DISGRACELAND - Ozzy Osbourne: The Prince of Darkness, Randy Rhoads’ Plane Crash and the Saving Grace of a Strong Woman

Episode Date: April 28, 2020

Ozzy Osbourne, along with his bandmates in Black Sabbath, invented heavy metal, and throughout Ozzy’s post-Sabbath solo career he would invent new, self-destructive forms of sabotage. Arrested at an early age for breaking and entering, Ozzy Osbourne refused to conform to societal norms and common decency. He would go on to be arrested numerous times and escape too many near-death experiences to recount, including a plane crashing into his tour bus that would ultimately kill a dear friend and bandmate. This episode was originally published on April 28, 2020. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at ⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠ ⁠X⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠ ⁠TikTok  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yello. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Moderato from Stranger Things, Tana Monjou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes a suspect is found guilty before a verdict is ever read in court.

On the Wicked Words podcast, I talk with the writers who dig deep into the cases that changed history, including Marsha Clark, who went from prosecuting one of the most famous murder cases to writing crime fiction. It doesn't matter that you didn't take part in the murder. If you were at the scene at all, you're guilty of murder. Every week, the real story is revealed. Join us every Monday for new episodes of Wicked Words. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Movies can make you feel, make you dream.

Sometimes they even make you appreciate architecture. Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway than Elizabeth Taylor? That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You, the new podcast from the Exactly Right Network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on, from blockbusters to deep cuts. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Ozzy Osbourne are in.

insane. He bit out the heads of small-winged creatures, urinated on historical landmarks, catapulted raw meat at audiences, woke up in the middle of a freeway after one of his all-too-frequent blackouts. He had drugs delivered by the truckload. His tour bus was cut in half by a low-flying plane, and it took the life of someone he loved like a brother. And during his stints as frontman for Black Sabbath, and as a solo artist, from his highest highs to his darkest lows, Ozzy Osbourne made great music. That music you heard at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Mellow San Francisco Treat MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to cold-hearted by Paula

Abdul. And why would I play you that specific slice of hit-and-run cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on September 3rd, 1989. And that was the day that Ozzy Osbourne woke up in a prison cell, charged with a heinous crime that he couldn't even remember committing. On this episode, headless animals, soiled landmarks, truckloads of drugs, and the Prince of Darkness himself, Ozzy Osbourne. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgraceland. Ozzy Osbourne was in trouble again.

He was always in trouble. Trouble had a way of finding him. And when trouble would disappear, Ozzy would go looking for trouble. This time, he found it, and he was in deep. The thing was, he couldn't even remember how he got into it in the first place. He had no idea how long he'd been passed out when he finally came to, or how in the hell he wound up on his back, laying in the median strip of a busy stretch of a Memphis highway.

His head rang, felt like it was in a vice. Each time a car screamed by, the vice tightened, and the headlights burned into his eyes. He smashed his eyelids shut and pressed his hands against his ears. Maybe if he squeezed every part of his head, it'd just flatten the whole thing, and the noise would stop. The pain would stop. The pain didn't go anywhere. If anything, it intensified. And then he felt another pain down below.

Ozzy Osbourne was 35 years old. Rock and Rolls quote unquote Prince of Darkness, unchallenged on his throne. He's been living the party hard lifestyle for more than a decade now. First as the lead singer of Black Sabbath, arguably the first and greatest heavy metal band of all time, and now out on his own as a successful solo artist. The blackouts, these were new, a sign of too much partying.

They started around the time that Randy died, but Ozzy took it all in stride. It was like a marathon runner getting leg cramps. You can't be a professional party, for this long and not expect to black out here and there along the way. As he lifted his head off the ground, he felt the heaviness of the night before, blow, cognac, Benihana. He'd been out with the boys and motley crew, the up-and-coming LA band he had tapped to open his 1984 North American tour, and the night featured the usual vices, bottomless bottles of

booze, drugs, girls, more girls, and they were knocking back shots at a Japanese steakhouse when Ozzy lost all grip on reality, lost consciousness. He was here, stuck inside of Memphis with the immobile blues again, in the middle of the goddamn highway to boot. Man, he had to take a leak. But first, he had to get himself the hell out of the way. Ozzy bobbed and weaved across three lanes of oncoming traffic to get to the side of the highway. It may as well have been 30 lanes, felt like that arcade game with the frog. His knees buckled as each giant hunk of metal roared by. He closed his eyes, trusted his life in the hands of fate, and made a run for it. He made it, thankfully, surprisingly.

