Ozzy Osbourne was once arrested for urinating on the Alamo Plaza
On February 19th, 1982, Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne made headlines for yet another provocative act. Two months prior to the incident, Osbourne had chewed off the head of a live bat during a performance and spat it into the crowd. Now, he was facing charges for drunkenly urinating on what he thought was an old wall. It was, in fact, Alamo Plaza, a UNESCO world heritage site in Texas, USA.
He’d been drunk at the time. Stumbling around in his girlfriend’s green dress, he blundered towards one of the most historically and culturally significant buildings in San Antonio and whacked out his todger to relieve himself. Recalling the offence many years later, Osbourne said: “I was legless with a bottle of Courvoisier in my hand at nine o’clock in the morning, and I wanted to take a pee. So I find this old wall, and I had this green evening dress on, and I’m standing there having a leak.” It wasn’t long before a police officer arrived and cuffed him. The singer was held at the Bexar County Adult Detention Center before being released after concert promoters paid his $40 bail. However, things were far from over.
The evening following his release, Osbourne performed a headline concert at HemisFair Arena. Two dozen people were arrested after the crowd began rioting and breaking windows. When the chaos had subsided, the singer told one local reporter that he’d just achieved a lifetime goal. “I (urinated) on the Alamo, and the White House is next,” he told the San Antonio Light. It was a huge error of judgement. Osbourne’s word’s were not appreciated by the officials at city hall, who decided to ban the singer from all city-owned facilities. That’s right, Osbourne had somehow managed to make the entire city of San Antonio his sworn enemy.
Many years later, a now-sober Osbourne returned to San Antonio to apologise for weeing on what is a site of pilgrimage for every proud Texan. His latent guilt even convinced him to cut a $10,000 cheque to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas — responsible for looking after the Alamo at the time. None of this stopped the Black Sabbath singer from receiving a fair number of death threats, however. Indeed, many San Antonio officials were surprised that Osbourne left the city alive. Things got so intense at one point that he had fans frisked on entry to his Texas concerts. Thankfully, everything soon settled down, and Osbourne continues to wreak havoc to this day.
