Steven Johnson

“Out of everything I've lost, I miss my mind the most!”
― Ozzy Osbourne

“My father always said I would do something big one day.‘I’ve got a feeling about you, John Osbourne,’ he’d tell me, after he’d had a few beers.‘You’re either going to do something very special, or you’re going to go to prison.’
And he was right, my old man.

I was in prison before my eighteenth birthday.”
― Ozzy Osbourne, I Am Ozzy

“They said I would never write this book.
Well, f**k ’em – ’cos here it is.
All I have to do now is remember something...
Bollocks. I can’t remember anything.”
― Ozzy Osbourne, I Am Ozzy

“‘And what about a [band] name?’ said Tony [Iommi]. The three of us looked at each other.
‘We should all take a couple of days to think about it,’ I said. ‘I dunno about you two, but I’ve got a special place where I go to get ideas for important stuff like this. It’s never failed me yet.’

Forty-eight hours later I blurted out: ‘I’ve got it!’
‘Must have been that dodgy bird you poked the other night,’ said Geezer. ‘Has your whelk turned green yet?’
Tony and Bill snickered into their plates of egg and chips. We were sitting in a greasy spoon caff in Aston. So far, everyone was getting along famously.
‘Very funny, Geezer,’ I said, waving an eggy fork at him. ‘I mean the name for our band.’
The snickering died down.
‘Go on then,’ said Tony [Iommi].
‘Well, I was on the shitter last night, and...'
‘That’s your special place?’ spluttered Bill, blobs of mushed-up egg and HP sauce flying out of his mouth.
‘Where the f**k did you think it was, Bill?’ I said. ‘The hanging gardens of f**king Babylon?”
― Ozzy Osbourne, I Am Ozzy