Jake E. Lee “Ozzy Never Snorted Ants, I Was There, He Snorted …
In “The Dirt”, which premiered last month on Netflix, a young Ozzy Osbourne (played by Tony Cavalero) holds an impromptu gross-out contest of sorts with Sixx at a Lakeland, Florida hotel swimming pool in 1984 during the two acts’ joint U.S. tour. After exposing himself to some hotel guests, Ozzy asks CRÜE for cocaine. Sixx (played by Douglas Booth) hands over a straw, and Ozzy kneels on the ground and snorts a crawling line of ants. Then he urinates on the ground and licks it up, challenging Sixx to do the same. Pressured, Sixx urinates on the ground as well — but before he can get to it, Osbourne kneels down and laps it up first.
Lee, who played guitar for Osbourne on the 1984 tour, spoke about the incident during a recent interview with Tone-Talk.
“I was there, and I never saw ants,” Jake said (see video below). “I was right there. He snorted a little spider. There was a not a trail of fucking ants there. Tommy [Lee, CRÜE drummer] says it, Nikki says it, Ozzy says it — they were fucked up. I was not. I was just trying to get a fucking sun tan. That’s all I was doing. They were getting fucked up. Ozzy snorted a little tiny stupid spider that was crawling across. There was no ants — there was no fucking ants. I don’t care what the other guys say — there was no ants.”
As for the “urine” portion of the story, Jake said: “Oh, that was true. It started with a contest. It was Nikki and it was Ozzy. I think it started in the pool. They were in the swimming pool, and they kind of raced, and, of course, Ozzy lost. And [they had] a push-up contest, and, of course, Ozzy lost. Ozzy was getting tired of losing, and he stepped it up. I do remember at one point, Ozzy was sitting there. He got this weird look on his face. He was sitting on the concrete, and piss started flowing out underneath him. And he was obviously doing a lot of vitamins, ’cause [the urine] was, like, lime green. So Nikk Sixx, I remember, pissed on the girl he was with. She was lounging. She was not happy about it. Ozzy pissed on the ground. [Nikki] saw that and he went over and pissed on the girl that he was with in the lounge chair. And that’s when Ozzybent over and started licking his own green piss up. That’s where I said, ‘Okay, I’m outta here.’ Not only is that happening, there’s families on the other side of the pool — children and mothers and fathers looking horrified, like, ‘What the fuck is going on over there?'”
Jake added: “That is my recollection. And Ozzy snorted this little spider that was crawling across. There was no ants. It’s a minor detail.”
In MÖTLEY CRÜE‘s 2001 autobiography, “The Dirt: Confessions Of The World’s Most Notorious Rock Band”, Sixx recounted the episode in detail, writing: “I handed [Ozzy] the straw, and he walked over to a crack in the sidewalk and bent over it. I saw a long column of ants, marching to a little dugout built where the pavement met the dirt. And as I thought, ‘No, he wouldn’t,’ he did. He put the straw to his nose and, with his bare white ass peeking out from under the dress like a sliced honeydew, sent the entire line of ants tickling up his nose with a single, monstrous snort.
“He stood up, reared back his head, and concluded with a powerful rightnostriled sniff that probably sent a stray ant or two dripping down his throat. Then he hiked up the sundress, grabbed his dick, and pissed on the pavement. Without even looking at his growing audience — everyone on the tour was watching him while the old women and families on the pool deck were pretending not to — he knelt down and, getting the dress soggy in the puddle, lapped it up. He didn’t just flick it with his tongue, he took a half-dozen long, lingering, and thorough strokes, like a cat. Then he stood up and, eyes blazing and mouth wet with urine, looked straight at me. ‘Do that, Sixx!'”
Ozzy told The Pulse Of Radio a while back that what little he remembers of the ’84 tour with the CRÜE was pretty wild. “The 1984 tour was the most craziest tour I think I’ve ever done in my life,” he said. “I don’t remember it, but I remember I used to wake up every morning or come around thinking, ‘What the fuck went on last night?’ I mean, everybody keeps asking me, ‘Hey, Ozzy, did you really snort a line of ants?’ You know what, the answer to that is: I don’t know, but it’s very possible.”
When asked recently by Page Six if the story was true, Sixx reconfirmed it. “Of course,” he said. “We were a wild young band and he kind of took us under his wing. We thought we could compete with that, but you can’t with Ozzy. He won.”