Ozzy: "It's done all right for me, my voice, hasn't it?"

Interviewing Ozzy Osbourne - dark metal god, Black Sabbath singer, Sharon's husband - is a game of volley and serve.

When a reporter asks a question, Ozzy lobs it back in charmingly diffident fashion.

"There's a lot of downsides to life everywhere, isn't there?" Osbourne responds when asked about his recently published autobiography, I Am Ozzy (Grand Central Publishing, $26.99), and how unflinchingly he looks at his hazardous past of bat biting, drug overdosing, and reality television filming. "Everybody has it hard once in a while, don't they?"

As to which recordings from his illustrious body of solo albums may be the elusive one-that-got-away, Osbourne nearly giggles. "You can't really hit a home run with each and every of them, can you? I'm not always right. Back in the day, they didn't make them like they do now. Ultimate Sin could've been better recorded, but saying that, I can't complain about any of them really, right?"

Musing on this year's Ozzfest, which he headlines with Mötley Crüe, Rob Halford, Black Label Society, and sideshows such as an interactive "Village of the Damned" shop, Osbourne huffs: "My wife and I - oh, it's really her thing, isn't it? For her and the kids to have a good time, right?"

But there's no wavering when talk turns to the solid possibility of a Black Sabbath reunion by 2012 ("just spoke with Tony Iommi yesterday, a lovely chat" says Ozzy about Sabbath's epic guitarist) and the new musicians that helped him make his best album in years, Scream.

"No one goes into a studio, spends all that money, reminisces about the . . . great run they've had in the past and says, 'Let's screw this one up.' I've always tried to better myself on every album. Sometimes, that works. Sometimes, it doesn't."

It works magnificently on Scream, what with Osbourne barking at the moon over the most delicious doom-riffing ("Latimer's Mercy") and glam-slashing ("Diggin' Me Down") guitars he's had in some time, courtesy of new guitarist Gus G.

"I could have anybody I want, right, but I'm looking for a sound; that thing that Randy Rhodes had and Zakk Wylde has, too. When I met Gus, I didn't tell him how to sound or what to do. He just had that power behind him."

Still, when you tell Osbourne that on Scream, he's never sounded more vitally potent, he goes back to his return game: "It's done all right for me, my voice, hasn't it? I sing 'em the best I can, you know?" - A.D. Amorosi