And on the side of the highway, he felt reinvigorated and mostly awake. He needed a drink to take the edge off. But first, he had a piss, like a racehorse. In 1984, Ozzy Osbourne was his own racehorse. He'd been groomed for this lifestyle. With his Black Sabbath bandmates, Tony Ayome, Geeseer Butler, and Bill Ward, Ozzy Osbourne invented heavy metal. Sabbath's 1970s albums with Ozzy

contained some of the heaviest music of all time. The band deployed rhythm, groove, and space via back-breaking guitar wrists and skull-crushingly simple power that is, to this day, unmatched in its originality and authenticity. Born of their native Birmingham, England's low-hanging industrial heaviness, Black Sabbath wrote the playbook's scores of heavy metal bands since have followed, incorporating everything from the horror film inspiration of their self-titled debut to Ozzy's in Congress, Beatles-esque vocal melodies that blanket most every one of their albums

to the proto-mosh parts of Ozzy's last Sabbath record Never Say Die. Simply put, Black Sabbath ruled. They still rule. And in 1984, Ozzy Osbourne was thoroughly enjoying the fruits of his kingdom's labor. On this particular morning, though, it would take more than a morning cup of Joe to power rock and roll that was the heaviest of the heavy. First, it was pints of bitter, lager, stout, then speed, pills, the stuff to get you going, the stuff to keep you going, and that was just breakfast.

Whatever Ozzy took the day before, wouldn't cut it the next day. Every day, the stakes were higher. By the late 70s, Ozzie's daily regiment had escalated to a mix of beer, weed, cognac, speed, cough syrup, barbiturates, acid, and cocaine.

He called it waffle dust because it would keep you up till breakfast. He did so much coke that he tore his epiglottis in half, half severed, it hung down the back of his throat, and nearly choked him to death. Loaded on every conceivable substance, Ozzy felt the need to defend whatever title or reputation he'd garnered up to that point against the hard-partying upstarts and Motley crew, who aspired to take heavy metal Bacchanalia to a level yet unseen. But Ozzy was so gonzo that when it came to his own antics, he wasn't even sure what was true and what was a myth anymore. Did he really snored a line of ants off of a popsicle

stick or the side of the road? He couldn't remember, but it sure sounded like something he would do. He did remember when he bit the head off that dove. That really happened. CBS Records headquarters, 1981, Century City, suits, execs, PR cronies, squares, all of them. And Ozzy Osmore, making like his hero John Lennon and starting over. Starting a solo career, that is. Black Sabbath were moving on without him with that munchkin Ronnie James Dio and Ozzy had something to prove. He had brought these doves to the meeting and he was supposed to release them as a gesture of peace. That was the gag, let them fly around the room in a real kumbaya moment. Instead, ever the entertainer or ever the troublemaker,

Ozzie pulled a real Prince of Darkness power move. He sat on the arm of one of the PR executive's chairs slowly and surprisingly pulled the dove from his pocket. Some of the suits caught the move. What the fuck? Ozzy had that gleam in his eye, that schoolboy troublemaker smirk. He scanned the room. He could feel the tension, all eyes on him, and he loved it. It's just like being on stage.

What the fuck was Ozzy about to do? His smirk widened into a shit-eating grin. He then slowly brought the dove from his pocket to his mouth, opened his mouth, and bit down, snapping the little bird's head clean off. A round of gore-induced moans from the conference room. full of executives and industry brass. Ozzy opened his mouth slowly, somehow, maintaining that troublemaker smirk.

The dove's head fell out and onto the lap the executive sitting to his left. The CBS executives in the room couldn't believe what they'd just seen. The feathers, the busted beak, the blood, all of it, goateeing around Ozzy Osbourne's mouth and that shit-eating grin. And they promptly threw him out of the room.

Instantly, the story was legend. Word spread throughout every boy's bathroom and every high school in America in between puffs of Marlboro Reds. Ozzy Osbourne was fucking crazy. Damn right, I bought my copy of Blizzard of Oz. And then there was the story about the bat. Ozzy did remember that one.

