How Ozzy Osbourne Accidentally Called the Cops on Himself
Ozzy Osbourne recalled how he accidentally called the cops on himself and then faced the challenge of trying to snort a large bowl of cocaine to avoid flushing it away.
The story inspired the song “It’s a Raid” on his new album Ordinary Man. The incident took place while Black Sabbath were working on their album Vol. 4 during the summer of 1972 in a house they’d rented in Bel Air. The band reportedly spent $75,000 on cocaine that year – $15,000 more than it cost to make the LP.
Osbourne recalled having a “pile of coke and a pile of pot on this table” during a recent SiriusXM special.
“I’m sitting there, great, Bel Air, sun shining, coke at hand, booze," he explained. "I’m thinking, ‘Fuck me, I’ve made it here!’ I’m sitting in this house and it’s fucking boiling hot. I see these buttons on the wall and I go, ‘Oh, must be the air conditioning.’ I pressed the fucking button, and [in] about five minutes, four or five cop cars come screaming down the drive. I’m shouting, ‘It’s a fucking raid!’
You can watch the interview below.
“So me and this roadie, we grab the big bowl of coke, and the pot, we go into the bathroom," he continued. "I’m going, ‘I can’t fucking throw this [away].’” Osbourne mimicked the act of snorting as much cocaine as he could; the result was he wound up “gacked.” After being told the cops were gone, his only response was a frozen grin. “I had coke coming out my fucking ears,” he recalled. “I didn’t sleep for four days after that.”
“He tells me that story, and I’m, like, fuck, that’s amazing," Andrew Watt, who co-wrote and produced the album, explained. "Use the real shit!”
He noted that "It's a Raid," which features Post Malone, was inspired by Motorhead, and was added to provide an upbeat track at the end of Ordinary Man.
You can listen to the song below.