LOS ANGELES -- Heavy metal rocker Ozzy Osbourne was targeted Monday in court papers claiming he helped push a teenager over the brink of depression to suicide with his Satanic-influenced song, 'Suicide Solution.'
The Superior Court lawsuit claims John McCollum, 19, killed himself with one shot from his father's .22-caliber pistol in October 1984 after listening to Osbourne albums for several hours. He was still wearing stereo headphones when his body was discovered.
The lyrics in 'Suicide Solution' are part of what McCollum's parents claim spurred the teenager's suicide: '... Breaking laws, knocking doors, but there's no one at home. Made your bed, rest your head, but you lie there and moan. Where to hide, suicide is the only way out. Don't you know what it's really all about ...'
The lawsuit also quotes the words of another song, 'Paranoid,' which the parents claim helped push their son to shoot himself: 'Think I'll lose my mind, if I don't find something to gratify, can you help me? Oh, won't you blow my brains, Oh yeah! ... and so as you hear these words, that in you now, if I state, I tell you to end your life I wish I could mine, it's too late.'
Attorney Thomas Anderson said the lawsuit, which also names CBS records, relies on a California law prohibiting assistance or encouragement of suicide. He said he means to 'teach record companies a lesson' by forcing them to take responsibility for lyrics that encourage suicide.
'They know exactly what kids are interested in hearing and they know what's too deep for them to understand,' he said at a news conference. 'They want them to buy their records and they don't care what happens.'
CBS Records officials were unavailable for comment, but Sharon Osbourne, the musician's wife, said in a telephone interview from New York that the lawsuit was 'ridiculous' and illustrated a 'very sad, sick situation.'
'I'm glad this boy never read Shakespeare in school, because he would have shot himself years earlier,' she said. 'Everyone was killing everyone in Shakespeare.'
The lawsuit was filed in October, but Anderson said he waited until Monday to serve copies of it on the defendants so he could amend it to include the lyrics of 'Paranoid.' McCollum and his wife seek unspecified monetary damages.
John's father, Indio banker Jack McCollum, said his only son had lived at home since childhood. A quiet boy, the teenager dropped out of school in the 9th grade and spent hours at home listening to heavy metal rock 'n' roll.
He had some trouble with the law, including an arrest for drunk driving, but his father said he never knew his son was so depressed.
'We were extremely close,' he said. 'We had our own handshake, and our own hit on the arm, so this came as a complete surprise to me.... I never knew what was on those records he listened to. The first time I heard them was the day after John's death and I knew it was the music that caused it.'
Anderson said the lyrics in Osbourne's albums could have been 'designed for John himself,' reflecting the youth's struggles with adolescence and spirituality. He said the words John scratched into one of the albums show his troubles: 'God Lives and Only I Go to Hell.'