Talking to BBC Radio, singer Ozzy Osbourne was asked to single out his rock god. He chose Motorhead’s frontman Lemmy Kilmister.

Here’s what Ozzy said:

“My rock god is Lemmy Kilmister. Lemmy was a guy – he shot from the hip every time. ‘That sucks,’ or, ‘I like that.’

“I’m good at starting lyrics, but I can’t finish them. And he’d go – he’d write a bunch of lyrics for my songs – ‘Mama, I’m Coming Home.’

“So, I’d give him a tape, and I had this book on World War II. I haven’t read it and I told him, ‘Tell me what you think. And I have a bunch of these lyrics – whenever you can…’ I’m thinking, it’s gonna be a week.

And he says, ‘Come back in about four hours.’ So I got back, and he goes, ‘What do you think about these?’ And I go, ‘Oh, great.’ He then goes, ‘What about these?’ I go, ‘Oh, you got two…?’

“He goes, ‘No, I got another one – three.’ I go, ‘You had written three sets of lyrics?!’ He said, ‘Yeah, and that book was crap!’ I said, ‘What book?’ He says, ‘The book you gave me.’

“He was a speed-reader! He could read really fast. He was amazing! You look at people like Lemmy and you think, ‘Oh, he’s a yob [a rude, noisy, and aggressive young person].’ But he was very well-educated.”