As the singer for one of the leading rock bands of the '70s, Ozzy Osbourne is no stranger to wild behavior. The Black Sabbath frontman formed a strong bond with his bandmates at the time and would frequently engage in behavior ranging from harmless fun to biting the head off a live bat.
One of the ways Osbourne would entertain himself was to set drummer Bill Ward's beard on fire. He showed it to Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony when the bands were touring together, and in a recent interview on The Eddie Trunk Podcast, Anthony confessed he was taken aback by what he saw.
"Ozzy, Bill Ward, and myself would be sitting at the bar at the hotel after the show having a beer," Anthony recounted. “Ozzy would elbow me and go, ‘Hey, Michael. Check this out.' And he’d just turn over and pick up a lighter and light Bill Ward's beard on fire."
While one might jump up upon realizing someone was setting them on fire, Ward wasn't fazed. Anthony then understood that this was something the two have done countless times before.
"[Ward] didn't even flinch," he said. "He just kept drinking his beer."
Ward was clearly used to being set ablaze by his bandmates, but it all came to an end in 1980 after a fiery prank gone wrong. Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi recalled the scary studio session in a 2016 interview with The Guardian. "I tipped rubbing alcohol over him. Normally it just burned off but this time it soaked into his clothes, so when I lit it he went up like a bomb," he remembered. "He was rolling on the floor, shouting and screaming. I thought it was part of the joke, so I poured more stuff on him."
Ward ended up suffering third-degree burns, putting an end to the band's pyro pranks. Needless to say the incident poured cold water on their arsonist tendencies.
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