Ozzy Osbourne Goes 'On the Record'

This is a rush transcript from "On the Record ," May 24, 2007. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, HOST: Did you know Ozzy Osbourne has a brand new CD out? It's called "Black Rain" and his first album or CD in six years. As you probably know Ozzy Osbourne is one interesting guy, to say the least. But you are about to see a whole new side to Ozzy.

Ozzy Osbourne welcomes you inside his L.A. home and he went "On the Record."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN: OK, Ozzy. We've talked before. But I've never actually gone back and done some research on some of these numbers. You have a new CD coming out which is why or is out which is why I'm here, but in the '70s, with Black Sabbath, you sold more than 50 million records, which is extraordinary. Then in the '80s you had your first solo, and 4-times platinum. In the '90s, five albums, each one went platinum. And then in 2000, your Grammy — you have a Grammy in the '90s. How have you managed to sort of stay on top? These numbers are incredible.

OZZY OSBOURNE, MUSICIAN: I don't know. I mean, I'm one of these people that always looks on the bad side of the fence, and I was like, (INAUDIBLE) I keep saying to Sharon, how long is he going to go on for and she'll go: We'll know? I'm always thinking of the worst until recently, Sharon said to me, she said: do you realize how many people don't get as far as you have? Not only in the recording industry, but as an entertainment career, you know? And I go, next year, it will be 40 years. I mean, I'm baffled by that.

VAN SUSTEREN: All right. You got to — the reason we're here, the new CD, "Black Rain."

OSBOURNE: Yeah.

VAN SUSTEREN: Who came up with the title?

OSBOURNE: Me. I was watching — I like to watch the news channels. I like to watch the documentary channels. And I got this — somebody gave me a DVD of when we dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. And after it blew up and killed everybody like that, it carbon — it evaporized (ph) some people, but it carbonized other people, not unlike charcoal and when the bomb — it sucked all these things up in a cloud, and it rained black rain, but they thought it was just regular rain there. And there were people catching it on their tongues and it kind of stuck on my head. I go, wow, I hope we never see black rain, you know?

VAN SUSTEREN: So is this CD, sort of — I mean, I don't know if this is the right word, a statement?

OSBOURNE: Well, I didn't say to have a concept, but it ended up that way. It was just — it was the first record I ever co-wrote and recorded clean.

VAN SUSTEREN: Meaning what? Clean, no drugs, no alcohol?

OSBOURNE: No drugs, no alcohol.

VAN SUSTEREN: This is the first one?

OSBOURNE: First — I've done one or the other, I've like, tried to write and record. But I just got to the point where you know, I thought well, I better give it shot, because, I mean, I was losing everything. You know? I was always apologizing for yesterday's behavior and I got tired of it, you know? It stopped working for me. I mean, I feel it's good being straight now. As I did when I first got high. It's a high to be straight because I was getting loaded every day.

VAN SUSTEREN: When you listen to some of your old music and getting high every day, can you tell that you were high during the music?

OSBOURNE: No, because we were all high. So, it was just one big party, you know? I mean, I remember when I recorded the first Black Sabbath album and I took the album — I was home with my mom and dad and they all expected it to be like: Come, come, come and makes eyes at me. You know, beer drinking song. When it started to thunder and the lightning and it's demonic and my sponsor (ph) stared at me, are you all right?

VAN SUSTEREN: Has the business changed a lot over the last four decades or three-and-a-half...

OSBOURNE: Oh, big time — Big.

VAN SUSTEREN: In what way?

OSBOURNE: Well, first of all, the brand I'm under is heavy metal, which I've never — it's our — Ozzy Music, you know? And the 70s, the 80s, the '90's, and now the new millennium is completely different but musically, on my kind of music — but it's that — you know, but I've it's all different. But I still believe in what I do, you know, I mean, I don't go out — I don't have the clothes or drink anymore, I don't do drugs or any of that. I used to. But I got very ready to get me out of the house. Because Sharon, why do you want to go out? It's my job is going out.

VAN SUSTEREN: Well, it's sort of interesting even, sort of, when someone has managed to be so successful for so many years, I mean, you look at the recording industry, I mean, when you started — when you started it was vinyl.

OSBOURNE: I mean, it's like — I remember, Sharon said to me in the '80s, she said, they've got these new format CD, and so we all went down to this place down on Sunset somewhere and it was all playing classical music, and it was like this big, and I'm thinking — the guy was telling me it'll never scratch, it'll never get — and I'm going, I can't believe this. This is incredible.

So we all wanted to get a record done on CD, now — and then from there, you go to burning CDs. You buy one and burn — you know — so now they download. I mean, you've got — your strategy has got to be completely different. For instance, Sharon said to me about a couple of weeks ago, she says you've got to go down and do the three videos. (INAUDIBLE) What? Are you insane? I'm thinking of the old way. Which is like making War and Peace, you know, you singing a song.

