Ozzy Osbourne‘s final memoir Last Rites has arrived posthumously, offering a haunting and revelatory glimpse into the Prince of Darkness’s tumultuous final years.
Completed shortly before his death in July, the book serves as a follow-up to his 2010 memoir I Am Ozzy and provides unprecedented insight into the heavy metal legend’s painful last chapter.
The memoir reveals Ozzy’s brutal honesty about his struggles with addiction, which continued to plague him even in his final years. After achieving sobriety, he began drinking again in 2012, admitting: “At some point I decided I could handle a drink. Probably a pint of Guinness. I dream about Guinness almost every night. I fucking love the stuff, it’s like drinking a glass of pudding.” His relationship with substances evolved during his farewell tour when he became addicted to the steroid Decadron, prescribed for vocal inflammation.
One of the most striking revelations concerns Black Sabbath’s final reunion. Ozzy expressed deep regret about Bill Ward’s absence from the band’s last album and tour in 2012. “Without him, it wasn’t Black Sabbath. It was just a close approximation,” he writes. The drummer’s departure created lasting tension, with Ozzy and Ward not speaking for a decade until Ward reached out following Ozzy’s 2019 injury. Their eventual reconciliation moved Ozzy to tears: “I love you, y’know,” he told Ward. “I love you too, Ozzy, you fucking lunatic,” came the reply.
The memoir also addresses his controversial stint on reality television with The Osbournes. Despite the show’s massive success, Ozzy describes the experience as damaging: “I got addicted to the fame for a while, if I’m being honest with you. At the end of the day, though, I’m a singer, not a TV personality.” The toll on his family was severe, with both Jack and Kelly struggling with drug problems while Sharon battled cancer.
Ozzy’s candid admission about infidelity in 2016 provides another sobering revelation. He describes becoming “addicted to sex” and breaking Sharon’s heart, expressing gratitude that she forgave him despite having “every right to dump me when she found out what was going on.”
The book chronicles his desperate search for medical solutions in his final years, including falling victim to expensive scams. One Canadian clinic charged $170,000 for what turned out to be a regular X-ray machine, while another “miracle healer” extracted $100,000 for an unproven electromagnetic wave treatment.
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Last Rites captures encounters with rock legends including Keith Moon, Bon Scott, and Steve Marriott, alongside revealing anecdotes about Van Halen’s David Lee Roth and his obsession with Peter Gabriel’s So album in 1986.
