Stairway To Heaven

by Richard Cole

  “Ozzy really wants to get sober,” she said. “He asked me if you would fly to London to hang out with him, keep him company, and go with him on his European press tour to promote his new record.” She also wanted me to accompany Ozzy on his American tour down the road.

  I was thrilled. It was like being catapulted out of a deep, black hole.

  A few days later, Ozzy and his driver, Tony, picked me up at Heathrow Airport in London, and we drove to his beautiful house tucked away behind a high brick wall in the Buckinghamshire countryside. Tony showed me to my room, which had a lovely view of the manicured gardens and the Osbournes’ private deer park in the distance. Then we enjoyed a delicious lunch of roast lamb and baked potatoes.

  I spent several months working out of Ozzy’s home, flying from London to various cities throughout Europe to escort him to press interviews—and attending sobriety meetings with him. Ozzy seemed to be enjoying his new sober life, and I was certainly enjoying working for him.

  Before long, Sharon joined us in London (their children were already there with Ozzy). It was a chance for their family to spend time together before we had to return to the States to rehearse for Ozzy’s 1988 American tour. When Ozzy and I finally flew to Dallas for a week of rehearsals, he was still committed to staying sober. Every afternoon, just before the rehearsal began, we would attend a sobriety meeting together to put us in the proper mindset for the day. When the week was over, we headed for Pensacola for the opening date on the tour.

  That Florida concert was the first time I had ever seen Ozzy perform—and he was quite a showman. His music was masterful. He exploded with energy. He put on an unforgettable concert. He gave the audience everything he had, from the opening moments to the closing number.

  We traveled by bus—a new Prevost with nine bunks and elbow room to spare, particularly since the only occupants on the bus were Ozzy, Tony, and me (plus Sharon and the children when they spent a few days with us). Again, this style of touring was different than the Zeppelin days, when we would place our food orders with the pilot of our plane before each show. But on Ozzy’s tour, the wardrobe girl would give us a selection of menus to order from, and then the food was waiting for us on the bus as we rode through the night from one city to the next. It actually worked out fine, except that Ozzy and I often ate out of boredom—by the end of the first week, neither of us could zip up our pants, thanks to the weight we had gained. Those extra pounds didn’t sit well with Ozzy, and he ordered a Lifecycle (and some barbells) to be placed in his dressing room throughout the rest of the tour. He exercised conscientiously, and dropped the weight in no time. We also canceled the postconcert meals, and he adopted a low-calorie, low-fat diet that kept him slim.

  When we arrived in Los Angeles for a New Year’s Eve show at Long Beach Arena, I was able to see Claire and Lea Anne, with whom I had not been able to spend time since starting to work with Ozzy four months earlier. I attended plenty of sobriety meetings during those days in L.A., leading and speaking at some of them, and going to sleep clean and drug-free each night. My continuing sobriety was the best holiday present I could have given myself.

  Ozzy’s tour resumed after the Long Beach concert, taking us to Houston, Shreveport, Dallas, Kansas City, Albuquerque, and San Francisco. When we hit Reno, Ozzy put a silver dollar in a slot machine, and won a $1,000 jackpot. I hoped that was an omen of good things to come, but in Seattle, all the traveling seemed to be taking a toll on Ozzy, and he appeared exhausted. He somehow got through shows in Seattle and then Salt Lake City, but by that point, he was too worn out and sick to carry on. A doctor examined him, and advised Sharon to reschedule the remaining dates, which she did. Ozzy flew to London to recuperate, and I headed back to Los Angeles—and called Marcus to get my messenger job back.

  When I wasn’t on the seat of a motorcycle weaving through L.A.’s traffic to deliver one envelope or another, I spent as much time as possible in the gym and on the beach—and at sobriety meetings. By mid-1989, I got a gig with Three Dog Night, serving as the group’s tour manager through the end of the year. By that point in the band’s evolution, there were only two vocalists, Cory Wells and Danny Hutton, but their sound was still there. In the Zeppelin days, we had actually done a couple shows with Three Dog Night, so they weren’t altogether unfamiliar to me. At one time, in fact, Danny was Jimmy Page’s first choice for the singer for Zeppelin, before Jimmy finally found and settled on Robert Plant.

