Suicide Solution

Osbourne said in 1991 that the song was about the alcohol-related death of AC/DC’s Bon Scott in 1980,[1] but Bob Daisley revealed in 2002 that he had Osbourne himself in mind when he wrote the lyrics.[2][3] Daisley affirmed the lyrics are “a warning to anybody that’s drinking themselves into an early grave”.

On 1 November 1985, a lawsuit against Osbourne and CBS Records was filed by the parents of John Daniel McCollum, a 19-year-old who took his own life in Indio, California on 27 October 1984 allegedly after listening to the song.[5] The plaintiffs, however, failed to prove that Osbourne had any responsibility for the teenager’s death. The plaintiffs’ attorneys alleged that a line in the song stated, “Why try? Get the gun and shoot!”[6] Lyricist Daisley and Osbourne himself both claimed that the line actually says, “Get the flaps out”. “Flaps”, they insisted, was an English vulgar slang term for “vagina”. Don Arden, Black Sabbath’s former manager and the father of Sharon Osbourne, is on record as having said of the song’s controversial lyrics: “To be perfectly honest, I would be doubtful as to whether Mr. Osbourne knew the meaning of the lyrics, if there was any meaning, because his command of the English language is minimal.”[7]

The 1990 horror film Dead Girls was loosely inspired by McCollum’s suicide and the subsequent lawsuit over his death.[8]

Following McCollum’s demise, two other American teenagers Michael Jeffery Waller and Harold Matthew Hamilton shot themselves in 1986 and 1988 respectively, while reportedly listening to the song.[9] Osbourne was similarly sued by their parents in 1990 but again the suit was dismissed.[10] Osbourne replied: “It’d be a pretty bad career move for me to write a song saying ‘Grab a gun and kill yourself’. I wouldn’t have many fans left”.[11]

Wikipedia

‘Wine is fine/ But whiskey’s quicker/ Suicide is slow with liquor/ Take a bottle drown your sorrows/ Then it floods away tomorrow’ (Ozzy Osbourne, ‘Suicide Solution’, Blizzard of Oz, 1980). On 26 October 1984, a 19-year-old, John Daniel McCollum, shot and killed himself while he was lying on his bed, wearing his headphones, and listening to, so it was claimed, this song at his home in Indio, California. His parents unsuccessfully sued Osbourne on the grounds that the song was a ‘proximate cause’ for their son’s death. Sadly, they are not the only bereaved parents to have wondered whether music might have played a part in their loss. While music-related suicides are rare, suicide per se is not. Worldwide, around 100 people an hour commit suicide. In France, for example, in 2000, ‘after an almost continual increase since 1975, the number of suicides reached 11,000 per year, i.e. more than one every hour.’

Mortality and Music: Popular Music and the Awareness of Death by Christopher Partridge