“Gagged up to the Gills”: The Time Black Sabbath Frontman Ozzy Osbourne Called the Cops on Himself

The only thing worse than getting the cops called on you is accidentally calling them on yourself, which is something Ozzy Osbourne learned the hard way while Black Sabbath was working on its fourth studio album, Vol. 4, in Bel-Air, California. In between sessions at the Record Plant, the band stayed in the West L.A. neighborhood, enjoying the California scenery, weather, and copious amounts of drugs.

Videos by American Songwriter

The last two would prove to be an unfortunate mix for Osbourne.

How Ozzy Osbourne Called The Cops On Himself

In the early summer of 1972, the members of Black Sabbath split their time between the Record Plant and their Bel-Air home, recording and writing their fourth studio album. As guitarist Tony Iommi recalled in Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath, “We were still f***ing about and doing stupid jokes, but ideas and the songs were coming out quickly. Perhaps having loads of c****** helped speed things up as well. And we had a lot of it. It came in a sealed box the size of a speaker, filled with files all covered in wax. You’d peel the wax off, and it was pure, fantastic stuff and loads of it. It was like Tony Montana in the movie Scarface. We’d put a big pile on the table, carve it all up, and then we’d all have a bit, well, quite a lot.”

At some point in the throes of their c****** binges, Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne started to feel a bit hot. It was summertime in sunny California, after all. So, he pressed what he believed to be the controls to the air conditioning in their Bel-Air home. Not long after that, he realized what he had actually pressed was the home’s built-in alarm system that immediately sent members of the Los Angeles Police Department straight to their front door.

How The Band Managed To Avoid The Crisis

Around twenty minutes after Ozzy Osbourne pressed the secret alarm button of their Bel-Air home, “six cops come screaming down the f***ing [road],” Osbourne recalled in a later interview. “I get the c***, I’ve got to go in the f***ing toilet. Lock the door. I’m gonna dump it down the toilet, and I’m going, ‘F***, I can’t do this. This is good c***.’ I managed to call Frank [Tony Iommi] and go, ‘Frank, get your f***ing spoon out.’ And we’re f***ing banging here, you know. We’re all gagged up to the gills.” Then, they heard a knock on the bathroom door. The cops left. The band had successfully averted the crisis…that one, anyway.

In addition to the general physical and mental ailments that come with consuming massive amounts of stimulants in a short period of time, the band got themselves into plenty of other trouble while high on c****** in California. For example, the band almost killed their drummer, Bill Ward, by covering him in gold spray paint that blocked his pores and caused him to start having convulsions. “The ambulance gave us a right bollocking,” guitarist Tony Iommi recalled to The Guardian in a 2016 interview. “‘You idiots! You could have killed him.’ They gave him adrenaline, and we had to use paint stripper to get it off. He looked like a beetroot by the end.”

Despite all their drug-fueled escapades and Ozzy Osbourne’s accidental call to the cops, the band managed to release their fourth album, Vol. 4, in September of that year. The album peaked at No. 13 on the Billboard pop album chart in the U.S. and No. 8 on the U.K. Albums Chart.

Photo by Andrew Kent/Retna/Mediapunch/Shutterstock