That really happened. That was at the Veterans Auditorium in Des Moines, January 20th, 1982. 8,000 rabid Aussie Osborne fans, Diary of a Madman tour, Randy Rhodes, Rudy Sarzo, Tommy Aldridge, standing in place behind Ozzie between songs.

The show was hot, the crowd, hype, And the bat was hurled towards the stage by a fan. Ozzy grabbed it quick, assumed it was a fake. The crowd went, bat shit, no pun intended. Was he going to do it? Really? Was Ozzy really going to do it just like the rumored biting of the dove?

Ozzy wrapped his teeth around the bat's tiny head and bit down. The crowd went crazy. Ozzie felt that familiar sensation of winged animal blood running down his chin and just went with it. Fuck, he thought. Ozzy also remembered pissing on the side of the Alamo, also 1982. Ozzy had gotten good and drunk in his hotel room. His manager and soon-to-be wife, Sharon Levy, had left with all of his clothes. She knew that the odds of Ozzy finding trouble were greatly reduced when he was drunk in a room and had no clothes to wear.

But she left one of her green evening dresses behind, and Ozzy was nothing, if not adaptable. So, Ozzy put the dress on, grabbed his bottle of Cavazier, and hit the streets of San Antonio. He was scrambling past the alamo like a non-committal drag queen when he felt his bladder inflate. It was sudden, urgent, and the alamo was just right there, just begging to be pissed on. Now, standing on the side of the highway in Memphis, he looked at a parked car. It, like the sacred alamo, was just begging to be pissed on as well. As he undid his pants, he thought of the alamo, thought of the cops with the Texan draws to put him in cuffs, the cramped jail cell that he spent a few hours in before he was inevitably turned loose,

all for pissing on a big chunk of limestone. To the Texans, Ozzy had messed with a symbol of their heritage, representative of their bravery. He don't mess with Texas and walk away. As Ozzy pissed on that car at Memphis, he remembered the helmet. He snapped too when the blue lights came on and a quick whoop of a siren. Son of a bitch, the car he was relieving himself on was an unmarked police car. Of all the roads in Memphis, of all the cars sitting on the side of the road, he had to pick this one. Like Ozzy, this car had trouble written all over it.

This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me.

Like, making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going. And the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or. You just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham.

So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Monsu.

Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver. And more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories

and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him and says she's gone. She's gone. These are the cases.

that leaves survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever. Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you'd do. You know, you look back at it, and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies?

Well, that's us. I'm Millie de Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the Criterion closet? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film grape I got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes. or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form.

I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over it, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your Podcasts. Ozzy knew trouble from an early age. Sometimes it was the only thing that kept him going. In Aston, a bombed-out ward of Birmingham, England.

He grew up poor, one of six kids. He was born John Osborne, named after his father. But his father was never called John. They all called him Jack. And his son followed suit with his own nickname. The kids at school shortened his last name and simply dubbed him Aussie. Aston was a factory town, the sort of black hole that would consume its inhabitants who weren't lucky enough to escape. People worked and then they died. Often they died because they worked so much.

The Osborne household, like many in Aston, had no indoor bathroom. And when they did visit the outdoor facilities, they used newspaper instead of toilet paper because it was cheaper. And they had money for pants and boots, but not for underwear and shoes. Ozzy hated school. He was dyslexic, had difficulty paying attention. In 1964, when he was 15, he left school and entered the workforce. For two years, he worked as a plumber, then in an industrial plant that made car parts, then as a car horn tuner, then in a slaughterhouse where he dealt with the sloppy innards of sheep's stomachs.

After scooping guts at the factory, he'd pop dexedrine and stay out dancing to soul music and clubs. Like every other teen in the UK, he discovered the Beatles and became obsessed. Music became an escape path, a way to possibly break out of the sepia-toned humdrum beatdown of life in Birmingham. He decided he would make like a beetle, find a ticket to ride to get the hell out of there. He slicked his hair back with soap and gave himself his first tattoo with Indian ink and a needle. O Z Z Y across the knuckles of his left hand. In his mind, he was the badass beetle. Every time he looked down at his fist, he'd be reminded that he wasn't long for Birmingham.

him, and if he didn't want to be testing car horns for the rest of his life, he needed to find out what lay beyond the gloomy shadow of his Aston neighborhood. But first, trouble would find him. 17 years old, too much time on his hands. Late at night, he made his way through the window of a shop up the street from his folks' house. He didn't even bring a flashlight. He couldn't see a thing in the dark, but the sensation was thrilling. He stumbled around, arms outstretched to guide. him, he felt a rack full of clothes and took as much as he could. You make a pretty penny on the resale market. As soon as he made it home, he wanted that high again, wanted to experience it all over, that high of fumbling around in a strange place and snatching something that wasn't his.

