When the Prince of Darkness took to the stage, anything could happen.
Ozzy Osbourne has died at the age of 76, just weeks after his farewell show. Though he will, of course, be remembered for his Hall of Fame-worthy heavy metal talent, the former Black Sabbath frontman will also go down in history for a particular moment he shared with a dead bat in Iowa.
You never really knew what Ozzy Osbourne was going to do on-stage.Credit: Alamy Stock Photo
During Osbourne’s Diary of a Madman tour in January 1982, the demon-invoking musician bit the head of what he thought was a fake, rubber bat that had been thrown on stage at Des Moines’ Veterans Memorial Auditorium (now the Iowa Events Centre). However, as soon as he noticed the blood seeping out of the fanged mammal, he realised it was a dead, but very real, bat.
Speaking in the 2020 documentary The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne, he recalled thinking it was fake when it was thrown towards him.
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“I picked it up, put it in my mouth, crunched down, bit into it, being the clown that I am,” he said. “I had to go to the hospital afterward and get rabies shots, one in each rear.”
It was later revealed that Mark Neal, an Osbourne fan who had been at the Des Moines concert that night, had allegedly thrown the animal on stage. According to an Iowa-based report, Neal said the bat was already dead before the show. However, Osbourne later said he felt the bat’s head “twitch” in his mouth.
Osbourne had already earned the “Prince of Darkness” moniker during his time as the lead vocalist for Black Sabbath, but the bat incident certainly cemented his anarchic, unpredictable brand, and launched him into mainstream fame.
He went on to appear on popular talk shows such as The David Letterman Show to explain why he bit the animal, and even sold plush toy bats with detachable heads as merchandise. From there, Osbourne continued to leverage his more mainstream stardom, but it arguably reached a peak in 2002 when he and his family launched The Osbournes, one of MTV’s first reality television shows. Its first season was cited as the most-viewed series ever on MTV, attracting as many as 8 million viewers in one airing.
