Ozzy Osbourne Badly Injured in ATV Accident
LONDON (AP) - Once the wild man of heavy metal and now a dazed dad in a reality TV show, Ozzy Osbourne was recuperating in intensive care Tuesday, temporarily unable to speak, after a quad bike accident fractured several bones.
Wife Sharon Osbourne rushed to Britain to be with the 55-year-old following the latest dramatic incident in a colorful career that has taken in bat-decapitation, urinating on the Alamo, and other outrageous antics.
``Apparently he was on his quad bike and he hit something and he fell and the bike landed on top of him,'' Sharon Osbourne told reporters after flying into Heathrow Airport, west of London, from Los Angeles.
She visited her husband at Wexham Park Hospital in Slough, west of London, where he underwent emergency surgery Monday to restore the flow to a damaged blood vessel, said Dr. **** Jack, the hospital's medical director.
The singer fractured his left collarbone, eight ribs and a neck vertebra in the accident on his Buckinghamshire estate in southern England.
``His progress is steady, he's stable, he's comfortable,'' Jack said Tuesday afternoon. ``It's satisfactory but it's going to be slow. I don't expect any major changes certainly for 24 hours.''
He said he believed there was no risk of paralysis from the fractured neck vertebra, although doctors were waiting for the all-clear from neuro-radiologists before removing a hard collar Osbourne was wearing. He added that doctors had started removing a ventilator which prevented him from speaking, but said the process could take several days.
The accident occurred while the singer was taking a day off from promoting the British release of ``Changes,'' a duet with his daughter, Kelly, his London publicist Planet Publicity said in a statement.
The song, released Tuesday, is a likely contender for the Christmas No. 1 spot in Britain's singles charts - a hotly disputed distinction that fuels big speculation in the British media.
Ozzy Osbourne, whose real name is John Osbourne, grew up in a blue-collar family in Birmingham, central England, and served two months in prison for burglary at age 17.
He rose to fame with hard rock band Black Sabbath in the 1970s but later split to embark on a solo career that helped give birth to the heavy metal genre and shocked many with lyrics focusing on the occult and startling performances.
Osbourne bit the head off a live dove at a meeting with record company executives in 1981. The following year he did the same to a live bat at a concert in Des Moines, Iowa, although the bat reportedly bit back in the process and Osbourne reportedly had to undergo painful rabies shots.
The singer also used to throw raw meat into the audiences and once urinated on a wall at the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas - a historical monument to Texan independence revered by all Americans.
He faced several failed lawsuits claiming songs such as ``Suicide Solution'' urged people to kill themselves, but famously retorted that ``if I wrote music for people who shot themselves after listening to my music, I wouldn't have much of a following.''
His guitarist and hairdresser died in a plane accident in 1982 and many fans concluded that decades of alcohol and drug abuse had taken their toll when a rather confused Osbourne became an unlikely TV star with hit reality show ``The Osbournes.'' The third season of the MTV series, following Ozzy, Sharon and their children Jack and Kelly, started production about a month ago and was due to begin Jan. 13.
However, on Saturday, a story on the Los Angeles Times Web site reported Osbourne's claim that he was overprescribed a variety of powerful anti-psychotic and tranquilizing drugs by a Beverly Hills physician.
Osbourne said he developed a 42-pill per day habit that accounted for his odd behavior on the expletive-laden MTV show, in which he has been seen mumbling, falling and appearing disoriented.
The rocker blamed a Beverly Hills physician, David Kipper, for overprescribing the drugs. Kipper has been investigated for overprescribing to other celebrity patients.
On Monday, actor-director Danny DeVito issued a statement in support of Kipper. DeVito said he and his wife, actress Rhea Perlman, and other family members have relied on Kipper's care for more than 20 years.
Calls to Kipper's office Monday were not returned.
Earlier this month, Osbourne told a British newspaper he'd been sexually molested as a child and suffered emotional effects from the abuse long into adulthood.
December 9, 2003