The next night, he brought a flashlight, and back inside the story shown the light on a 24-inch telly, a thing of beauty, the kind of opulent picture box that a family like his can only dream of. But the thing was like a 24-inch box of bricks. As he tried to climb over a wall behind the store, he lost his grip and fell to the ground. The TV came down straight on his chest with the thud and pinned him there. Once he pushed the set off his belly, he decided it wasn't worth it.

He'd leave the TV behind. But it wasn't the only thing he left behind. His fingerprints were all over that TV and all over that store. As a result, he spent a few months at Winston Green, a notoriously violent and anarchic Birmingham prison. While as heroes, the Beatles released revolver, Ozzy served prison food to child molesters. It was too much, too much trouble.

He needed a new idea and he needed it fast. When Ozzy took an ad out in the local paper and formed the band that would be called the Pocatuck Blues Band and then called Earth before settling on Black Sabbath, it saved him from a life of crime. It was the first time music saved his life, and it wouldn't be the last. Sabbath was not only democratic, they were pragmatic.

All four members were equals, and there was no frontman. Guitarist Tony Iommi summoned the heaviest of riffs. Drummer Bill Ward brought the wisdom of the experienced musician in pummeling beats. Bassist Geiser Butler, a vegetarian who was into contemporary politics and Alistair Crowley, naturally wrote the lyrics. Ozzy was the melody man. It was a true wizard's brew. For a while, Sabbath's fan base was 100%

bloke. It's not like they were singing pretty pop dities with well-clothed dues and come hit their stairs. They were Birmingham boys and they looked it, sullen, withdrawn, unwashed, and they need a vitamin D. Black Sabbath's self-titled debut was released on Friday the 13th, 1970. The superstitious release date only added to the band's mystical allure. The whole Prince of Darkness role that Ozzy would inhabit and eventually embrace was more of a marketing ploy than anything else. The band weren't exactly thrilled about the inverted cross and the inside artwork of their debut, but it meant that the band attracted a particular type. Fans of the occult, of paganism, of fantasy novels and horror films, Dennis Wheatley, Bella Lagosie, the dark shit. Sabbath was

approached by Satanists and black magic dabblers, Anton Levei heads. So the band started wearing crucifixes around their necks to ward off any curses that may have been placed on them. Ozzy's dad made them for the band to protect them. Ozzy didn't mince words with the would-be hexers. He told them straight up that the only evil spirits he cared about were the ones that were at least 80 proof and gave him a hell of a buzz. When Sabbath's second album, Paranoid, was an unexpected hit,

suddenly it wasn't just pentagram wearing blockheads who came around. On their first tour of America, Sabbath was swimming in a sea of groupies, at least a rooftop pool of groupies. At a holiday inn in California, Ozzie ascended to the hotel's roof to find a veritable orgy in full swing. So, while making music destined for rock's hallowed canon, Black Sabbath also busied themselves with drafting a blueprint for the cliched sex,

drugs, and rock and roll lifestyle. And by 1972, the band was fully out of control. They decided to record their fourth album in Los Angeles and rented 2002-3 Stradella Drive in the exclusive neighborhood of Bel Air. The opulent mansion was owned by John DuPont, heir to the DuPont fortune, and 20 years later, the convicted murderer of an Olympic wrestler. Six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, one swimming pool, a movie theater. The place was extravagance incarnate, and Sabbath looked forward to defiling it.

And they were there for two months while they recorded what would become Volume 4, a record they wanted to name Snowblind, which was also one of the songs they recorded, one of the greatest songs they ever recorded, Snowblind, is a succinct encapsulation of that particular moment in the band's lifespan spent high to the gills on cocaine. The record cost about $60,000 to make, but the cocaine costs them closer to $75,000. You couldn't walk into the next room without tripping over another cardboard box full of the little sealed vials. Cocaine was delivered whenever they needed it, which was pretty much always. Occasionally, they they'd find their way to the record plant in L.A. to make music.

