40 Years Ago Today – Ozzy Osbourne Bites Head Off a Bat in Des Moines, Iowa

There is the Led Zeppelin “mudshark incident” and then there are Ozzy Osbourne’s incidents.. 40 years ago today (1/20/82), in Des Moines, Iowa, the infamous Ozzy bat biting incident took place. A member of the audience at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium threw an unconscious bat onto the stage. Thinking it was one of his rubber fakes, Ozzy picked it up and bit off its head. The singer was taken to the hospital to be given a rabies injection. According to the forthcoming biography Black Sabbath: Symptom of the Universe, Osbourne thought it was a toy bat — until its wings started flapping. Good thing this happened 38 years pre-covid or we’d have some other theories on our plate. Watch a chunky looking Ozzy reflect back on the incident from a video clip in the 80’s.

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