Ozzy Osbourne‘s American dream is coming to an end.
While the Black Sabbath rocker and his family’s L.A. antics brought them early reality TV fame on MTV’s The Osbournes, Osbourne is ready to move back to his native England. In a new interview with the Observer, the 73-year-old cited gun violence in the United States as a factor in his decision to leave.
“Everything’s f***ing ridiculous there,” Osbourne told the U.K. newspaper. “I’m fed up with people getting killed every day. God knows how many people have been shot in school shootings. And there was that mass shooting in Vegas at that concert. … It’s f***ing crazy.”
Beset by health problems in recent years — including a Parkinson’s diagnosis, two staph infections, pneumonia, COVID-19 and, most recently, surgery this June to remove metal plates that had been pressing up against his spine since a grueling 2019 procedure on his neck — Osbourne noted, “I don’t want to die in America. I don’t want to be buried in fucking Forest Lawn,” referencing the celeb-frequented L.A. cemetery.
“I’m English,” the Birmingham-bred musician added. “I want to be back. But saying that, if my wife said we’ve got to go and live in Timbuktu, I’ll go. … But, no, it’s just time for me to come home.”
Wife Sharon Osbourne gave her own reasons for putting the family’s L.A. spread on the market.
“It’s just time,” she said, adding that her husband’s health issues had not precipitated the plans to move back to England. “America has changed so drastically. It isn’t the United States of America at all. Nothing’s united about it. It’s a very weird place to live right now.”
Sharon has also been working in the U.K. since being fired last year from CBS talk show The Talk following an internal investigation into her on-air dispute with co-host Sheryl Underwood. During the disagreement, Osbourne defended British talk show host Piers Morgan, whose criticism of Meghan Markle had been accused of being racist in nature.
Sharon has since spoken about how her career took a nosedive in the States following her ouster from The Talk.
“My phone as far as my TV career here was nonexistent, not one call. Noth-ing,” she told the Sunday Times this April. “In England and Australia it never changed. Here it was like I was dead.”
Osbourne recently made, by his count, his first trip to the U.K. in eight years. On Aug. 8 — just two months after his latest surgery — the rocker returned to his hometown of Birmingham to perform his hit “Paranoid” at the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony alongside Black Sabbath bandmate Tony Iommi. According to the Osbournes, they initially declined the opportunity, but felt more hopeful about Ozzy’s health following his appearance at Comic-Con in July.
“[Organizers] called six days before the gig and said: ‘Do you think Ozzy could do it now?’ And I said to him: ‘Can you do it?’” Sharon said of finally booking the Commonwealth Games performance. “He said yeah, and that was it. Six days, turned it around, booked the flight, got everybody together.”
“It’s one song — and I’ve sung it every f***ing night for the last 55 years, so it’s not like I’m going to forget the f***ing words!” her husband added of agreeing to play. He noted that Sharon, nervous about him falling on stage, insisted on having a bracket on stage to offer support.
“So I was leaning against that,” he explained. “And I was holding the microphone. I was kind of wedged in. Every time I see my Parkinson’s doctor, the first thing he says to me is: ‘Have you had any falls?’ Not only that, I’m on blood thinners. I’m pretty f***ed up, actually.”
Osbourne said the Commonwealth Games show has “given me a bit of hope” about his future musical prospects. The rocker admitted to the Observer that he’d previously been in a dark place as he suffered from severe nerve pain stemming from his 2019 neck surgery.
“It got so bad that at one point I thought: ‘Oh God, please don’t let me wake up tomorrow morning.’ Because it was f***ing agony,” he said.