For a band that recorded the entirety of their first three albums in what was less than a total of three weeks, having two months to work on one record was both an eternity and a luxury. It was hard to keep track of all the people who came by Stradella Drive. And there was one guy who hung around all the time. He didn't fit in. He had great posture, press suits, dark sunglasses, didn't say much, was always there when the Coke truck pulled up. It was too obvious Ozzy thought.

He's a narque. What if he's a narc? Why wasn't he more undercover? Look at him. He clearly was not one of them. Ozzy continued to Hoover lines, only he'd do it with one eye cocked to the side, never letting the sunglasses and suit fucker out of his sight.

His paranoia was validated on the day he heard sirens. LAPD, they were coming up the road, fast. And that polished narc with a great posture, he made them, he must have, made the whole mansion. Ozzy knew he should have trusted his gut. So Ozzy went into full panic mode. He grabbed the tiny vials and the baggies and dashed into one of the seven bathrooms.

The vials and baggies returned upside down, powder and grass at the porcelain. He slapped at the toilet handle and it all swirled away. He grabbed another handful of drugs, and those followed. They started down and then there was a wet clunk and the toilet's guts

and the murky coke weed water burbled back up. Ozzy had clogged the damn thing. Ozzy slapped at the handle some more, but the water in the bowl kept rising. He heard the sirens get louder. Any minute now, the cops would be banging on that front door. There were six more bathrooms. Ozzy lumbered out into the living room and found six unsuspecting roadies paralyzed with fear. He yelled at each of them to grab a handful of the stash, split up and work as a team.

Pick a bathroom, find a working toilet, flush it, all of it. They all snapped to attention, took as much as they could in their arms, and fled in opposite direction. There was still too much stash left over. Ozzie heard tires pull up outside, heard the slam of at least four car doors in quick succession. Shit, they were going to be cooked as soon as LA's finest walked in through the door. And the cocaine had to go. As the cops caught them with this much blow, they'd never tour again. Ozzie made a split decision.

Band member, crew member, groupie, friend of a friend of a friend, it didn't matter who you were. If you were in the room, you were now part of phase two. The cocaine had to disappear. up their noses now. They all dropped to their knees, sealed vials popped open, piles of waffle dust hit the floor, nose snorted, socked, sniffled, presto. And the blow was burning holes in all of their sinus cavities when they realized the cops were only there simply to respond to an emergency call switch that had been tripped.

And the police didn't even make it through the door. The crazy train didn't slow down. And a few years later in 1978, Black Sabbath, grew tired of Ozzy's antics, which was nuts because the whole band was just as engaged in the destructive, unholy trinity of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Tony, Bill, and Gieser forced Ozzy out. Sabbath would continue on, but for the first time in almost a decade, Ozzy Osbourne was out on his own, defend for himself. When it came to the kind of trouble he could get into, the possibilities were... We'll be right back after this word, word, word.

This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb.

And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me. Making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been

asleep walking. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman

broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Monsu. Camilla Morone at Carrie Kenny Silver.

And more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the Wicked Words Podcasts. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him and says she's gone. She's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever.

Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you'd do. You know, you look back at it and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the exactly right network. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter, arguing about movies? Well, that's us.

I'm Millie to Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the Criterion Clause? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film grape I got to.

Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your Slacker Movie Clerks and Podcasts, I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Randy Rhodes hated planes. They made him dizzy, nauseous, anxious. He was happy. with his feet firmly planted on the ground. He was grounded. He was just the kind of guy that he was. But Randy was a lot of things that his ball, Sossi Osbourne, clearly was not. Randy didn't drink or do drugs. His biggest vices were Coca-Cola and cigarettes.

