How Ozzy Osbourne's Friends Remembers Him One Year After His Passing

Stephen Rae and Big Dave — two people absorbed into Ozzy Osbourne's inner circle — share firsthand stories from decades spent inside the Osbourne world, one year after Ozzy's passing. Rae, who first met Ozzy as a 15-year-old fan from Belfast after his mother wrote a letter to the fan club, and Big Dave, a New York limo driver who parlayed a birthday airport pickup into a full-time role as Ozzy's personal assistant, recount the bizarre, hilarious, and deeply personal moments that defined their relationships with rock's most unpredictable family.The conversation covers the culture shock of entering Ozzy's orbit without any music business background — from Rae being escorted backstage by tour managers speaking into radios as if retrieving a head of state, to Big Dave learning on the fly as Sharon Osbourne handed him roles ranging from nanny to chief of security to throat-spray handler. Both men describe the specific moment they realized their lives had permanently changed, and how the Osbournes operated less like an employer and more like a surrogate family that collected strays and gave them purpose.Among the episode's standout revelations: the Bob Daisley shoe hustle in Rio de Janeiro where a 15-year-old Rae got stiffed eight dollars by Ozzy's bassist, Ozzy's habit of shaving sleeping crew members' eyebrows and hair during the 1980s rehearsal sessions, Jason Newsted's first-day bass etiquette lecture and Ozzy's slow revenge through ever-expanding setlists, Robert Trujillo mocking Rae's Berlin CD moments before Ozzy walked in requesting a fretless bass part inspired by "Take My Breath Away," and the Voodoo Fest night Sharon Osbourne abandoned Big Dave side-stage after Ozzy's voice blew out mid-song during Iron Man. Chris Kale of Five Finger Death Punch and Dave Buckner of Papa Roach join as co-hosts, adding their own touring context and a previously unknown Kelly Osbourne audition story.Part one of a two-part conversation recorded on the one-year anniversary of Ozzy Osbourne's death captures how two ordinary fans became permanent fixtures in an extraordinary life, and what that proximity cost and gave them in equal measure.