Built to (Expletive) Last

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Ozzy Osbourne is sober and a bit sheepish, two traits seldom associated with a man whose near-mythic feats of debauchery once established him as a Paul Bunyan of booze, a guy with a titanium liver and a pharmacy pulsing through his veins.

But speaking from his Beverly Hills home on a recent Tuesday afternoon, Osbourne’s voice is measured and tinged with caution as he talks about his upcoming stop in Las Vegas for the second annual "VH1 Rock Honors," where, alongside Genesis, ZZ Top and Heart, he’ll be saluted for his four-decade-long career.

Clearly, Osbourne doesn’t seem all that comfortable with these kind of music industry distinctions.

"I’m kind of a bit shy about getting them," he says. "I’m funny with getting awards, ’cause I’m just there for the people, ya know? Over the years, there are more and more awards shows. Pretty soon, they’ll have an awards show for having the best awards show."

Still, Osbourne just sounds happy to be here, a guy well aware of the fact that the Grim Reaper has somehow slipped on a banana peel or two on the way to his door.

These days, Ozzy’s chances of survival have improved, namely because of his decision to get clean and sober at long last, spurred on by seeing his son, Jack Osbourne, successfully enter rehab.

"I’ve been battling with it for 22 years," Ozzy says of drug and alcohol addiction. "My daughter Kelly was just born when I first went to Betty Ford. I’d go on, I’d go off, I’d go on, I’d go off, but as I was going on and off, all these little things that people would tell me in recovery that were going to happen to me started happening.

"At the beginning I just thought, ‘Of course you don’t have blackouts, it’s just an excuse to say you don’t remember,’ but then large amounts of time would evaporate, and I’d go, ‘Was I in the bar that long?’ At the end of the day, I’d just drink and get pissed off, I’d smoke a joint and get worse. After the third beer, I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t walk and so I just said, ‘(Expletive) this.’ "

A connoisseur of rapid-fire profanities, Ozzy’s quick with the f-bombs, but there’s no venom in his swearing, instead, his cursing is almost endearing, like a grandpa with Tourettes.

This side of Osbourne became well-established during the hit reality show "The Osbournes," which documented the chaotic lives of heavy metal’s first family, potty mouths and all.

You didn’t have to be a fan of Osbourne’s music to get into the show, what made it work was that it was a candid, warts-and-all snapshot of a lovingly quarrelsome family out to put the "fun" in dysfunction.

"Greta Van Susteren, I was talking to her the other day, and she says, ‘Do you know why "The Osbournes" was such a success?’ " Osbourne recalls. "I said, ‘I don’t know,’ and she said, ‘People could see that it was real, that it wasn’t prepped or scripted. People can see through the fake ones.’ Talk about a riot. We had the biggest thing in MTV’s history. It was like Beatle-mania. We couldn’t go anywhere."

Not that Osbourne ever caught the show much himself.

"I think I watched about one or maybe two episodes," he says. "I don’t like to see myself on TV, because I’m either bent the wrong way or talking like a (expletive) idiot, because I was still drinking then, especially when Sharon (Osbourne, Ozzy’s wife and manager) got diagnosed with colon cancer or when I (expletive) broke my neck on a (expletive) motorcycle. You couldn’t script that."

After the show ended, Osbourne began work on his first disc since 2001, the forthcoming, "Black Rain." Due out on May 22, the album is awash in driving, dynamic hard rock with a political bent.

"It’s very anti-war," Osbourne says. "I’ve always been aware of the political climate. With this Gulf thing that’s going on, I don’t know what we’re doing there and eventually it comes out in the music."

Osbourne’s deep catalog is directly reflective of its maker: impulsive, wayward, die-hard.

Like Osbourne, it was built to last, a crazy train that somehow hasn’t run out of rail just yet.

"Next year, I’ll have been in the music industry for 40 years," Osbourne says somewhat incredulously. "I never thought I’d live that long."