Ozzy Osbourne released “Mama, I’m Coming Home” as a UK single on November 18, 1991. The ballad had appeared that September on his sixth studio album, No More Tears, bringing together Osbourne, guitarist Zakk Wylde and Motörhead’s Lemmy Kilmister as songwriters. Behind its guitar arrangement was a song that began with Ozzy and Wylde sitting at a piano.
Wylde was making his second studio album with Osbourne, following No Rest for the Wicked in 1988. Speaking to ABC Audio in 2021, he described feeling more comfortable on the follow-up and having more room to use his Southern rock influences. The pressure of proving himself on that first record had eased. When Ozzy visited his North Hollywood apartment, the singer had a melody, and the pair worked on it at the keyboard. In the studio, Wylde moved the part onto a 12-string guitar.
That change gave Wylde a way to put his own musical interests into the arrangement. In a 2022 Guitar World interview, he explained that the guitar part used open E tuning, with a figure moving from E to A. He connected the country bends in the introduction to his love of Southern rock, describing how he worked those influences into the album wherever they fitted.
The title came from Osbourne’s life away from the studio. As Metal Hammer later recounted, he used the phrase when phoning his wife, Sharon Osbourne, near the end of a tour. His recollections in the notes to the 1997 compilation The Ozzman Cometh also placed the melody’s beginnings a couple of years before he finished the song with Wylde. The words would take shape with another writer’s help.
Lemmy approached the job around the music Ozzy supplied. “He sent me a tape of the song with where he wanted the lyrics,” he recalled in a 2013 Classic Rock interview. He thought Ozzy had supplied the title, too. Building lyrics around a title was already familiar working practice for the Motörhead frontman.
The result sounded personal enough to prompt a memorable misunderstanding. Lemmy recalled a festival interview in which a reporter asked Ozzy about writing such an intimate song. Ozzy pointed out its lyricist and answered, “He wrote it!” Osbourne’s delivery had made the collaboration sound like a direct account of his own experience.
The assignment also mattered to Lemmy financially. In the same interview, he said he had little money after moving to America when Sharon asked him to write four songs. He recalled receiving a substantial lump-sum payment and said he was satisfied with the arrangement, which he described as carrying no royalties for him.
His contributions to No More Tears extended to “Hellraiser,” “Desire” and “I Don’t Want to Change the World.” “Mama, I’m Coming Home” went on to reach listeners across rock radio and the broader singles market: it peaked at No. 2 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart and No. 28 on the Hot 100 in 1992.