So, I go down and they took — it's a green screen. You play the three songs and they — you have like a thing on the Internet. I cannot work one of them things. I can't work a calculator, nothing. And what's happening with this thing is whoever comes up with the best video in the background it can move me up forward or change me around or whatever you want to do with it, whoever wins, we play the video and quite a concept, really. And also, we're selling the album 10 songs for $10, because it's cheaper the downloading of it. I mean, I'm talking here like I know what I'm talking about.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAN SUSTEREN: Coming up, whose guitar does Ozzy hang on his wall? Want a clue? Well, we're not going to give you one. But we will give you the answer in a moment, plus take you inside Ozzy's recording studio. Much more with Ozzy Osbourne in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VAN SUSTEREN: "Black Rain," that's Ozzy Osbourne's brand new CD and Ozzy is taking you inside his studio at his house where he made it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VAN SUSTEREN: What do you — how — what do you call this room?

OSBOURNE: The rec room (INAUDIBLE).

VAN SUSTEREN: The rec room or record. Recreation or record?

OSBOURNE: Record recreation.

VAN SUSTEREN: All right. And whose are these? These are all...

OSBOURNE: Oh, just when people come down and I want to try different guitars and, you know, of course I had to have a Paul McCartney Beatle base and original one.

VAN SUSTEREN: This — which one?

OSBOURNE: This violin thing?

VAN SUSTEREN: This? This is a — this is a — this isn't his?

OSBOURNE: No.

VAN SUSTEREN: It's a copy.

OSBOURNE: It's a rare guitar, now. But it's good for doing ballads and things this guitar.

VAN SUSTEREN: What's the most valuable guitar here? What costs the most?

OSBOURNE: I didn't pay for hardly any...

VAN SUSTEREN: No, I — I assume that, but what — I mean, give me a lesson in this.

OSBOURNE: Well, that's Zakk Wylde's guitar, that's his Epiphone — where is the other one? It's probably around. That one. That's Wylde's guitar.

VAN SUSTEREN: Which one?

OSBOURNE: The bull's eye one.

VAN SUSTEREN: The red one?

OSBOURNE: And I went to the shopping — when I was on tour, and I said — they said B.B. King and they probably just got something to write it down.

VAN SUSTEREN: Have you ever heard B.B. King in concert?

OSBOURNE: Oh, I love his work.

VAN SUSTEREN: And then are these your platinum...

OSBOURNE: Yeah some of them. This is where I come from. This is where — this house, here.

VAN SUSTEREN: That's where you were born? That's where you grew up?

OSBOURNE: Yeah.

VAN SUSTEREN: All right, and this is the route into your studio?

OSBOURNE: Yeah.

VAN SUSTEREN: Look at this.

OSBOURNE: This is Kevin (INAUDIBLE), a guy I work with on the album.

VAN SUSTEREN: Hello, Kevin. Greta van Susteren. So, how do you do this?

OSBOURNE: Well, he comes up with the ideas and we have an argument and then laugh and we get on with it.

VAN SUSTEREN: And so where do you actually do the — where do you do your...

OSBOURNE: Singing. Right here.

VAN SUSTEREN: Right here. Oh, right here?

And then what about — so, do you have music when you sing or laying down tracks?

OSBOURNE: When Kevin lays the tracks down, he'd do kind of a mix and we will get the vocal line (INAUDIBLE) in and then we'll put the lyric to it and then it's kind of fun, you know.

VAN SUSTEREN: Do you know when you sing the song, do you know like this is perfect? That's done? You can tell. I mean, like when you've done it — listen to it over and over?

OSBOURNE: No, well, when I do mine bit, I have to leave the studio, because, unlike like Kevin. He's like mad. He'll sit here for all day getting one guitar sound to match another one, you know and I couldn't do that.

VAN SUSTEREN: You don't have the patience?

OSBOURNE: I haven't got the patience, you know, I just think I got to get out of here, it sort of close in on me, you know?

VAN SUSTEREN: Well, where are the people who play the music?

OSBOURNE: Well, they come in way at the beginning.

VAN SUSTEREN: Are concerts fun or work?

OSBOURNE: Well, it's like what I talked about — ask yourself, at 9:00, every night of the week, do you feel — nobody feels the same, like — I'm so down on myself, I might drop a note or say the wrong thing, I'll kind of tend to beat myself up because I just want it to sound better than better, you know?

VAN SUSTEREN: You get down on yourself for that?

OSBOURNE: Oh, I'm terrible. I'm not going to say what I say to myself.

VAN SUSTEREN: What do you say to yourself?

OSBOURNE: You'd do nothing but bleeps.

VAN SUSTEREN: All right, then don't say. But, why are you so hard on yourself? I mean, look, I mean, if you look at your career. How could you be? Most people would die to sell your CDs.

OSBOURNE: People say to me, you have not still got stage fright at this name of the game — time in the game? And if I haven't got stage fright, then I'm going to be comfortable within myself, and then something — I've always been that way and so I'm fighting to get away from that fear, you know? I mean, the way I go on stage is I'm so happy to see the people. I mean, so many artists go out there and say you're happy to see me up here. Which — and I can't go there, you know? Because, you know, I love — we written a song — we wrote a song for them on the album. "I'm here for you," you know?

VAN SUSTEREN: But you get — you have stage fright?

OSBOURNE: Big-time stage fright.

VAN SUSTEREN: That's astounding.

OSBOURNE: A lot of us do, you know.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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