Ozzy Osbourne Talks New Solo Album, Legalizing Marijuana
With Black Sabbath’s final U.S. concert a week away, Ozzy Osbourne has revealed that he’s already begun fleshing out ideas for a new solo album. “I’ve been in the process of writing with Billy Morrison and Steve Stevens from [Billy Idol’s band],” the singer said in an interview with Sirius XM. “He’s not gonna be in my band. … I said I’ve got some ideas and we worked it out.” One song, he revealed, has the provisional title “Crack Cocaine.” He didn’t want to say when it would be coming out since it’s difficult to work on solo stuff while he’s touring with Black Sabbath.
Later in the interview, Osbourne discussed writing the song “Gods” with Morrison for the bassist’s recent God Shaped Hole solo album and the Black Sabbath frontman praised Morrison for being his sober sponsor. “I haven’t drunk for nearly four years, taken drugs or smoked a cigarette,” Osbourne said. “I didn’t want to die that early. All the guys I used to drink with are fucking dead.”
In another section of the interview, Osbourne weighed in on the U.S. election, likening it to a “bad accident on the freeway.” The singer isn’t an American citizen and won’t be voting, but he said, “Donald Trump, I don’t know. If I was American, I don’t know who I would go for.”
He nevertheless called for Americans to go to their polling stations next Tuesday just to get their say. “There’s only a small amount of American people who can vote who do vote,” he said. “If you don’t like either one of them, go for the one you like a little bit more than the other. … But vote. Whoever gets in, if you don’t like Hillary or Donald Trump, whatever they do, it affects all of you.”
He also spoke out in favor of legalizing marijuana. “It’s only a leaf,” he said. “There’s more poison in tobacco. The good thing about legalizing it is the people who grow it illegally, they don’t give a shit what they use to fertilize it. A dear friend of mine smoked that every day, he died of the worst throat cancer ever. But if it was governed by the government, they’d have deadlines: you can’t mix this with that. It would make it smoker to smoke. You wouldn’t get sick. … [But] I think tobacco is far more dangerous for you than pot.”
Osbourne is currently on the road with Black Sabbath, who will be playing their final three concerts ever in the United States this week, with dates in Tulsa, Houston and San Antonio. They’ll then embark on a run of dates in Mexico and South America before kicking off a final string of dates in Europe and the U.K. The band’s final show will take place on February 4th in their hometown of Birmingham, England.
As reported by Rolling Stone