  I returned to L.A. just before Christmas to enjoy a bit of time off. But on my way back from Warner Brothers Studios, where I had met with a friend who wanted to become sober, the unthinkable happened. While riding my motorcycle home, a car speeding in the opposite direction veered into my lane, heading straight at me. I didn’t even have time to panic, but instinctively managed to turn my bike to the right, although not fast enough to avoid a collision. The car hit me full force on the left side of my bike, turning both me and the motorcycle into airborne projectiles. The bike and I soared twelve feet before hitting the road, and then I flew another eight feet as my bike split in half nearby. A witness who watched the violent accident told me she couldn’t believe that I had survived.

  Fortunately, I never lost consciousness. I remember opening my eyes and carefully moving my body to see if all my limbs were intact. Amazingly, although I was wearing only jeans, tennis shoes, and a leather jacket (with no helmet), I had no broken bones or head injuries. But I was terribly battered and bruised, and shaken badly. When an ambulance arrived, it shuttled me to Santa Monica Hospital, and because I complained of pain in my right foot, they took X rays, which revealed that I had a broken toe. The motorcycle didn’t fare as well. It was a total loss. In fact, the tow truck driver who picked up the pieces of the bike was stunned to learn that I was alive and not on my way to the morgue.

  I considered myself very blessed to have survived. When I left the hospital that night, I limped to a sobriety meeting to count my blessings. Meanwhile, Lea Anne had to fly to Oregon to see her ailing grandmother, and Claire and I decided to spend some time together in Santa Barbara, where I was able to spoil her a little and celebrate the Christmas season with my precious daughter—while also letting my wounded body heal a little.

  More than a year later, in February 1990, I returned to working for Ozzy. With Sharon spending time in her London office, I moved into Ozzy’s home in the hills of Los Angeles for a couple of months, keeping him company while he wrote and began recording his next album. Shortly thereafter, Sharon asked me to take over as tour manager for her new band, the London Quireboys, who were starting an American (and then a world) tour in mid-May that would last until the end of the year.

  I didn’t know much about the London Quireboys, except that they had been quite successful everywhere in the world except the U.S. I had heard that they were a wild bunch, and frankly, I was a little uneasy about touring with a band who liked a drink now and then. By this point, I had four years of sobriety under my belt, and remaining sober was my highest priority in life.

  There was plenty to organize for the London Quireboys tour (we used two buses and a tractor trailer in the U.S. leg). When I finally flew to Daytona Beach for the opening concert, I was in for a pleasant surprise. As I mentioned in chapter 57, touring with the London Quireboys turned out to be a joyous experience. Yes, the band members could drink in amounts that were reminiscent of my own boozing in previous times (our bus carried enough alcohol to stock a large nightclub!). And they loved to chase the girls. But I earned their trust and respect, they followed my instructions, and the tour went off with very few hitches.

  The only time the band and I were at odds was one night when I became concerned that the rigors of touring might be pushing them to the brink of exhaustion. I knew they had to be in top shape for a pending flight to London, where they were scheduled to play in a huge outdoor festival with the Rolling Stones at the Newcastle football stadium. For the guys, it was the dream of a lifetime, and I was determined not to let them sabotage i
t. So to help preserve their health, I poured out all the hard liquor that they had accumulated. While the bus was parked, I dumped bottle after bottle down a nearby drain. Midway through the process, two of the band members, Spike and Guy, saw what I was doing, and went berserk.

  “What the hell are you doing?!” Spike shouted. “Have you gone nuts?”

  The booze continued to flow down the drain, which was more than they could handle. They were absolutely livid, and I was becoming a bit concerned.

  Finally, to calm them down I suggested, “Why don’t you call Sharon and tell her what I’ve done?”

  They had fire in their eyes, but my comment silenced them. They knew that it wouldn’t be a good idea to complain to or mess with Sharon, so they dropped their heads, turned, and walked back to their hotel rooms. All the while, they muttered obscenities about me under their breath.

