
Summer ’79, and West Hollywood’s glitzy Le Parc Hotel has a nuisance guest. In the months since his ejection from Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne has holed up in a suite he can scarcely afford, nursing “boxes of beer” and feeling “unhappy as fuck”.
Reports of the singer’s state are sketchy – his most regular visitor is his dealer – but the rumour is that he’s not long for the music industry, nor for this world. “I really did think: ‘This is the fucking end for me,’” he told Classic Rock in 2010. “I’d been booted out. I just got fucked up every day. Never went outside. Never even opened the drapes.”