"I'm not the Antichrist, I'm not the Iron Man, I'm not the kind of person you really think I am . . . I try to entertain you the best I can, I wish I'd walked before I ran," Ozzy Osbourne sings in "Gets Me Through," the opening track on his new album, "Down to Earth." It is at once a touching thank-you to his hordes of faithful fans and a dismissive f**k-you to those who have tried to condemn him or who have misrepresented him.
"It amazes me that people see me like this," the Englishman complained in a weekend phone interview from his home in Beverly Hills. "I don't go out very often; I watch TV a lot and stay home, so how do they know I worship the f**king devil or whatever? They don't see me swinging off the rafters off my house or anything."
Of course, any man who is prepared to bite the heads off live doves (in a meeting of CBS record executives) and bats (on stage) is hardly likely to get a fair shake when it comes to images in the media. "I though it was a rubber bat," Ozzy once said, somewhat disingenuously.