  More than 50,000 people attended the outdoor concert with the Rolling Stones. Since I knew the Stones and their security, I arranged for the Quireboys to meet Mick Jagger and pose for pictures with him. The boys said it was one of the most exciting days of their lives.

  From England, the Quireboys headed back to the States, then on to Canada, and finally to Europe, Japan, and back to the U.S. But just three days after returning to the States for a concert in Houston, Capitol Records unexpectedly pulled the plug on its support of the tour. Instantly, the remaining concert dates on the U.S. itinerary had been canceled.

  The band members were heartbroken, and I wasn’t feeling too good myself. But all was not lost. The Quireboys had already earned a gold record in Canada, and their record company there was convinced that additional touring north of the border could turn the album platinum. So two weeks later we flew to Toronto for a series of concerts, including one on Victoria Island in a club that I had last played with the New Vaudeville Band in 1968, long before McDonald’s was a prominent feature on the picturesque island. Sure enough, before leaving Canada the band picked up its platinum record in Vancouver, where Sharon had flown to see the last concert of the tour.

  After I returned home, I received photographs taken at the platinum record presentation in Vancouver. I placed those photos next to the pictures taken at the band’s gold record presentation six months earlier, and I could see just how much wear and tear all the touring had caused us. We all looked like we had aged a few years—a moving testament to just how brutal touring can be.

  When Sharon and Ozzy decided to travel to Switzerland for Christmas, they invited me to spend the holidays in their rented home in the Beverly Glen section of Los Angeles. It was a wonderful Christmas present, and with Sharon’s permission, I threw a party for all my sober friends to celebrate my five years of sobriety. I also celebrated the holidays with Claire, buying the biggest Christmas tree I could find and decorating it with her help.

  Once I had moved out of Ozzy’s home in early 1991, I rented my own apartment in Venice. I didn’t have much music memorabilia left to decorate the walls—about a dozen gold and platinum records from Led Zeppelin, a few original Yardbirds and Zeppelin posters, and a couple of photographs—but it was a start and I was excited about having a new apartment. Work was scarce for a few months, and I began to write this book. Then I was hired to tour with a New York band, The Throbs, in the U.S. and England for six weeks, and in 1992 I watched over Alice in Chains for Columbia Records as the band’s companion during the recording of a new album. Next, my phone rang to go on the road with Eden, a band whose members included a son of Frankie Avalon and an offspring of one of the Everly Brothers. Eden was a new act on Hollywood Records, and the tour’s small budget forced a lot of cutting corners. But at about that time, I had decided to move my career in a new direction—into music management—and with Claire in private school, the Eden tour was an opportunity to add a few dollars to my bank account.

  I launched my entry into management with my friends Michael Lewis and Gary Quinn, along with record producer Peter Rafelson. The four of us decided we would put together an all-girl band—an all-lesbian band, to be exact—and we came up with the name Fem 2 Fem. All we needed was to find five beautiful lesbians, and do it in a professional way (we decided it wouldn’t look good for us to appear to be aging perverts asking any two girls holding hands if they could sing). So we put the word out on the type of girl we were looking for and held auditions while Michael and Peter began writing songs for the new band.

  When I arrived at the auditions, I was amazed at the beauty of most of the young women. Our biggest challenge was to find those with the best voices and attitude—and since we had an offer from Playboy for a three-page spread and story, we also needed girls who were uninhibited and willing to take off their clothes. As it turned out, we had no trouble filling the slots for the band. Within days, the girls were in the recording studio, as well as preparing for their Playboy photo session and a video shoot. With some help from college students from the UCLA film school, we made one video for MTV and another (with nudity) for the clubs and for European audiences.

