Heavy metal icon Ozzy Osbourne found himself on the wrong side of the law after a wild night out in Memphis left him behind bars for public intoxication.
The Prince of Darkness had just finished a blistering performance at the Mid-South Coliseum on May 14, 1984, when things took a chaotic turn. In the early hours of the morning, at around 12:30AM, Memphis police reportedly discovered the rocker “staggering drunk” along the city’s infamous Beale Street and promptly arrested him on a misdemeanor charge, reports ultimateclassicrock.com
Osbourne, known for his hard-living lifestyle, later opened up about his turbulent relationship with substances. “See, I can’t have a casual line of coke – that doesn’t equate in my head,” he confessed. “I never went to the bar for a drink; I never smoked a joint. I used to go into a bar to get absolutely s***faced. It didn’t really occur to me that other people were going there for a drink.”
The Black Sabbath frontman sobered up in a Memphis jail cell for five hours before being released. He wasn’t required to appear in court and quickly bounced back, continuing his Bark at the Moon tour with shows in Nashville and Jacksonville in the days that followed.
He also, unfortunately, continued ingesting a prodigious amount of intoxicants into the new millennium. His wife and manager, Sharon Osbourne, said Ozzy was stoned through the entire early-’00s run of their reality television series, The Osbournes. He then relapsed during a Black Sabbath reunion.
“Alcoholism and drug dependency is a killer disease,” Osbourne later admitted. “I went to two rehab places and then I still went out again. And then I stopped again and then I started. I have accepted I have a problem with drugs and alcohol. That’s a big stepping stone, you know. I’m very lucky that I’m still alive and I’m also very lucky I can still put two words together.”
For Ozzy, it was just another night on the road — chaotic, controversial, and unmistakably rock ’n’ roll. From humble beginnings in Birmingham he is credited with creating the Heavy Metal genre of Rock music and will go down in history as one of the most iconic British musicians.