Having carved an unchallenged niche among fans as one of the most individual performers to inhabit a stage, ex Black Sabbath front-man, Ozzy Osbourne has now agreed to undergo tests to discover why he’s even alive.
The 61-year old rocker has somehow survived a life of indulgence that would leave most hardened addicts almost breathless in wonder. In forty years of performing this unique individual has survived the effects of;
Four bottles of cognac a day, addiction to 42 different prescriptions, being hit by a plane while asleep in his tour bus, rabies treatments after eating a bat, a broken neck, cataracts, some unexplained time in a mental asylum, uncountable overdoses and a passion for cigars.
Now the father of five has volunteered to take part in a process that will discover how he has endured the effects of a depth of addiction that would have left even Superman gasping for life;
“When I die, I should donate my body to the Natural History Museum,” he tells NME. “It’s all very well going on a bender for a couple of days, but mine went on for 40-years.”
Now the Massachusetts-based medical company, ‘Knome’ will collect a blood sample from Ozzy, which will then be used to map his entire genome, thus discovering how he’s still even breathing after such extended abuse.
“Sequencing and analyzing individuals with extreme medical histories provides great potential scientific value,” Nathan Pearson, Knome’s Director of Research told the scribes.
But Ozzy – a self-professed hypochondriac – claims his extreme days are over and he’s now a new man;
“I’m a different person now: I keep fit, don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t get high — At least, not on anything but endorphins,” he says. “Now I take drugs only for real things, such as high cholesterol, depression or heartburn.”
Creating Ozzy’s sequence will take roughly three months, and cost $40,000. What they’ll do with the results has not yet been explained…
