CNN –
Rock icon Ozzy Osbourne opened up about his health struggles in a recent interview with Rolling Stone, saying he would “die a happy man” if he could perform one more show to express his gratitude to his fans on stage.
“If I can’t keep doing shows regularly, I just want to be healthy enough to be able to do a show where I can say, ‘Hi guys, thank you so much for my life.’ “That’s what I’m working towards, and if I end up dropping dead, I’ll die a happy man,” he said.
The 74-year-old announced in February that his touring career was over because he was “physically no longer able to do it” after several health setbacks. In July he canceled an appearance at a music festival planned for October.
Osbourne injured his spine in a serious accident four years ago, has since undergone multiple surgeries and announced his Parkinson’s diagnosis in January 2020.
The fall and subsequent surgeries “really blew me away,” Osbourne said. “The second operation went completely wrong and left me virtually crippled. I thought I was good to go after the second and third, but they stuck a damn rod in my spine on the last one. They found a tumor in one of the vertebrae, so they had to dig that all up too. It’s pretty tough, man.”
Although Osbourne appeared intermittently during this time, including at the closing ceremony of the 2022 Commonwealth Games in his hometown of Birmingham, England, he largely stayed away from the stage.
During his career – which began as a member of the groundbreaking heavy metal band Black Sabbath – Osbourne won Grammy Awards both for his solo work and as part of the band, which he left in 1979.
He became famous for both his colorful performances and his music, especially in the 1980s, including when he threw raw meat at concertgoers and bit into a dead thug thrown onto the stage by a fan (Osbourne had thought , it was rubber. That was true). not).
“I’m taking it one day at a time, and if I can perform again, I will,” he said. “But it was like saying goodbye to the best relationship of my life. At the beginning of my illness, when I stopped touring, I was really mad at myself, the doctors and the world. But as time went on I always thought, ‘Maybe I just have to accept this fact.'”
However, appearing as a “half-hearted Ozzy looking for compassion” is out of the question, the legendary singer said.
“I saw Phil Collins perform recently and he has pretty much the same problems as me,” he added. “He comes up there in a wheelchair! But I couldn’t do that.”