“Painting the walls”: The horrendous moment Ozzy Osbourne decorated his hotel room with excrement
Few have managed to go toe-to-toe with Ozzy Osbourne in his legendary hellraising, but Mötley Crüe certainly came close. While they may not have fully matched ‘The Prince of Darkness’ in sheer debauchery, the band still gave him a serious run for his money. During the alcohol and drug-fuelled madness of the 1980s, both Osbourne and Mötley Crüe found kindred spirits in one another, forging a bond amid the chaos of rock ‘n’ roll excess.
Say what you want about their music and personalities, but some strange credit has to be awarded to the Californian hair metal band for even daring to challenge Osbourne, who was in the depths of his hellraising at the time, to a “gross-out” contest during their 1984 tour. As you might expect, the former Black Sabbath frontman’s memory of the jaunt is hazy, with him recalling that it was “one continuous alcohol and drug-induced tour. I don’t remember the shows to be honest with you”.
It was this hellish partnership that produced some of Osbourne’s most notorious antics, leaving a trail of wanton destruction in their wake. Most famously, after a night of heavy boozing and cocaine ingestion, when the sun was coming on at their Florida hotel, the maddened pioneer spotted a popsicle stick on the ground and a long trail of ants moving towards it. However, this intoxicated metal god had nothing but the obliteration of the innocent in his mind, about to use the ants as a means of winning the contest. He dropped to his knees and snorted a line of ants.
Retrospectively, even Osbourne has expressed bewilderment at snorting ants, which also confirmed to Mötley Crüe just how comprehensive his predilection for hellraising really was. While the ant story is undoubtedly the most notable moment from the tour, there were also other much grosser ones, including Osbourne licking up Nikki Sixx’s urine from the ground by the pool. Although the Mötley Crüe bassist might have pretended to go and slurp his yellow stuff from the ground, the Brummie icon allegedly beat him to it and was down on his knees in a flash, lapping it up like a dog and a bowl of water on a hot day.
Believe it or not, that horrifying, contest-securing stunt is not the most despicable that unfolded during that truly diabolical tour. During a recent interview on This Past Weekend with Theo Von, Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee revealed that on the same day as the urine incident, a much more scatological nightmare materialised.
After the urine by the pool incident, Lee told Ozzy they had to get out of there; otherwise, they would be kicked out, so he said he’d take him to his room. They then got into the hotel elevator, which had other people in it, and went up to their floor. Audiences had never stopped Osbourne, though, and they certainly weren’t about to.
“He pulls his pants down and he just starts fucking [pushing hard],” Lee said. “He’s shitting. I’m, like, ‘Ozzy, dude. No! Fuck! Dude, no.’” The drummer managed to stop Osbourne from pushing one out in public, but when they got to his hotel room, there was no preventing this Satanic slug from flying straight out his bottom. What ensued is one of the worst things I’ve ever heard.
“I’m like, ‘OK, buddy. See you later,’” he continued. “And he goes, ‘Come here’. I’m like, ‘I’m gonna go.’ He’s like, ‘No, you come here.’ I go in, and now he’s gonna finish. He just starts shitting in the middle of the room. He bends down, picks it up and starts painting the walls with his shit. I’m, like, ‘I’ve gotta go, dude.’ And I fucking bailed.”
It makes you wonder what other terrible capers Osbourne has committed to in his time. Given his propensity for dancing with the devil, surely there have been many we don’t know about and likely never will, but even still, it would take a lot to be worse than this genuinely terrifying art experiment. Tracey Emin has nothing on him.
