OZZY OSBOURNE: 'I Couldn't Be Progressive If I Tried To'

Gary Graff of The Macomb Daily recently conducted an interview with legendary heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On nearly 45 years in rock and roll:

Ozzy: "With everything I've done and gone through, I'm just a very lucky guy I'm not six feet under shoving up (expletive) daisies, y'know? I'm like the laboratory rat that survived."

On his weekly "Ask Dr. Ozzy" health column for Britain's Sunday Times, which is occasionally picked up by Rolling Stone magazine and is slated to be compiled for his next book:

Ozzy: "It's not serious. I mean, I'm the last (expletive) person to ask for help. I'm not a (expletive) doctor. I don't know what I'm talking about most of the time ... But a lot of what I talk about is basically common sense. I know when you're in that hole you want somebody to help you out of it, and it's very hard for a lot of people to ask for help. So if they feel like they can ask me and I can give somebody some sensible information, maybe I can help, you know?"

On the success of "The Osbournes" MTV reality show that aired from 2002 to 2005 and the failure of the variety show "Osbournes: Reloaded" in 2009:

Ozzy: "I never say never [about doing another TV show], but I've got to be honest; I'm not really keen on TV. That 'Reloaded' (expletive) thing, I didn't want to do that in the first place. When they canned the show, thank God, I was happy about that.

"I'm not the television guy, you know? My main thing is music and rock 'n' roll. I was always surprised ('The Osbournes') took off in the first place. I still, to be honest with you, don't understand how it happened the way it did. And people didn't have a clue I was involved in rock 'n' roll all my life; they'd stop me in the street and say, 'What are you doing now?' 'Oh, I'm doing my rock 'n' roll.' 'Oh, are you doing that as well?'

"It amazed me that people only knew me from the TV show. I don't really like that."

On his new album, "Scream":

Ozzy: "You know, throughout my career the most memorable things I've done have come out of nowhere. On the 'Scream' album, I didn't go, 'I want it to sound like this. I want it to sound like that.' I can hear SABBATH. I can hear my solo stuff. I can hear contemporary things.

"Being Ozzy Osbourne, you're very limited to what you can explore. If you try to be too clever, people will go, 'Oh, it sounds too progressive.' I mean, I couldn't be (expletive) progressive if I tried to. But people like Ozzy to sound a certain way, so that's what we've given them."

Read the entire interview from The Macomb Daily.