Ozzy Osbourne was quite the busy bee in the mid-1980s: he was in the middle of a prolific Bark at the Moon promotional tour, doing copious amounts of drugs and binge drinking alcohol with Mötley Crüe and the appropriately named Waysted, and, for one brief moment in a nightclub stairwell, gravely offending musical legend and Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson. Though, to Osbourne’s credit, he said it was all a misunderstanding.
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The awkward incident took place after a tour stop at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Osbourne, the rest of the bands, and the crew were enjoying an after-party at a church-turned-nightclub called the Limelight when someone asked the Prince of Darkness if he would get a photograph with Brian Wilson. “Who the f***’s Brian Wilson?” Osbourne replied, per his memoir, I Am Ozzy. Someone told Osbourne who he was, and he obliged.
“Everyone had been talking about Brian Wilson a lot because the week before, his brother, Dennis, had drowned in LA,” Osbourne wrote. “It was terribly sad. Anyway, I was told to go and meet Brian Wilson on the stairwell, so I went, loaded up on booze and coke, and waited for him. Ten minutes passed. Then twenty minutes. Then thirty minutes.”
Although Osbourne was annoyed that Wilson made him wait over half an hour, he decided to give the musician some grace. His brother had just died, after all. So, Osbourne greeted Wilson with his condolences. “Sorry to hear about your brother Brian,” he said.
Or he thought he did, anyway.
Ozzy Osbourne Said Brian Wilson Misheard What He Was Trying to Say
In his memoir, Ozzy Osbourne recalled Brian Wilson giving him a funny look and walking away without saying anything. Considering Osbourne had already waited 35 minutes, he said something perfectly harmless, and was “loaded up” on alcohol and c******, he began shouting after Wilson for wasting his time. “First, you show up late,” Osbourne hollered. “Now you’re just gonna f*** off without saying a single f***ing word? I tell you what, Brian, why don’t we forget about the photograph so you can shove your head back up your a** where it f***ing belongs, eh?”
From Osbourne’s perspective, Wilson was the rude one. But a phone call to the Osbournes’ hotel room the next morning would prove otherwise. Ozzy’s wife, Sharon Osbourne, picked up the phone, spoke to the person on the other end for a few minutes, then promptly hit Ozzy in the head with the phone receiver.
Sharon informed Ozzy that what he actually said that night in the stairwell was, “Hello, Brian, you f***ing a**hole. I’m glad to hear your brother’s dead.” Osbourne immediately protested, arguing he would never say that. “No,” Sharon replied, “the f***ing c****** you keep shoving up your nose said that.”
Ozzy insisted (and years later, he would stick to his story during a 2010 interview with Howard Stern), but he called Wilson just the same and apologized twice. “Since then, I’ve bumped into him a few times over the years. We’re cool now. Although we never did get around to taking that photograph,” Osbourne wrote.
To his credit, between the booze and the Birmingham accent, it was notoriously difficult to understand him when he spoke.
Photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns
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