Boy, does the music legend have some crazy stories.
Exactly 44 years ago marks one of the most infamous moments of rock ‘n’ roll history, when the heavy metal icon — who died last year at age 76 — quite literally bit the head off a bat that was thrown on stage during his concert.
The incident made headlines around the world, HISTORY.com reports, and is still discussed to this day — especially amid its 44th anniversary.
In an interview with David Letterman after the fact, Osbourne said what happened at Iowa’s Veterans Memorial Auditorium “was an accident,” claiming he thought the bat was a rubber toy. Of course, after popping the winged mammal into his mouth, he had quite the unfortunate realization…
Osbourne also reflected on the Jan. 20, 1982 ordeal in his 2010 autobiography I Am Ozzy, BBC reports. “Immediately… something felt wrong. Very wrong.” he wrote. “For a start, my mouth was instantly full of this warm, gloopy liquid. Then the head in my mouth twitched.”
Was the bat actually dead already, upon entering Osbourne’s mouth? Accounts have varied over the years, HISTORY.com also notes. Either way, Osbourne was taken to the hospital after the infamous show and was given the first of multiple rabies shots.
And for a bit of background — after his Black Sabbath bandmates had fired him in 1979, Osbourne went on to form Blizzard of Ozz. During the band’s Diary of a Madman tour, the Osbourne patriarch launched a ritual in which they catapulted chunks of raw meat at concertgoers, who began retaliating by throwing equally visceral animal matter onto the stage, Ultimate Classic Rock reports.
Osbourne would later make money off all the controversy, with his website ultimately selling plush toy bats with detachable heads. And in January 2022, the late rock god rolled out an NFT product called “Cryptobatz.”