SiriusXM‘s Ozzy’s Boneyard will air a special, “40 Years Of Ozzy Osbourne’s ‘Blizzard Of Ozz'”, to honor the special anniversary of Ozzy‘s classic debut solo album. “40 Years Of Ozzy Osbourne’s ‘Blizzard Of Ozz” will premiere on Friday, September 18 at 5:00 p.m. ET and 11:00 p.m. ET and will be rebroadcast throughout the weekend.
Ozzy and Billy Morrison take SiriusXM subscribers through a track-by-track rundown of “Blizzard Of Ozz”, including the song “Suicide Solution”, which was the subject of controversy in 1986 when the parents of a teenager who shot himself to death filed suit against the singer, contending their son was influenced by the track’s lyrics.
Speaking about the allegations in the lawsuit, Ozzy told Morrison (hear audio below): “Well, that was all taken out of perspective. So we wrote this song about… We were all doing some serious pounding of the booze back then. I’d been drinking heavily for a long, long time. And it’s, like, ‘Suicide Solution’ means solution being liquid — not a way out. People get the fucking thing wrong.”
Regarding how he first found out he was being sued, Ozzy said: “Sharon [Ozzy‘s wife and manager] phoned me up in England. She said, ‘Get on a plane. You’ve gotta come out.’ I said, ‘Tell me what I’ve got to come out for.’ She said, ‘I’ll tell you when you get here.’ I said, ‘Is it problems?’ She said, ‘Just get on a fucking plane.’ I get to LAX, come to the terminal, and there must’ve been 200 cameras. I’m looking over my shoulder [while] I’m standing, and [there are] about 15 microphones in front of me: ‘What do you think of this lawsuit?’ And I’m going, ‘What lawsuit? I’m gonna go back to the hotel. I’ll find out what it’s all about.”
Asked by Morrison if he was shocked to find out about the lawsuit, Osbourne said: “More than shocked.”
The parents of 19-year-old John McCollum believed that Ozzy was responsible for their son’s death because there were lyrics in the song that incited the teenager to kill himself. McCollum allegedly was listening to Osbourne when he shot himself October 27, 1984, with his father’s .22-caliber pistol.
A line in “Suicide Solution” says: “Where to hide, suicide is the way out. Don’t you know what it’s really about?”
Osbourne responded that “Suicide Solution” was actually an anti-suicide composition written about AC/DC singer Bon Scott, who drank himself to death in 1980.
A California court dismissed the McCollums‘ lawsuit in 1988, ruling that John‘s suicide was not a foreseeable result of Osbourne‘s song.
