CRAZY TRAIN BY OZZY OSBOURNE

SUMMER ’79, AND West Hollywood’s glitzy Le Parc Hotel has a nuisance guest. In the months since his ejection from Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne has holed up in a suite he can scarcely afford, nursing “boxes of beer” and feeling “unhappy as fuck”. Reports of the singer’s state are sketchy – his most regular visitor is his dealer – but the rumour is that he’s not long for the music industry, nor for this world. “I really did think: ‘This is the fucking end for me’,” he told Classic Rock in 2010. “I’d been booted out. I just got fucked up every day. Never went outside. Never even opened the drapes.”

There is some debate over the roots of the band that resurrected Ozzy. His own recollection is that “One morning, Sharon just came round and told me: ‘Get your shit together, I’ll manage