He was a classically trained musician. He could read and write music. He didn't waste time between shows chasing skirt and snorting blow. He tutored kids who were just learning how to play. And he sure shit wasn't a thrill-seeker. So why did he get on that plane? And why did the Tours

makeup and costume artist Rachel Youngblood joined him. She had a heart condition and was just as likely to not get on an airplane as Randy was. All of these questions and more raced through Ozzy's head in March 1982. The horrific aftermath of the crash played over and over like a loop in his brain. But here he was, standing in a field in the middle of Leesburg, Florida, the tour bus nearly cut in half, the wreckage of a small plane smoldering and choking the sky with thick smoke. Art of a wing found its way to a house nearby which was on fire, flame, smoke, chaos, and Rachel and Randy were dead. Randy Rhodes was one of two people that saved Ozzy's life when it really needed saving. The first was Sharon.

Sharon believed in Ozzy at a time when he didn't believe in himself. His first marriage was falling apart. His music career was on hold. Sharon believed in him enough to take him on as a client at her father Don Arden's management firm. She helped him reconstruct his identity after he'd been sacked by Sabbath. Sharon had the future locked in her gaze. She had a crystal ball. She would take Ozzy and make him bigger than he ever was in Black Sabbath.

Her gaze went so far into the future, she saw her life with Ozzy. He would leave his first wife and take Sharon as his bride. And with Sharon's guidance, solo Ozzy would dominate. Sharon introduced Ozzy to Randy. Ozzy thought Randy was so pretty that he had to ask. Ask point blank if he was a dude. Randy was used to it. At 22, he rocked impressively plumed long blonde hair. Played a flying V painted in polka dots. When he was still a teenager, he co-founded Quiet Riot in Los Angeles. He was the prettiest guitar slinger on the strip, and he was immensely talented.

All it took was Randy to warm up with rudimentary scales on his guitar. Ozzy wept. Randy was hired. Finally, Ozzy was weeping about something besides himself. He had spent the majority of a two-month period feeling sorry for himself in a room at Le Park Hotel in West Hollywood. The Prince of Darkness went real dark. The booze and the Coke were delivered around the clock. He came to expect knocks on the door, and the sun from the outside world would brutally invade the room, and there stood a dealer bringing him the next round of Coke or a groupie looking for a romp in the sack with a heavy metal has been. The one day, a knock came on the door that sounded different than the rest.

Ozzy couldn't tell if it was a heshire with a bag of drugs or a horny coad. It was neither. It was Sharon, quick, sharp, and to the point. She told Ozzy to get his shit together. With Sharon managing him, and Randy playing blistering leads by his side, Ozzy Osbourne was unstoppable. His first solo record, 1980s Blizzard of Oz, was certified gold, platinum the year after that. One of its singles, Crazy Train, peaked at number nine on the mainstream rock charts in the U.S. Diary of a Madman followed the next year.

It was another resounding success. Flying high again, the lead-off single went to number two on the U.S. charts. It was just like Sharon had envisioned. Ozzy was on top. His reputation as a crazy performer was the tops too. His insane stage show included a mock execution, a catapult that flung raw meat at the audience, the aforementioned occasional animal who was unknowingly beheaded.

The newly formed Pita threw a fit about that last bit, so Ozzy assured them that the bad, at least, was already dead when he caught it. That beef was squash decades later, and now, Ozzy is one of Pita's animal-loving spokesmen, if you can believe that. And the Blizzard of Oz band toured, melted faces, and rendered Black Sabbath nearly irrelevant. Ozzy was the future. It was on that tour in March of 1982, that Randy confided in Ozzy in the back of the bus.

Randy told Ozzy he was tired of touring. He was ready to wrap it up, start a new chapter, maybe go to college. Randy wanted off Ozzy's crazy train sooner than later. Ozzy told Randy they'd talk about it another time, poured himself another gin and tonic, and then passed out. Ozzy awoke the next morning to the sound of metal on metal, the sound of a quick demonic screech, the sound of life going off the rails.

And then he could feel the world rumbling around him. from below, something low and mean to counter what was up top, and his ears. A high-pitched death squill, tinnitus on ten. And there were flames he could feel them. There was smoke. It was filling his nostrils. His first thought was that a house had been dropped square under his tour bus. His head was heavy.

