"Smedley. Deanie Smedley."
It made me laugh when they would later call up and ask for my puss.
The Deanie came from a Natalie Wood film that I had been to see with Posy called Splendor in the Grass. It was all about smoldering love and Deanie wanting to escape from the confines of her parents. Suffocating parents I knew about, but smoldering love had no parallels in my own life. Boys weren't interested in me. I had pimples, I was short, I was fat. I was dieting, I was not dieting. Now that I wasn't dancing, I was putting on weight fast. And in a mistaken belief that it would make me look less dumpy, I'd cut my hair. Having it long had made it look reasonably straight. Now I had tight curls: fanny brown, fanny texture.
Although this was the sixties and everyone seemed to be sleeping around, sex for me was never a way out. Whenever my father talked about this girl or that girl, it was always "that slag" or "that whore," and after all I'd witnessed with Dixie, I knew that no one was good enough for him. Better to have no boyfriend at all--and being fat, I realized, made it easier for men not to be interested in me in that way. I'd be the mouthy one they could have a laugh with, not the sexy one they wanted to fuck. And so I ate. Not because I was hungry. Not because it was dinnertime, breakfasttime or lunchtime. I just ate. And the fatter I got, the more I ate.
It was about this time that I first met London's infamous gangland boss, Charlie Kray. He was the twins' less famous older brother, and it was like Prince Philip was coming to tea. And for the impending royal visit, the house had to be cleaned from top to bottom. So my mother got in the flowers, got out the silver service. And I can see her now sitting at the kitchen table the night before, Silvo everywhere, rubber gloves up to her elbows, polishing the lot. She even made finger sandwiches, crusts off, and bought a box of iced dainties.
So the next day we're all there in the living room waiting for the ceremony of afternoon tea, my father, me, my brother and little Charlie Kray, and my mother comes in dressed in her Sunday best, dripping with diamonds, with this big silver salver and the silver teapot, silver creamer, silver sugar bowl and the best china. And as she goes to put the tray on the coffee table, I see that her skirt is all caught up at the back, leaving her arse hanging out. And I stuff my hand in my mouth, but I can't stop laughing. And then my father gets up, pretending to help her--"Here, Paddles, let me give you a hand'--as he desperately tries to pull the dress out of her girdle without Charlie Kray getting an eyeful. But by this time I'm laughing so much, I'm wetting myself, so holding my crotch, I run for the door, my hand already soaking.
I spent the rest of the afternoon on the phone to Posy.
The way my father lived, violence wasn't the last resort--it was the first resort. The idea of calling the police would never have occurred to him. Who needed the police when he had his gangster friends? You knew they were villains just from the way they talked, bragging away like drug addicts or alcoholics do when they're together:
"I used to shoot up five times a day."
"Five times! I used to shoot up ten times!"
"I used to drink five bottles of scotch a day."
"That all? You're just a beginner. I used to drink ten before breakfast!"
So it was like:
"I got out my gun and I fuckin' killed him, one bullet right between the fuckin' eyes."
"One bullet! I used half a fuckin' bullet."
It was a pissing contest.
As for all that shit about them being "incredibly nice people" and their code of honor and how they looked after their own, it was pure crap. The Krays weren't an unknown commodity. We all knew what they did, all about concrete overcoats and people being cut up and fed to the pigs.
Don Arden loved the power and he loved the fear that it put into people. I swear, after he saw The Godfather, it sent him bonkers. He thought he was the godfather. And he lived his life like that. He was a street fighter: he was brought up on the street, he had to fight for everything, and he'd had very little education. All of that I get. But he was a bad businessman and he came from the mentality of "You fuck me, I'll fuck you twice." Instead of going to the lawyer or going to the police, he'd always deal with it himself in his own way.
I can remember one time, a year or so later, we had a huge party at the house. Everybody would always want to come to the Ardens' parties because they were great parties. I made sure they were. I loved throwing parties, and I still do.
Anyway, at this particular party, somebody was found in my parents' bedroom rifling through my mother's jewelry, and my father and two thugs began beating the shit out of him, and then he was just taken away and dumped somewhere out on the common. He wasn't dead, but he could have been.
And at that same party, a gatecrasher jumped over the fence and got in, and my father had him down on the ground and was battering him, and I joined in and began kicking him myself, because that was what you did. And as I was kicking this man, all I could think was: my dad's going to think I'm really great for doing this. I was doing it to impress him. For years and years I looked on him as this pillar of strength. Always putting us first, even though the whole world was against him for some reason and he never got a break. Morally he was unimpeachable, the best family man in the world, and he had "great ethics." The first time I heard the word ethics was when my father was talking about himself.
