All the revelations from Ozzy Osbourne’s book

“Last Rites”, Ozzy Osbourne‘s third and last book, was finished just days before he passed away in July 2025, as reported by UCR. It is a gripping account of the terrible health struggles he faced in the final six months of his life. To put it simply, Osbourne‘s perseverance in being able to properly bid his supporters farewell is astounding. Between talking about the operations, near-death experiences, and his battle to go back on stage at the “Back to the Beginning” concert in July 2025, Osbourne reflects on some of the most significant moments in his life and career from a fresh and more astute angle.

He claimed that the ensuing hangover had prepared him for the performance, but he soon discovered that he should never act when intoxicated or inebriated.

The best did I ever did – in my opinion anyway,’ was the Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donington, 1984. The night before at the hotel, I’d be absolutely off-the-charts shitfaced. We’re talking peak human wrecking ball days. I rolled out of bed in the afternoon, got shot up with Decadron, went on stage and absolutely killed it. It’s sod’s law. You over-prepare, and it’s shit. You wing it – going out there with a steaming hangover – and it’s amazing.

Rudy Sarzo departed Osbourne‘s band a few months later, distraught over the death of Randy Rhoads in 1982. Don Costa, a former bassist for W.A.S.P., took his place.

Don was a great player. The problem was he was nuts. And I mean really nuts. Like, he had a cheese grater screwed to the back of his bass, and during a gig he’d use it to grate the skin off his knuckles. And other parts of him. The pain must have been unreal… he never wore a shirt, just a pair of white jeans that would be splattered with his blood by the end. The horniest guy I’d ever met. He’d fuck anything. …His time with the band came to an end when he tried to make out with me at the back of the bus. It wasn’t a joke. He was in my business, trying to stick his tongue down my throat.

Osbourne and his fellow Black Sabbath members undoubtedly lament that no one had given their early contracts a more thorough reading. Osbourne says he once asked his accountant how much the term cost the group, which was a mistake. Osbourne comforted himself by claiming that they wouldn’t have been able to manage the estimated 100 million pounds.

None of us in Sabbath had a clue, and the people advising us were often the same ones trying to rip us off. If I could go back in time and teach myself one legal term, it would be ‘perpetuity.” Thanks to that one word, we lost control of Sabbath’s publishing rights forever. I don’t think all four of us would still be alive if that had happened.

When talking about a number of celebrities he met through Alcoholics Anonymous, Osbourne violates the “anonymous” guidelines. In addition to revealing that Friends star Matthew Perry used to attend meetings at Osbourne‘s residence, he describes a sequence of incidents in which he mistakenly believed he had offended fellow meeting-goer Eric Clapton.

I felt so sad when they said he’d been found in his hot tub, unresponsive, with ketamine in his system. He’d given everything he had to stay clean. But it wasn’t enough.

Osbourne provides an incredibly eerie first-person narrative of guitarist Randy Rhoads’ death in a plane crash in March 1982. The fact that Osbourne had not been informed that the band had stopped at an airstrip in the middle of a field to attempt to fix the bus’s air conditioner added to the confusion and fear of being awakened by the sound of an airplane smashing into their tour bus. Rhoads and cosmetics artist Rachel Youngblood were on the second of the bus driver’s two unauthorized joy excursions in a single-engine plane. Osbourne transports you to the horrifying moments of his initial awakening.

How did we skid this far off the freeway? Where are the other cars? What did we crash into?
What’s everyone so upset about? Why can’t I hear sirens? Where’s the bus driver?
WHAT. THE. FUCK. IS HAPPENING?

…Sharon’s trying to do a headcount. I don’t know where Tommy (Aldridge) or Rudy (Sarzo) are.

We’re all going into shock, getting that dead, numb look in our eyes. Sharon’s taking off a shoe. Beating our tour manager Jake Duncan over the head with it, trying to get some sense out of him.

He can’t get his words out.

‘What happened?’ Sharon’s screaming. ‘Where’s Randy? Where’s Rachel?’ He’s just pointing at the fire.

Following Osbourne‘s dismissal from Black Sabbath in 1979, he and Ronnie James Dio, the band’s new lead singer, engaged in decades of backstabbing in the media. However, he states in “Last Rites” that he has come to terms with the entire circumstance.

On reflection, getting fired from Sabbath was the best thing that ever happened to me – and it was certainly the best thing that ever happened to them. When they hired Ronnie James Dio to take over from me, they had something to prove. And I had something to prove. And that re-lit the fire inside all of us at a time when we all badly needed to feel that hunger again.

My first wife had refused point-blank to ever call me Ozzy. To her, I was always John. Ozzy was just my nickname from school, a short version of Osbourne. …Before I met Sharon, Ozzy was like a separate identity. He was the person I became on stage…. the human wrecking ball. …But for whatever reason, once I divorced my first wife and married Sharon, John never came back. I asked Sharon about it once, why she never called me by my birth name. ‘I like you as Ozzy,’ was all she said. Now I’m Ozzy all the time.

Osbourne‘s health issues over the past five years were far worse than fans realized, according to the book’s primary revelation.

All I wanted was to make it to that final show. And to walk again, I suppose,” the singer says of his “desperate” attempt to heal himself before the July 5 Back to the Beginning concer. I ain’t proud to say we got taken in by a couple of total quacks. First was a guy in Canada who said if we paid him $170,000 he’d put me through a new kind of CAT scan, which could show everything that was wrong with me. So Sharon wired him the money and we went over to his clinic. But the thing was just a regular X-ray machine. Then he gave me this box of ‘special medicine’ that was just a bunch of herbs and whatever, the same stuff you can buy on Amazon. What a con. At least we got our money back after Sharon went stage-five crazy on him.

An additional $100,000 was spent by Osbourne on “something called a PAP-IMI machine, which can supposedly cure anything with electromagnetic waves.” After using the machine for three hours every day for six days, he discovered that it has not been proven to be safe and that it is really illegal to sell in the United States.

After all that, I was like, fuck it, I’ll stick to Tylenol.

Osbourne‘s Black Sabbath bandmates, especially drummer Bill Ward, with whom Ozzy had been at odds for almost ten years, began to inquire about him as word spread about his deteriorating health.

The blow up over the (2013) 13 album had been the biggest falling-out we’d ever had. …{But] whenever we think any of us need each other for any reason, we have this camaraderie that just kicks in automatically.

“We may have all got ripped off, Bill,” I said, “but our lives were forever changed by what we did.”

“I know Ozzy, I know. We’re lucky guys,” he said. We can’t complain.”

“I love you, y’know.” I told him. It went very quiet for a moment.

“I love you too, Ozzy. You fucking lunatic.”

Just two days before his death, Ozzy Osbourne completed penning “Last Rites”, living up to the title’s promise. In the last chapter, he is content to be back in his native land and is soaking up the glory of the Back to the Beginning concert. It was obvious to him that the end was imminent.

Death’s been knocking at my door for the last six years, louder and louder. At some point I’m gonna have to let him in. As for what I want on my tombstone, that’s one of the subjects my family definitely won’t let me discuss. Between you and me though, I’m thinking something short and sweet. ‘I told you I wasn’t feeling well’ should do the trick.