After announcing the end of his touring career, Ozzy Osbourne has been dealing with a slew of rumors that suggest he’s dying, and the rocker isn’t taking the drama lightly.
“I’m f***ing not dying,” he candidly declared during an installment of SiriusXM’s Ozzy Speaks.
The Black Sabbath frontman has been battling spinal injuries that have kept him from performing live for several years. Those injuries have left him with damaged neck and leg nerves, and he admits that he’s “in constant pain,” but he’s not dealing with anything terminal.
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Nonetheless, the press has been having a heyday overdramatizing the situation, and it’s driving him “nuts.”
“I mean, I looked in the magazine, ‘Ozzy’s on his last legs.’ I’m fucking not dying,” he said. “Come on, guys. Haven’t I had it bad enough already?”
Ozzy Osbourne Still Hopes to Return to the Stage: ‘I Gotta Get Out There’
In an Instagram post on February 1, the 74-year-old told his fans that doctors have been trying to help him overcome his injuries for four years, and they’ve been unsuccessful. Overall, he’s undergone “three operations, stem cell treatments, endless physical therapy sessions, and most recently,[a] groundbreaking Cybernics (HAL) treatment.”
After his final procedure and several canceled concerts, he accepted that he is too weak to get back on the road.
“I’ve been working my guts out to try and get back on my feet,” Ozzy continued. “I’ve come to the point where [my wife] Sharon says to me, ‘You know what, the truth of the matter, you can’t keep booking tours and failing, canceling.”
However, sitting on the sidelines has been hard to handle. In an earlier interview with Yahoo! Entertainment, the Grammy-winning rocker admitted he has to find a way to get back to the crowds. In his words, “there’s nothing like a good gig,” and “a great gig is better than any sex or drug.”
But at this point in his life, no matter how badly he needs a fix, he simply isn’t physically capable of enduring life on a tour bus nor does he have the strength or stamina to jump around on stage. Aside from his spinal issues, he has also been dealing with Parkinson’s Disease since 2003.
However, Ozzy Osbourne has not fully committed to a life without touring. He’s still holding out hope that he’ll heal from his injuries.
“If the doctor said to me today, ‘Oh, you can tour.’ It would take another six months to get it together, you know? The only thing I’ve got that keeps me going is making records,” he added on the podcast. “But I can’t do that forever. I gotta get out there.”
