Ozzy & Me: Life Lessons, Wild Stories, and Unexpected Epiphanies from Forty Years of Friendship with the Prince of Darkness

An entertaining, heartwarming memoir detailing the adventures and valuable life lessons learned from the author’s four decades of friendship with Ozzy Osbourne and the Osbourne family.

Stephen Rea was born in Northern Ireland in 1969, the same year “The Troubles” began. Violence was everywhere. His grandmother was nearly killed when gunmen opened fire on the wrong house, leaving young Stephen to pick at the bullet holes in the walls. He found refuge from this turmoil in heavy metal—especially the music of Ozzy Osbourne. As a pre-internet teenager, he hunted down dozens of live concert bootlegs—corresponding by mail with collectors around the world—and devoured every music magazine he could find.

In late 1984, when Stephen was fifteen, he read about a huge festival in Rio de Janeiro that January called “Rock in Rio” whose bill included AC/DC, Queen, and Osbourne. As a lark, he mentioned it to his dad, and was stunned when he said they should go. He was even more shocked when his mother, looking for information about how to get tickets, began a correspondence with Osbourne’s secretary, who scored the family VIP passes and introduced them to Osbourne in Brazil. Thus began a friendship with Ozzy, his wife Sharon, and the rest of the Osbourne family that has continued for decades.

While traveling on tour in the mid-nineties, Ozzy gifted Stephen a pair of fancy leather notebooks and told him to keep a record of their adventures and conversations. The result is Ozzy & Me, a beautiful behind-the-scenes memoir that proves the life-affirming, soul-nourishing power of music—and disproves the notion that you should never meet your heroes.

Stephen Rea is a former United Kingdom newspaper journalist and the author of the memoir Finn McCool’s Football Club. Originally from Northern Ireland, he lives and teaches writing in New Orleans.