Rock icon Ozzy Osbourne, who announced his retirement from touring earlier this year, revealed in a recent interview with Rolling Stone UK that he still hopes to perform live again, even as he takes it "one day at a time" due to his ongoing health struggles.
"It's really knocked me about," Osbourne said about a tumor discovered in one of his vertebrae during a fourth spinal surgery. "The second surgery went drastically wrong and virtually left me crippled. I thought I'd be up and running after the second and third, but with the last one they put a f—ing rod in my spine. They found a tumor in one of the vertebrae, so they had to dig all that out too. It's pretty rough, man, and my balance is all f—ed up."
"I'm taking it one day at a time, and if I can perform again, I will," he added. "I'm not going to get up there and do a half-hearted Ozzy looking for sympathy. What's the f—ing point in that? I'm not going up there in a f—ing wheelchair. I've seen Phil Collins perform recently, and he's got virtually the same problems as me. He gets up there in a wheelchair! But I couldn't do that."
Ozzy said that a final performance would give him a chance to say goodbye and express his gratitude to fans.
"For whatever reason, that's my goal to work to. To do those shows. If it's at Ozzfest or somewhere, or even a f—ing gig at the Roundhouse," he says. "If I can't continue doing shows on a regular basis, I just want to be well enough to do one show where I can say, 'Hi guys, thanks so much for my life.' That's what I'm working towards, and if I drop down dead at the end of it, I'll die a happy man."
(Photo: Harmony Gerber; CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia)
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