We’re coming up on another anniversary of Ozzy Osbourne and The Bat Incident on January 20, and to commemorate the iconic and insane moment, let’s debunk a couple of myths about that 1982 concert. There are several things that history got wrong over the years, so here’s the record straight-up.
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Let’s set the scene: Des Moines, Iowa, on January 20, 1982. Ozzy Osbourne is on his Diary of a Madman Tour and playing a show at Veterans Memorial Auditorium. In the middle of the show, someone threw what Osbourne thought was a fake rubber bat on stage, so he picked it up and bit the head off for shock value. However, when he bit into the bat, he quickly realized it was real.
Myth: The Bat-Thrower Remained Anonymous All These Years
In 2022, when Rolling Stone looked back on the incident for its 40th anniversary, the outlet claimed that “The Des Moines bat thrower has never come forward publicly.” This is a blatantly false statement, according to a 2018 report from The Des Moines Register. Luckily, the name of the bat-thrower has not been lost to history.
Mark Neal was 17 years old when he attended the Ozzy Osbourne concert in 1982. He revealed himself as the bat-thrower that same year, speaking with the Register, and shared that he had planned to throw the bat for a while. The Register also spoke with Carmen Martin-Kelly, a friend of Neal’s.
“We were telling everybody before the concert that we were bringing a bat,” said Martin-Kelly. “Hell or high water, we were gonna get it in and throw the bat up onstage. We brought a whole bunch of friends who used to sit together in Section 22, so when Mark was headed up towards the stage, I told him to wait a few minutes so I could get up there and tell everybody that Mark’s getting ready to throw the bat up onstage.”
Neal added, “We got right down in front, right in front of Rudy Sarzo, the bass player. I tossed [the bat] up onstage and it landed in front of him. He kinda looked at it a couple of times and motioned Ozzy over. Ozzy came over, picked it up, and the rest is history.”
Myth: The Bat Was Alive When Ozzy Osbourne Bit Its Head Off
We all know the bat was real, but was it alive? After the concert, rumors flew of Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off a live bat on stage, and that story stuck for years. Osbourne never denied this, claiming he felt the bat twitch as he bit its head off. However, the concert goers who smuggled the bat into the concert stated firmly that the bat was dead.
According to the Register, Mark Neal’s younger brother had found the dead bat outside of an elementary school in Des Moines. Carmen Martin-Kelly urged Neal to put the bat in his freezer and save it for the Ozzy concert. At that time, grotesque displays of showmanship were becoming common practice with Ozzy and other artists like Alice Cooper. The teenagers had heard stories of dead animals and meat being thrown at other concerts and thought their bat would be perfect.
As Osbourne later described, when he took the bite, “my mouth was instantly full of this warm, gloopy liquid, with the worst aftertaste you could ever imagine. I could feel it staining my teeth and running down my chin.”
For that morbid scene, Ozzy Osbourne had to spend the next three weeks getting rabies shots. “Every night for the rest of the tour I had to find a doctor and get more rabies shots: One in each arse cheek, one in each thigh, one in each arm,” he wrote in his 2009 memoir. “Every one hurt like a bastard.”
Featured Image by Paul Natkin/Getty Images
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