OZZY OSBOURNE On BLACK SABBATH: 'The Only Black Magic We Had Was Chocolates'

Julian Marszalek of Spinner recently conducted an interview with legendary heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Spinner: It's good to have you back musically. You've got a new line-up for the album — you and Zakk have gone your separate ways after three years.

Ozzy: He was just holding up my fort for two, three years. He's got his own thing, BLACK LABEL, he's doing very well on his own, a great player, but I knew I had to move on eventually but I kept making excuses because when you go to auditions you don't say, "oh you're one, let's go" you've got to go to 500 guitar players, most of them nuts, then you get a short list and shorter list and there ain't that many people around anymore.

Spinner: The new album, thematically, picks up where "Black Rain" left off. Are you getting more pessimistic as you get older?

Ozzy: No, I'm not pessimistic, it's just I like something with bit of a twang to it, not some bullshit about boy meets girl and they all live happily ever after, that's bullshit you know. It's a question of something, in other words, how bad has it fucking got to be here before, they say "He's going to return, how bad has it got to be before He returns? If He returns — if He's true."

Spinner: It's been forty years since your first album came out. It occurred to me that you're sort of part of that generation that didn't do art school, did you?

Ozzy: Oh, no — fucking art school? I didn't go to regular fucking school, always played truant all the time nicking gear.

Spinner: How important do you think that was to what you did? You've got people like Pete Townshend, Keith Richards — all those guys did art school.

Ozzy: When we were starting BLACK SABBATH it was all, "If you go to San Francisco be sure to wear a flower ..." and we were like what the fuck does that all mean? We wanted a few pints, a few chicks and a laugh you know? And Tony [Iommi] said one day, I think it was Tony, he said, "If these people pay money to watch horror movies let's start writing horror music," and it was just from that. We never practiced fucking black magic; the only black magic we had was chocolates.

Spinner: The other thing is you've signed up for this year's iTunes festival at the Roundhouse in London.

Ozzy: Oh yes.

Spinner: How do you feel about that? You're not someone known for playing intimate gigs are you?

Ozzy: I always .. .for instance on the BLACK SABBATH reunion tour we played in Oxford or somewhere like that, tiny venue, and it was great. I loved the closeness, the proximity, it's what metal is all about for me. The kids and you can touch them and get one on the stage. I love that. I mean the bigger the gig, it's good for your ego but ... I can play a gig, small, big, whatever but I do like doing a small gig.

Spinner: Would you ever fancy doing a small, back-to-basics tour?

Ozzy: Absolutely, I'd love it.

Spinner: Have you ever considered the idea of an on-the-quiet side project, not under the Ozzy name?

Ozzy: Oh, absolutely.

Spinner: What would it be?

Ozzy: I have but being me I can't diversify. "Oh well you can't do that, time won't wait, you're Ozzy." I mean I don't want to do "Iron Man" for the rest of my fucking life. I mean, not that it's bad. It's like, I've tried to stop doing "Paranoid" but people go, "Oh why didn't you do 'Paranoid'?" That's my anthem." It's like THE KINKS and "You Really Got Me"; they play that all the time but yeah I'd like to do something like that thing [Paul] McCartney did — "Fireman", it's a great, great album. I loved it, loved that album. It's a really, really good album.

Read the entire interview at Spinner. You can also watch video of the chat below.