The Madman and me

Ozzy and I crossed paths on the worst day of my life. Boy, am I grateful.

By Erich Pfeifer

Jul 16, 2002 | The day I heard the news of my father's death -- he was hit by a drunk, killed on a lonely stretch of road in Washington state -- was the same day I received a call informing me I was a finalist in the Ozzy Osbourne Look-Alike contest. I was to show up at the studios of KGON, the local rock station that sponsored the contest, on Thursday the 17th at 2:45 p.m. I still have the piece of paper with the neatly printed contest details pasted in my Ozzy Osbourne scrapbook, the one I've saved from my mullet-wearing days. Word from the station was that Ozzy himself would interview the four finalists and pick the winner. The day started out as one of the happiest of my life and ended as the worst.

It was the summer of 1982 and I had just finished my freshman year of high school. I attended a private school my parents saved dearly to send me and my brothers to. They wanted to give us a better education. They wanted to keep us away from the open campus and drugs they feared were so prevalent in the public system. So I would spend my teenage years at a Christian Brothers-run school in the city of Milwaukie, 20 minutes southeast of Portland. The best way to describe Milwaukie is simply this: me and Tonya Harding, same malls.

I appreciated my parents spending their hard-earned money to send me to a private school, but I wasn't prepared to compromise my devotion to Ozzy. My uniform of faded jeans and concert T-shirts rubbed the conservative faculty the wrong way, but it wasn't until I led the entire freshman class in a chant of "Judas Priest! Ozzy Live! We're the class of '85!" at a pep rally that the administrative brass fingered me as trouble.

For any kid with a rebellious streak and a fascination with the darker side of life, Ozzy and his music were easily intriguing. He represented everything that teenage boys lusted after: sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Cloaked in bleak imagery that parents feared and preachers railed against, he was perfect, the nagging stone in the shoe of authority.

I was introduced to Ozzy through my cousin's Black Sabbath records. The music was ominous, like a storm cloud rolling from the speakers. I found the contrast of the heavy, crunching guitars and Ozzy's sympathetic whine oddly appealing. But it wasn't until I heard the song "Crazy Train," the first single of Ozzy's solo debut, "Blizzard of Ozz," in '81, that I fell under his sway. He also did things like bite the head off a bat (an accident) and take a whiz on the Alamo (not an accident) that I found amusing. I saw him perform at the Paramount Theater that summer -- my first show and still one of the highlights of my concert-going career -- and after that it was all Ozzy, all the time.

It seems ridiculous now, but after the initial shock of finding out I was short one parent, and before the reality of dealing with it set in, the only thing I could think about was meeting my hero. I lay in bed that Thursday morning waiting for my mom to ask me a question I didn't have an answer to: whether I was going to see my dad one last time. This would be our only opportunity before the funeral on Friday.

I hadn't thought about it, really. I was too busy going over what I might say to Ozzy and, more important, what I was going to wear. The Look-Alike part of the contest was misleading as I bore no physical resemblance to Ozzy whatsoever. I had won the first round of the event by flawlessly lip-syncing to one of his songs at a scummy 18-and-over bar called the Wooden Shoe on the east side of Portland.

If I was going to actually win the contest I figured I'd have to overcome my appearance. I decided to mirror the cover of his second album, "Diary of a Madman," and turn myself into a tattered lunatic. I was so focused on the details of my transformation that when my mom came in the room and said I couldn't go to the radio station or the concert that night, not with the funeral the next morning, my throat tightened and my eyes squinted with pain, and kneeling on my bed, I cried my first tears since the accident.

Next Page: I was ushered into the studio, and there he was, Ozzy Osbourne

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