Jack Osbourne - 21 Years Gone: The Autobiography

This book is for my family and friends.

You are all very special to me.

List of Plates

PROLOGUE

EL CAPITAN, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CALIFORNIA
SEPTEMBER 2005

They say that if you fall to your death, you see your life flash before your eyes. If I fall now, it will take fifteen seconds to hit the ground. Sounds a lot, but I cant help wondering if that will be enough time.

Im thousands of feet above sea level. A two-inch ledge and a rope are the only things that are stopping me from falling to earth. Its dark. The temperature is falling dangerously low. My muscles ache so much I can hardly move, and I hurt with hunger. Ive been hanging here for hours. My companions are either hundreds of feet below or hundreds of feet above, and right now I dont know if Im going to make it to the summit. Im beginning to wonder what the hell Im doing here. And Im beginning to wonder, if I fall, which bits of my life I will see the most clearly.

To be honest, there are things that I dont much want to remember, but which I know I will never forget. Bent over a line of opiates and inhaling deeply, too fucked up to know where I am or what Im doing. Begging my friends to give me a fix of heroin. Waking up in hotel rooms with blood on my face and empty pill and alcohol bottles scattered around. Vomiting in my sleep. Passing out in swimming pools and having to be rescued by friends only slightly less high than me. Being told my mum might die, and then trying to take my own life so that I wouldnt have to deal with it.

But I have to put those thoughts from my mind. When youre pushing yourself to the limit like this, you have to keep positive. Lose your concentration and you make mistakes. And mistakes kill people on El Capitan.

When I first set eyes on the sheer cliff face and was told that I would have to climb it in six months time, I didnt think it was possible. Hardly anybody thought it was possible. Some of them even laughed at the suggestion. I dont blame them. After all, if Id been told the same thing four years ago, Id have been laughing with them. Climb El Capitan? Whats the point? Why would I do that when Ive got a refrigerator full of beers and a box full of pills? Wheres the party to be had halfway up some fucking rock face?

To the world I was Jack Osbourne, TV celebrity. Funny Jack. Party Jack. Jack-the-lad. Some of them thought I was a bit arrogant, a bit whiny. Maybe they were right, but what the hell? They still kept tuning in. My face was on the front cover of magazines the world over. I got paid more money than most people can dream of just to be myself. Girls wanted my autograph. Some of them wanted more than that. No matter that I was a bit overweight. No matter that I liked the occasional drink. No matter that I smoked a joint now and then.

No matter that I was only fifteen years old. Life was good.

What would they have thought if they had known the truth? What would they have thought if they had known that beneath the jovial exterior was an insecure kid subconsciously wincing from the glare of publicity? What would they have thought if they had known that I was a teenage alcoholic and a drug addict?

Would they have laughed quite so hard if the cameras had captured me at my lowest, crying into a pillow in the dead of night, begging a God I didnt believe in to end my life, and to end it now?

I have to push on. I have to find the energy from somewhere so that I can climb this mountain just as I have conquered the metaphorical ones that preceded it. Only then can I get back down to earth and revel in what Ive achieved. At the foot of the mountain I know my parents will be waiting. Expectant. Proud. We will hug each other, and probably cry, knowing that what I have just achieved is more than a sporting endeavour. It will be a personal triumph, documentary proof that Im not that arrogant, scared, lost little kid any more. Proof, to myself and everyone else, that Ive put those demons behind me.

But its been a long road. Ever since I was small, Ive listened to my dad telling funny stories about his life. Its been quite a life, and the stories are good. But somewhere in the back of my head, I always knew that I wanted my own stories to tell.

And now I have.

Ive done things most people will never do, seen places most people will never see. And Im a different Jack Osbourne to the one the public think they know.

Truth to tell, Im a different Jack Osbourne to the one Ive spent most of my life with...

ONE

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

I hate it when I hear people say, You know, Ive always felt different, even as a kid. Every kid feels different it goes with the territory but to say so out loud sounds kind of insincere, like theyve been spending a bit too much time analysing themselves. But if I had to be honest, looking back at my early childhood, it would be insincere of me not to say that growing up as the son of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne was how can I put it? a bit out of the ordinary.

I dont want to give you the wrong idea. Its not like my dad was walking round the house biting the heads off bats and practising devil worship every morning before breakfast the Prince of Darkness is just his professional title, and he tended not to bring his work home with him but it is true that I remember going to my friends houses on play days or for the weekend and thinking that everyone elses family seemed to be run along the same lines as each other. Everyones, that is, except mine. Our family just felt different. Not normal. My friends dads would be at home a lot; mine would be on tour for half the year. Their mums were, for the most part, housewives looking after the kids, cooking meals, keeping the household running; my earliest memory of my mum was that she was always on the phone, taking care of business. The other stuff was done by a constantly changing army of nannies who tried to keep us all in line.

It wasnt just me, either. I was always aware that other kids around me knew that there was something different about us. They were too young to know what it was, I suppose, but there were always remarks, little comments about me and my family that they picked up from fuck knows where. Your dads crazy. Your dads been to jail. Your dad bites the heads off animals. I heard it all and, as any kid would, I used to get upset by it. The man they were describing was not the man I knew, the man I looked up to and respected, as I still do. And I never really understood how people could know all that stuff. I knew he was a musician, a singer, and I suppose that somewhere in my consciousness I knew that he was famous, but I never really knew why anyone would be aware of all that other shit, or why they would be interested. To me, he was just my dad. Gentle. Funny. Attentive. Whenever he was around hed be playing games with us, taking us for walks, reading us bedtime stories although not being a great reader, he used to make them up as he went along, and they were always ten times better than the actual book. Sometimes he used to pretend to be asleep when we were all watching TV, only to jump up and scare the living daylights out of us when we least expected it. OK, so he was a little crazy, perhaps; maybe a bit too fond of a drink; but I adored him, like all little boys should adore their dad.

I was born on 8 November 1985, the youngest of three and brother to Kelly, who youve probably seen or heard, and Aimee, who you almost certainly havent. Aimee was two years old when I was born, and Kelly was one, so we all arrived pretty close together. We were a tight-knit family we still are and the overwhelming impression I have of being a little kid is that I was perfectly happy and contented. Despite the fact that we lived in different circumstances to most other people, cocooned in the weird bubble of the Ozzy Osbourne show, Mum and Dad always went out of their way to make sure that we felt safe, cared for and above all loved. I never felt scared and I never felt threatened. Even when Dads behaviour got a bit out of control, I remember taking it all in my stride.