Ozzy Osbourne Recalls Going 'Numb' at News of Sharon's Cancer

Posted on Feb 5th 2010 2:00PM by Steve Baltin
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One of Ozzy Osbourne's signature songs may find him declaring "I am iron man," but even iron men are not impervious to heartbreak. Osbourne reveals that his wife Sharon's cancer scare in 2003 left him devastated.

"When Sharon got diagnosed with cancer I remember feeling numb," he tells Spinner during a recent discussion of his new memoir, 'I Am Ozzy.' "I didn't feel happy, bad, glad, mad, sad. I didn't react. The human body's amazing -- when something bad happens it's kind of like I was running on auto-pilot. It was weird. You're walking around and all of a sudden you expect a feeling you've never, ever had before, so because you've never had it before you don't know how to deal with it. Your body shuts in."

Osbourne famously left his namesake Ozzfest tour for some time and it was only Sharon who got him back there. "When Sharon got diagnosed with cancer I just went into this f---ing weird place and for the longest while I said, 'I'm not gonna do the Ozzfest, I'm gonna stay with you,'" he recalls. "And she goes, 'Go on the f---ing tour.'"

Once out on the road, he kept to himself about her fight with the illness until it spilled out onstage. "I wouldn't let anybody talk about it, I didn't want to talk about it, and one night I was onstage, I think it was Denver," he recalls. "I don't know what made me say this, and I go, 'I'm gonna talk to you about the Sharon situation.' The audience went deadly quiet and I said, 'My wife, don't worry, she's gonna kick this cancer's f---ing ass.'"

He was overcome with the crowd's response that night. "The whole crowd went f---ing ballistic and that love I have from my audience lifted me above this f---ing thing in a way I can never, ever explain to anyone," he says. "I knew I wasn't alone at that point and that's the beauty of being in my position. You have your audience, your people who want to be with you, not only onstage but in your life."

Now, with seven years' perspective and Sharon thankfully healthy, he is able to reflect on that period in his own inimitable Ozzy way. "It's only after the fact when you look back you go, 'F---ing A.'"

'I Am Ozzy' is in bookstores now.