His eyes were bloodshot. The gin from the night before still coated his tongue. He smelled gasoline, smelled something burning, smelled death, destruction. Ozzy was dazed, hung over, panicked. It was like he was in a waking dream. Some sort of post-traumatic Sabbath stress slash apocalyptic vision come to life. He stumbled around the wreckage,

found Sharon, found the other guys in the band, but no Randy, no Rachel, and they were gone. What in the hell, Ozzy wondered, had just happened. Only later did he find out. The Torres bus driver, Andrew Aycock, pulled a Casey Jones the night before. He was driving high on cocaine,

so doped up to endure, he would stay up all night to keep the tour rolling on to the next city. But the AC and the bus was on the fritz. And Andrew stopped at a bus depot to see if he could get the cooler working while half the tour slept off their highs. The bus depot in Leesburg also had an airstream. And as a surprise to those who were awake, Andrew revealed he was a pilot.

There was a beachcraft bonanza. A single-engine six-seater plane parked at the depot. And they were making good time. Andrew looked at the beachcraft bonanza and then back to Randy and Rachel. who were stretching their legs outside. How about it, he asked. Want to get up high? The friendly skies?

And they'd go up and come back down in a flash, and then they could get on with the tour. The Beechcraft Bonanza airplane has an infamous nickname, The Doctor Killer. It is referred to as such, due to a high number of high-profile crashes involving wealthy hobby flyers who underestimated the power of the small plane,

and after losing control of the aircraft, wound up dead. Andrew's impromptu flight would only add to the plane's reputation. They climbed into the Doctor Killer with Andrew at the wheel, and they were airborne quickly, didn't ascend too high. Before too long, the plane looped back around, adjusted its course, and began to descend straight for the idling bus. As soon as they got close, close enough to see through the windows

at the sleeping tour crew inside, they knew they were in trouble. The Doctor Killer was coming in hot, Andrew pulled up on the yoke. The whole plane shook as it struggled to rise. The plane's wing dug into the top of the tour bus, bending the bus in half. The collision happened within the blink of an eye, and the destruction was swift. Death from above. Did Andrew try to clip the bus as a joke?

Just another prank pulled by a tour full of pranksters? Or was he just careless, tired from driving, tired from being high, and Icarus underestimating the doctor killer? Andrew Aycock died in the crash along with Randy Rhodes and Rachel Youngblood and took any answers down with him. To this day, no one knows what happened. Some think it was the result of a careless or wasted bus driver turned airplane pilot out on a lark, the deadliest of fuck-ups. Ozzy was devastated. He had brought trouble to Randy, put him in the bus with Andrew, high on cocaine.

Put Randy in the crosshairs. It was almost too much to bear. Ozzy wasn't sure he could move on, but he had to try. Probably easiest just to forget it all. Get it off his mind. Booze would help. So would pills and blow. He wouldn't remember much of anything, including why years later,

he'd wake up alone in a cold jail cell. The first thing Ozzy Osbourne saw the morning of September 3rd, 19, 1989 was a puddle of his own drool on the floor. There, right next to where his chin rested against the concrete. His eyes blinked open, his lids were thrown back by the rapid movement beneath them, so rapid, so forceful that his lids couldn't keep things under control anymore, and they opened under extreme protest. Ozzy was thrust violently from a dream into this.

This wasn't a dream. If it was a dream, it would be a nightmare. It was most definitely awake at the last. He lifted his head, looked around. He was in a small cramped jail cell, and the floor was dirty, sticky, soiled. It smelled like piss and vomit. Smelled like the raw meat catapult he used on stage

after a show and before they hosed it down. He heard a scream from a deep, gravelly voice, bounced down the hallway, heard the sound of something hard rapping against metal bars, the clang of doors ringing shut and clamoring open. What am I doing here, Ozzy thought to himself? It hurt his brain to ask himself a simple question. Like the devil himself had smacked him upside the head and left him to rot,

alone on a dang, sticky, piss-stained floor. What had he done? Knocked someone's block off in a bar fight? Liberated the head off another winged mammal. Did he murder someone? He genuinely had no clue. His head pounded. His ears rang.

He called out for help and the sound of his voice just echoed down the dark hallway. And the blackouts were still happening. It was one thing when Ozzy was the only one affected by his comatose detours, when it was just his life on the line, when he woke up in the median strip in Memphis, when he passed out cold on the tour bus. It took him a while to get to this point. Shortly after Randy's death, Ozzy had a breakdown.