  Fem 2 Fem’s first live show was scheduled at the Dinah Shore Golf Classic in Palm Springs. The promoters wanted only two songs, which was fortunate since the girls didn’t know many tunes by then. They were also featured on Geraldo Rivera’s TV show, in a program about “lipstick lesbians.” Before long we had a record deal, a billboard atop the Virgin Megastore on the Sunset Strip, more TV programs, interviews on radio stations across the country, and a highly publicized appearance on the Howard Stern radio show (during which Howard was more than delighted to get a good look at one of the girl’s tits, which everyone agreed were worth their weight in gold).

  As we toured radio stations, the girls were plenty of fun to be with, although I did have to raise my voice a few times, particularly when they were all suffering from PMS and were whining and groaning in their bunks. But they always looked drop-dead gorgeous when we arrived at those radio station appearances, even when we had to get there by six in the morning.

  From the start, our game plan for the band was to make records, grab some endorsement deals, appear on some radio and TV shows—and that was really all. But then we got a call from a major agency in New York, with an offer for the girls to perform live in concert. I, of course, immediately said yes, told them to send the contract to us—and then nervously asked Michael and Gary, “What the fuck are we going to do now?” When the girls sang on TV and in limited appearances onstage, we kept their own voices low and used backing tracks to give them a well-rounded, professional sound. But now we had to turn the girls into a real singing band. Would it be an impossible task?

  Michael took the girls under his wing, and tried to work a miracle. After just a week, he seemed to have succeeded. Fem 2 Fem was ready for prime time. First we tried them out at a gay nightclub in Houston—a city where their first single, Switch, was getting plenty of airplay. When our little divas hit the stage, the queens went nuts. While the crowd screamed and shouted, Michael and I looked at each other in amazement, and then just burst out laughing, not believing our good luck.

  Almost immediately, offers came in for Fem 2 Fem to perform in Miami, Tampa, Long Island, San Antonio, and again in Houston. The group also made some additional appearances on TV, including on the Maury Povich and Joan Rivers shows.

  Even with everything going so well, however, we had to deal with a hurricane of internal turmoil within the band, forcing us to make some personnel changes. One girl started complaining about royalty checks, and would wander aimlessly through the audience before each show. We made the decision to let her go. We gave another girl a leave of absence after her home was badly damaged in the Northridge, California, earthquake. Two others left when they refused to sing some of the lyrics that Michael had written for the band. But we always quickly found new girls to replace the ones who had left.

  At the same time, other problems were brewing: We continued to spend more money to keep the band afloat than we were bringing in. Were it not for the $110,000 we received
as a publishing advance on the first record, we might have drowned in debt. I was hoping we could survive long enough to release a new record and reap an inflow of publishing cash.

  Meanwhile, Michael flew to England with a couple of the girls to publicize the London opening of a stage show built around Fem 2 Fem that the tabloids there were already calling a “singing sex show.” Members of the London city council were outraged, insisting that they would shut down the erotic show before it ever opened. As Michael appeared on radio programs, defending freedom of speech and art in the theater, council members turned up at the dress rehearsals (or were they undressed rehearsals?) to get a firsthand look at the onstage nudity. The male councilors seemed to enjoy the show, and wiped their sweating brows with their handkerchiefs. But eventually we decided to take much of the sex and nudity out of the program so the show could go on, even though the girls were still scantily clad in very sexy clothing. When the show opened in London, it drew respectable crowds, including a fair number of men in raincoats who longed to see as much skin as possible.

  Eventually, I decided to sever my ties with Fem 2 Fem. It was costing me too much money to stay on, and I felt it would be better to pay for my daughter’s school tuition than throw any more dollars into the band.

  In the midst of the controversy surrounding Fem 2 Fem in London, I received a call from Terry Rindal, who managed the reggae band Black Uhuru. He needed a tour manager to fly to Jamaica to sort out the band’s visas and then accompany them on a tour of Argentina and Brazil. It was just the tonic I needed, and I flew to Kingston to rest in the sun for a week before the tour began. It took me a while to get accustomed to working with the Rastafarian band members, but we soon developed mutual respect for one another, and the tour went so well that Terry asked me to work with the band in their upcoming American tour as well. In fact, I would have a working relationship with Black Uhuru for the next three years, traveling all over the world with them.