Ozzy Osbourne instilled a work ethic into his kids: 'You don't get much more blue-collar than him'
Ozzy Osbourne always tried to instil a work ethic into his kids after years of working in menial jobs before he hit the big time with Black Sabbath.
Ozzy Osbourne always tried to instil a work ethic into his kids.
The 75-year-old rock icon - who has Louis, 49, and Jessica, 43, with ex-wife Thelma Riley as well as Aimee, 40, Kelly, 39, and Jack, 38, with wife Sharon Osburne - was employed in a number of menial jobs before hitting the big time as the lead singer of Black Sabbath and now his youngest has insisted that it was those working-class roots that got him to where he is today.
He told Fox News Digital: "It's funny. It's something that — I think my dad kind of gave to me without realizing is work ethic. "My dad is such a hard-working guy. He's always been. You don't get more blue-collar than like the family he grew up in.
"Everyone was factory workers. And he was for a while. And so he kind of has that work ethic that as I was growing up, he always impressed upon me. He was like, 'You got to do your job. You got to show up when you say you're going to show up. You got to give everything you can.' And his classic line is, 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
"I can remember him saying that to me my whole life. "I try and impress that upon my kids like, 'Hey, listen, you don't have to be amazing at your job. You just have to always strive to be better."
By the time Jack was born, Ozzy - who now has a reported net worth of $220 million - was at the height of his rock career and the family found even further fame when they were given their own MTV reality show in the early 2000s but Jack admitted that his childhood was still "relatively normal" despite the lack of "structure" throughout.
He said: "For me, it was relatively normal. But because it was just my life. But when you compare it to, like, all the other kids that I was going to school with, you know, it was different.
"There was a lot of travel, there was a lot of kind of craziness. It was very loud everywhere we went. But it was cool. I got to do some really amazing things.
"There wasn't a lot of structure. Knowing me, I do really well in structure. And when I don't have it, I have kind of ‘self-will run riot. But yeah, it was fun."
