it, because we just got Tenacious D to do our trailers! I remember the night the show aired and how I was normal, high school kid one day and then the next it was different.

Kerrang! Radio: How did you feel seeing yourself on TV?

Jack: Sometimes I felt that what they were showing was like me, and other times, I just thought "that's so not what happened!" The thing is, everyone always thought that "The Osbournes" was scripted, and it's not like we were ever scripted, but the edit was. You can do amazing things with editing anything; you can make the tone of something completely different or make things appear to be completely what they're not.

In the first episode, I have three different hair-dos, and I can't believe no-one ever really picked up on that! How can this one story be followed through three different hair-dos? And they were completely out of order, it's not like one minute I had long hair, then short, then even shorter, it was short, long, half cut, weird. So when they would do stuff like that, it would really frustrate me; when they would embellish things that weren't as big of a deal as they were, but sometimes it was more or less as it was.

Kerrang! Radio: What were the positive benefits of it at the time for you?

Jack: At the time, I thought the positive benefits were that I got loads of women, I could get into any bar I wanted, and I was getting paid! That was actually, honestly, the only reason at the time I was doing it. I was 15, you don't actually think about things like getting paid to be filmed at home, it doesn't pop into your head, and it wasn't until we'd been filming for three weeks that it actually clocked into my head that, wait a second, this is going to be on TV and I went up to my mum and I was like, "Why are we doing this?" and she's like, "Well…", and I was like, "am I getting paid?" and she's like, "yes." And she told me at the point before we'd signed anything and I thought it was an astonishingly high figure, I was like, "Oh my god, that's amazing!" It was something like forty thousand dollars or something, for a 15 year old that's epic, and I was like, "oh my god!" So I was like, "Amazing! Great! I'm in! Fantastic! I'm going to go and buy a car or something with it!" Although it sounds slightly hollow, sorry, I only did it for the money!

Kerrang! Radio: How have your relationships with your family changed over the years? Have you ever been embarrassed by anything your family has done?

Jack: Yeah. It's very tough having a family that you have and then there's a public perception of your family. So there is this strange balance of things and I sometimes forget that my parents' actions don't just disappear. With my dad, I've grown up with that, but when things started happening with myself, and sister and mum, things get difficult.

There's definitely a lot of embarrassing stuff. I always found "X-Factor" with my mum hard to deal with, just because who she is perceived as on television is not necessarily who she is to me. Just like when my dad's on stage. At home, my dad is dad, he's not Ozzy Osbourne. So I had a hard time getting used to the fact that my mum now had a public persona she'd created for herself, but also she was my mum. And with my sister as well, and I'm sure them with me. Things definitely were hard at times. "Why did you say that?" You know, "What's this all about? Why didn't you speak to me about this?" So it can be tough at times, especially when my mum or sister come out with something in the press. I don't really worry that much about my dad, he's been doing it so long he's got his routine down pretty well when it comes down to talking about things, but my mum and sister are a bit of a loose cannon every now and then — they'll just blurt stuff out and it can have quite an effective backlash.

Kerrang! Radio: There can't be many other families who read about what each other have been doing in the papers.

Jack: It's always interesting! The thing that probably ticked me off the most was reading in the newspaper how my mum and dad had agreed upon euthanizing in Switzerland if one of them got terminally ill. I was like, "when were you going to talk to us about that?" and mum's like, "well, it's your father and I's decision," this and that, and I'm like, "Well, yeah, so you'll talk to a seedy reporter about it, but not your own kids?" Things like that get frustrating, but like I said, I think essentially what we do is entertainment and I think my mum and sister are very conscious of that whereas me, I'm sometimes like, "Well, okay then," just jump off something, that's my job! I think they're a little more savvy in the entertainment aspect of things and about making things entertaining, whereas it's just not really my thing, I now get that, that some things are done for entertainment's sake.

Read more of the interview at Kerrang! Radio.