See Ozzy and Jack Osbourne Visit Cuba’s John Lennon Statue
In the upcoming episode of Ozzy & Jack’s World Detour, the Black Sabbath singer and his son visit Cuba where a guide takes them to a statue of John Lennon. Fidel Castro banned rock & roll in the country in 1962 following the missile crisis, but made an about-face four years later. Decades later in 2004, Castro honored Lennon in a speech that recognized the late Beatle’s rebel nature, highlighting how the United States had sought to deport him in the Seventies.
In the clip, a guide tells the Osbournes that Castro personally attended the unveiling of Lennon’s statue in 2000. Ozzy, who is wearing circular Lennon sunglasses, goes to inspect the monument. “That’s really cool,” he says. “They were saying it was banned and then he became a hero.” Then he becomes emotional. “I’d rather have seen the real thing; that fucking asshole killed him.”
Ozzy later tells his son that the statue was one of the highlights of their journeys together. When Jack asks Ozzy if he was “Team John Lennon” or “Team Paul McCartney,” his father says, “Both. Lennon and McCartney for me were two of the greatest things that ever happened.”
Ozzy told Rolling Stone about the Osbournes’ visit to Cuba shortly after they went. “They got parts of a fucking U-2 plane lying around in this military thing in a park and you can just go and touch it,” he said. “And I’m going, ‘Fucking hell. If that was in England or America, they’d have a fucking screen that you couldn’t touch this stuff.’ Then somebody pointed out to me that under the Castro regime, it’s everybody’s property. It’s not a government thing … but it’s kind of weird.”
He also added that people should consider visiting before the island becomes gentrified. “As the embargo’s dropping off every week, it’s gonna get built up and right now is the best time to go,” he says. “It’s like when I first went to Prague in the Czech Republic many years ago as the Russians left. It was cheap and it was funky and it was good until, you know, we all get the businesspeople in there and they fuck it all up. I had a great time in Cuba.”
The full episode airs Sunday at 10 p.m. EST on History. While in the country, the Osbournes also check out Fifties cars, Cold War weaponry, Ernest Hemingway’s house and the presidential palace.