This month marks the 35th Anniversary of Ozzy’s infamous “Bat” incident.
Performing at Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, IA while on tour to support the Diary of a Madman album, his second solo effort since leaving Black Sabbath almost three years earlier, Osbourne picked up what he believed was a toy someone had thrown onstage.
“I thought it was one of those rubber bats,” Osbourne told Night Flight the year of the incident. “I picked it up and it was a real bat, you know?”
The interviewer asked if it was alive, and Ozzy said it was, “’Til I bit the head off it.”
“I had to go straight from the gig to the hospital, and the guy said, we better give you some precautionary rabies shots,” Osbourne noted in the documentary Don’t Blame Me: The Tales of Ozzy Osbourne. “I had one in each rear, one in each arm, and one in the top of my leg — and I had to have that every night. For anyone out there who thinks it’s “cool”… and if you want to be a complete dick, try it.”
And even funnier, watch the November 8, 1982 Night Flight interview with Ozzy…check out that buzz cut!! Does he look like his son Jack in that video or what?