Ozzy Osbourne may think of himself as the Prince of Darkness, but, to quote another one of his album titles, he is now realizing he's just an ordinary man.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone UK, the rock icon says he's come to accept his mortality isn't what it used to be and most of the people he surrounded himself with have since passed.
"I've been doing a lot of reflection while I've been laid up, and all my drinking partners, I've realized they're all f**king dead!" he says. "The graveyard's full of them! You're dead and you're dead and you're dead."
Osbourne notes that his time should have been up long ago, based on his actions over his 50+ years of being in showbiz.
"I should have been dead way before loads of them," he continues. "Why am I last man standing? I don't understand any of it. Sometimes I look in the mirror and go, 'Why the f**k did you make it?!' I'm not boasting about any of it because I should have been dead a thousand times. I've had my stomach pumped God knows how many times."
He adds that when death comes knocking he won't be scared.
"I don't fear death, but I don't want to have a long, painful and miserable existence," he explains. "I like the idea that if you have a terminal illness, you can go to a place in Switzerland and get it done quickly. I saw my father die of cancer."
"But look," he continues. "I said to Sharon that I'd smoked a joint recently and she said, 'What are you doing that for! It'll f***ing kill you!' I said, 'How long do you want me to f***ing live for?!' At best, I've got ten years left and when you're older, time picks up speed."
Of course, Osbourne has been battling some major scares of late. In 2020 he admitted he suffers from Parkinson's disease. And the year before, he required a fourth spinal surgery after a fall. All of this, plus the aging process has prevented him from getting back on stage to give his fans the farewell he'd always hoped for.
"It's really knocked me about," he says. "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**king rod in my spine. They found a tumour 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**ked up."
He adds, "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."