Urine in the Wine: Ozzy Osbourne’s disastrous meeting with a German record exec
Almost everyone knows at least one strange story about Ozzy Osbourne. Since he emerged as frontman and leader of rock monolith Black Sabbath, chaos has run bone-deep, electrifying his veins like a charged flow of mania, culminating in some of the most iconic—and controversial—moments in music history. As he once said: “All I am is a conductor of mayhem.”
Sabbath emerged as a force for change from the outset, driven by their need to quash any pretence lingering in peace signs and flower power with a new, rage-filled darkness that would lead the music industry forward. In their world, it was never about following trends; it was about epitomising everything everyone had become disillusioned with, embodying the type of occultist mania many had long felt lurking within.
At the forefront of this new explosion was Osbourne, who earned his reputation as the chaotic, untameable musical maestro from day one, with remarks that challenged what it meant to be an influential musical entity and attitudes and behaviours that reinvented what it meant to be a rockstar. The rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle had long existed before Osbourne’s emergence, but his presence took this to the next level, breeding the kind of stories even the most creative of minds could have never dreamt up.
One of the most notable examples is his infamous bat-biting incident on stage, but many other occurrences far exceed the notoriety of such a stunt, with Osbourne taking his off-kilter antics into seemingly formal or normal settings when most would expect him to shelve the eccentric persona in the name of business momentarily. Most of the time, however, this wasn’t the case.
Strangely, whether he intended to create a consistent streak or not, a handful of these instances revolve around urine. Granted, they also happened outside of any realm of sobriety, meaning his lack of inhibitions made space for some of his most basic instincts, but somehow, it seemed to become his ammunition for either proving his rockstar authenticity or showing off in the face of authority. In other instances, it was both.
In his autobiography, I Am Ozzy, the musician recalled once being invited to a meeting with the head of CBS Europe. The meeting, which was held in Germany, was attended by a very intoxicated Osbourne who, aside from being a recipe for immediate disaster, enhanced his desire to rid the atmosphere of any preconceived frostiness that usually lurked in the air of corporate set-ups. In other words, he wanted to break the ice and, for whatever reason, decided that the only way to do so was by acting out.
According to the book, this involved performing a striptease and goose-step up and down the table, kissing one of the record executives, and urinating in their wine. That last part was contributed to by his wife Sharon’s version of events, who filled in the blanks when it became obvious that her husband was too out of it to remember the extent of his endeavours that gruesome day.
Osbourne knows he’s done some—to put it lightly—fucked up things throughout his life and career. He’s talked about this on the record several times to varying degrees of accountability. However, while battling Osbourne’s obvious controversy with a judgmental eye is always tempting, it almost seems entirely redundant. Perhaps this is because he is finally approaching his swan song with an impact that seems to outweigh the severity of his shortcomings, or maybe it’s even simpler than that. Maybe it’s just about knowing that readjusting perception would be like talking to a brick wall.
