The “fucking amazing lyrics” Lemmy Kilmister used to honour Ozzy Osbourne’s marriage
When Back to the Beginning was announced, some people doubted Ozzy Osbourne. But it was all wasted energy. As he said, “All I can say is I’m giving 120%. If my God wants me to do the show, I’ll do it.” And that passion wasn’t just something he shared alone; it never was. Backing him all the way, since day one, was Sharon.
Through disagreements, frictions, monumental career milestones, unimaginable creativity behind closed doors and a commitment to the art that never wavered, Sharon was Ozzy’s rock, the missing piece that had his world brimming not only with newfound organisation and a clear-cut drive but meaning, adoration, and complete and utter devotion.
It doesn’t take an expert to recognise the familial bond at the heart of their unit. “We first met when I was 18, over 52 years we have been friends, lovers, husband and wife, grandparents and soulmates. Always at each other’s side. I love you, Ozzy,” Sharon once said, a sentiment her husband reflected elsewhere on The Osbournes Podcast when he said, “Sharon is like my soulmate.”
He added, “Through it all, at the end of the day, I love her more than anything in the world. Put it this way, I couldn’t live without her. I don’t want to live without her. And my love for her now is bigger than it ever has been.”
This love reflects in the music, too. During his solo set at Back to the Beginning, Ozzy paid homage to his wife the only way half a heart would, and he sang ‘Mama, I’m Coming Home’. This is something Ozzy would often say at the end of a tour run, on the phone to his beloved moments before setting off to come home, the promise of reuniting on the horizon like a lingering taste on his tongue. A breath he could finally let go of.
“I had been walking around with the melody in my head for a couple of years but never got a chance to finish it until I was working with Zakk [Wylde] on the No More Tears album,” Ozzy wrote in the liner notes of The Ozzman Cometh. “At that time, Zakk and I were doing a lot of writing on the piano. ‘Mama, I’m Coming Home’ was always something I’d say on the phone to my wife near the end of a tour.”
The song, a ballad-like sway of romantic expression that captures a whole lot more than what we’ve seen through moments like Ozzy buying Sharon $600 worth of UK chocolate sweets, was actually written by Motorhead’s Lemmy Kilmister, who took Ozzy’s initial seed of thought and made it an anthem of absolute kindred devotion. “He’d written me three sets of lyrics,” Ozzy later reflected to Mojo. “He just writes them as if he’s writing a message. And it’s like, ‘He wrote this in how long? ‘And they’re not good lyrics – they’re fucking amazing lyrics.”
And they are. It’s like something straight out of a poem, like the kind you could only read or hear about in novels: “You took me in and you drove me out / Yeah, you had me hypnotised, yeah / Lost and found and turned around / By the fire in your eyes.” And the everlasting longing until they reunite once more: “I’ve seen your face a thousand times / Everyday we’ve been apart / And I don’t care about the sunshine.”
A side to Ozzy people didn’t see all that often, ‘Mama, I’m Coming Home’ was a part of the perfect send-off, a song with the kind of intensity and poignancy that only grows with time, at the hands of two people who went through it all together. And then some.
