'Ozzy and Jack's World Detour' puts rocker on the road

Here's a little-known fact: Ozzy Osbourne is a history buff.

The lead singer of the seminal hard-rock band Black Sabbath has a native curiosity about what came before, particularly 20th century military history, and he has a library full of books to prove it.

And beginning this week, viewers can see him indulge his passion in the hourlong unscripted series “Ozzy and Jack's World Detour,” premiering Sunday, July 24, on History. In 10 episodes, he and son Jack hit the road to places here and abroad to check out the stories and people behind such landmarks as the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia, Mount Rushmore, Stonehenge, Roswell, Cuba and the Alamo.

“A lot of the show takes place with us kind of in the car driving from location to location,” explains Jack Osbourne, who is also an executive producer, “and at that point it really was just me and my dad, a couple of lipstick cameras in the car and a camerawoman in the back seat. So it was pretty minimal in that sense. And ... when you go anywhere with my dad, people get excited and so we made the decision to scale down as much as possible.”

One place where the Osbournes decided to go early on was the Alamo. In 1982, Ozzy was arrested on charges of public urination at the Texas shrine, so when this show was conceived the idea was that he'd go back there to do a bury-the-hatchet/reunion visit. But while the city of San Antonio was fine with it, some people at the Alamo weren't as welcoming. But luckily they had an in.

“One of our producers was a native Texan and had done a ton of production in Texas and had a lot of great relationships,” Jack Osbourne says, “and he managed to kind of get us a decent amount of access and get us in to the right people. But the problem with that is the more people we were telling we were coming, the more people knew.

“And so by the time we got to Texas, a local politician at a city council meeting stood up and told the entire council that Ozzy Osbourne and Jack are coming to the Alamo and this big whole thing, and it was just like madness.”

When their car pulled in, a thousand or so people were there to greet them.

Through it all, Ozzy was Ozzy: outgoing, gregarious and digging being recognized in public. This is a man who will not go incognito.

“That was kind of a running joke I had with him,” Jack Osbourne says, “because I'm always like, 'You know, you can just wear a baseball hat and like a hoodie.' And he would be like, 'No, no. I'm a rock god, I need to dress like a rock god.' It was his little gag line. But my dad kind of likes it. He enjoys meeting people and he enjoys meeting his fans.”