Once the IV drip of sedatives stabilized him, he went right back to the hard stuff. He and his first wife were finally divorced. He married Sharon, but even their courtship was rocky. Ozzy would go full Ozzy, drink too much, snore too much, sleep around too much. And Sharon would throw our engagement ring into the wind. And they went through over a dozen rings before they got hitched. Sharon had Ozzy check into the Betty Ford Clinic.

As soon as he checked out, he was back on the hunt for trouble. He learned how to be sneaky. He hid vodka bottles in the oven. He installed outdoor lights in his garden, not because he caught the bug to plant carrots and beans at all hours. The lights were there so he could find the bottles of booze he had buried in the vegetable beds when he went searching for them late at night. And then he tested positive for HIV.

He didn't actually have HIV, but his immune system was so busted from all the alcohol and drugs that it thought he had the virus. The doctors had to run the test a few times to make any sense of it. The lab had never seen results like these, near fatal amounts of alcohol and cocaine in his bloodstream. And never mind, his body thinking it had HIV, his body had no right to be functioning at that moment.

Ozzy's body was blacking out on him just like his mind. Through it all, he remained a vital cog in the American heavy metal machine. Next to blistering albums by Metallica, Judas Priest, and Slayer, his 1986 record, The Ultimate Sin, was his highest selling to date. Its single, Shot in the Dark, was an instant metal classic. His next album, 1988's No Rest for the Wicked, peaked at number 13 on the Billboard 200. The 80s were big for Ozzy, but damned if he could,

remember any of it. Just like he couldn't remember why he had woken up in a puddle of his own spit in a jail cell on this foggy morning in September 1989. He couldn't remember the night before, walking down the stairs and nothing but tidy whiteys, sitting next to Sharon on the couch. He couldn't remember telling her he had no choice but to kill her, to end her life, right then and there. In the moment, it was clear as day.

Sharon was going to die. Ozzy was going to kill her. He knew what he had to do. Put his hands around her throat and squeeze. Was it the cocaine talking and the Hennessy? Maybe it was the gin or the pills. It could be the pills. But was it the uppers or the downers?

There was no reason, no real reason anyway, to lash out at Sharon. It wasn't Ozzy talking. It was trouble. As usual, trouble was in control. And it took over his body, told Ozzy when to stand and how to stand. So then he stood up, straddled Sharon. Sharon screamed and then Ozzy got his hands around her throat and suddenly she couldn't scream anymore. She struggled to bring her arms up to Ozzy's face. Her nails went right for his eyes.

The weight of Ozzy's half-naked body pressed down on his wife. He watched her fight for her breath fight to toss him onto the floor. And then, just like that, he blacked out, fully out. The next thing he knew, he was pleading with a prison guard to tell him why he was behind bars. The guard looked at him and disgust and ran it down simple. You're an asshole. You attempted to kill your wife, attempted murder by strangulation. Ozzie had tried to kill Sharon.

He couldn't believe what he was hearing. After 36 hours alone with his own thoughts, Ozzy was sent to court. The judge let him go on bail, but he had to agree to three ground rules. He couldn't talk to Sharon. He couldn't go home, and he had to go back to rehab immediately. He channeled Randy Rhodes while in rehab

and cut his vices back to smokes in Coca-Cola. After a few months, Sharon paid him a visit to let him know that she was dropping the charges. She knew that was an Aussie who had attacked her. It was something, someone truly different, something truly dark, something that had taken over. It was trouble. It was an Aussie Osborne. Just like she had seen the promise in Ozzy almost the decade prior hold up in a hotel room with the shades drawn, she saw it again here in rehab.

She would stick it out with him. But he'd have to make more music with Sharon at the helm, managing his career. Ozzy would have to keep making great music. Sharon wasn't playing. Sharon Osborne was all business. Music and the influence of a strong woman, his wife, his manager. The combination had saved his life before and it would save his life again. Ozzy Osbourne climbed back on top.

No more tears. Mama, I'm coming home. Ozfest. With Sharon Osborne and the music guiding him, Ozzy Osbourne would never again let trouble lead him all the way astray. Lead him to Total Disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis.

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Weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelampod.com slash membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook at Disgracelandpod, and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at disgraceland pod. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do?

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dream. Sometimes they even make you appreciate architecture. Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway than Elizabeth Taylor? That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You, the new podcast from the Exactly Right Network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on, from blockbusters to deep cuts. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.