I Am Ozzy: The classic autobiography from Ozzy Osbourne, the heavy metal music icon and frontman of Black Sabbath

by Ozzy Osbourne

On Friday the thirteenth of February 1970, Black Sabbath went on sale. I felt like I’d just been born. But the critics fucking hated it. Still, one of the few good things about being dyslexic is that when I say I don’t read reviews, I mean I don’t read reviews. But that didn’t stop the others from poring over what the press had to say about us. Of all the bad reviews of Black Sabbath, the worst was probably written by Lester Bangs at Rolling Stone. He was the same age as me, but I didn’t know that at the time. In fact, I’d never even heard of him before, and once the others told me what he’d written I wished I still hadn’t. I remember Geezer reading out words like ‘claptrap’, ‘wooden’ and ‘dogged’. The last line was something like, ‘They’re just like Cream, but worse’, which I didn’t understand, because I thought Cream were one of the best bands in the world.