Ozzy Osbourne Says He No Longer Wants to Move Back to UK: 'If I Had My Way, I'd Stay in America'

Kevin Winter/Getty Ozzy Osbourne

Ozzy Osbourne is still planning to move back to England, but he's not exactly looking forward to it.

Less than three months after claiming he and wife Sharon were moving back to the U.K. due to the steep number of shootings in the U.S., the 73-year-old Black Sabbath rocker expressed second thoughts toward the decision in a new Consequence cover story published Monday.

"I'm getting a bit of flak from people," Ozzy said, referencing mixed social media responses to his quotes about violence in the U.S., which were published in an August interview with The Observer.

Shortly after making the statements, he and Sharon, 69, announced a new, 10-part BBC reality series called Home to Roost that will document their journey back to Britain. In the new interview, however, the "Crazy Train" musician said, "To be honest with you, if I had my way, I'd stay in America. I'm American now."

Greg Doherty/Getty Ozzy Osbourne and Sharon Osbourne

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Ozzy explained that the decision to move was inspired by backlash toward Sharon's March 2021 exit from the daytime talk show The Talk following her defense of Piers Morgan's controversial remarks questioning the validity of Meghan Markle's discussion on mental health during an interview with Oprah Winfrey.

"When my wife got called a racist on [The Talk], she is absolutely not a racist," he told Consequence. "Her friend is Piers Morgan… She didn't say, 'I agree with him.' She just respected his ability to have freedom of speech. That's all that she said. And she got a lot of flak from that, so we actually had to have f--king armed guards and all that."

Sharon also spoke to the outlet for the interview, explaining that Los Angeles is no longer the "heaven" she once thought it was. "In the '70s, if you loved music, this was the place to be. It's not that hub anymore. It's not exciting anymore. It hasn't gone sideways, it's gone down," she said. "It's not a fun place to live. It's dangerous here. Every big city's got crime, but I don't feel safe here. Neither does Ozzy."

Ozzy, however, then expressed another strong desire to remain stateside: "To be honest with you, I don't want to go back [to England]. F--- that."

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In his August interview with The Observer, conducted after his surprise appearance at the Commonwealth Games' closing ceremony, Ozzy said he had not traveled to his home country in so long nor performed live in "three or four years" due to his health struggles. The publication revealed that he and Sharon will resume living in the U.K. in February 2023 after residing in Los Angeles for more than two decades in large part due to the U.S.'s fraught political environment and too-common gun violence.

"Everything's f---ing ridiculous there. I'm fed up with people getting killed every day," Ozzy told the outlet at the time. "God knows how many people have been shot in school shootings. And there was that mass shooting in Vegas at that concert… It's f---ing crazy."

"And I don't want to die in America. I don't want to be buried in f---ing Forest Lawn," Ozzy added, noting the famous cemetery in Los Angeles. "I'm English. I want to be back. But saying that, if my wife said we've got to go and live in Timbuktu, I'll go."

"But, no, it's just time for me to come home," he clarified.