One evening in February 1970, I went with my father to the Marquee in Wardour Street. There was a buzz in the industry about this unknown band out of Birmingham that had an album about to be released. They were managed by some small-fry local manager, so the sharks in London were all hoping to land a big catch.
I had never been to the Marquee before because I wasn't involved in the talent-spotting side, and in any case, I'd only recently joined the business and I was still only sixteen. But it was one of the premier gigs for an up-and-coming artist to play at that time, and it struck me as very seedy for somewhere with that kind of reputation: outside just a hole in the wall, and inside the sort of place where your feet stick to the floor, and you can barely breathe for the fug and stink of cigarettes and crammed-together bodies, and where sweat was running down the walls. When we first went in, another band was on. And then the band we'd come to hear began to play, and suddenly I had goose pimples on my arms and felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, and it was like What. The. Fuck. Is. This! I had never heard anything like it. I must have been to hundreds of gigs before, flashy American R&B artists, pop groups, even rock and roll, but nothing, nothing remotely like this. It might not have been my kind of music, but the atmosphere and the ambiance around them were incredible. And it was just a brilliant show. You didn't have to know anything about the genre--and none of us did, because it didn't really exist until Black Sabbath invented it.
They belonged in a category that at the time might have contained Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. But the truth is that they were out on their own. They looked angry, austere, and the singer's voice was truly otherworldly. If you remember that during the same period Gary Glitter was asking the fans if they wanted to be in his gang, you can see just how different they really were. And whereas Led Zeppelin was musically brilliant, they also sold sex--Robert Plant wore vests and tight jeans, a complete look-at-my-lunchbox merchant. Sabbath was nothing like that at all. With them the sound and the atmosphere were the thing.
My father had already set up an appointment for the following day. And now, having heard them, he was determined to get them signed. In those days if an artist was available there'd be a handful of managers auditioning for the part, so he put on a show: the Rolls, the Mayfair office, everything to demonstrate that Don Arden was the most powerful manager in England, which in fact he was.
Sabbath was staying at some run-down boardinghouse in Shepherd's Bush, where they were sleeping four to a room. Wilf Pine was dispatched in the Rolls to fetch them, and I still remember the buzz of excitement in the office as we waited. Sure there were other managers out there, but my father had already done well by seve
ral other bands out of Birmingham, so they would know his name. And these were all working-class boys who didn't know honey from pigshit. All they wanted was to be rich and famous, and if Don Arden had done it for the Small Faces, Amen Corner and The Move, he could do it for them.
And so they arrived, ushered in by Wilf, and I did the meet and greet. And they were a strange-looking sight. You could barely see their faces for all that hair. The bass player was very trendy, high-end fashion, but the singer--the only one without the droopy mustache--was the strangest of them all. Although it was winter, he was wearing open sandals. For a shirt he had a pajama top, and on a string around his neck was a tap. I asked them to take a seat, so they sat down. But not on chairs, on the floor. I asked if they wanted a cup of tea; they mumbled something I took to be a no. And so they were all huddled on the ground mumbling to each other. I retreated to my switchboard and stayed well clear as if they were a firework that looked safe but might at any moment go off.
Eventually my father buzzed me through. The overture was over, the first act was about to begin.
"If you'd like to come this way," I said, "Mr. Arden will see you now."
When they finally came out, my father got Patrick and Wilf to take the band back to the hotel, to buy them drinks and generally find out how the land lay.
"So how did it go then?" I asked him, once I'd heard the elevator go clunking down.
My father took a satisfied puff on his cigar. "You know what, Sha? I think we're in business."
But we weren't. We heard nothing back from them at all. Not a word. However, a week or so later, Patrick Meehan and Wilf didn't turn up for work . . .
Not only had they taken them back to the hotel, they'd taken them on to the Speakeasy, then the hippest club in London, for a bit of a chat. And what Sabbath had told them was that they would really like to go with Don, but they were scared of him. And so these two had said, "Well, how about us? We're the ones who do all the work, why don't you come with us?"
And that's what happened. Patrick Meehan bankrolled the whole thing, put in his son as executive producer. The two Meehans managed, and Wilf Pine ran the company.
From their very first record Sabbath was a hit, and they went from strength to strength, getting bigger and bigger and bigger, because in the music world of the early seventies nobody had heard anything as dark as their music, with such riffs and lyrics. It was entirely new. And the Meehans built a huge corporation around them. It was Black Sabbath that bankrolled everything, Black Sabbath that gave them credibility in the industry. Eventually they bought out Brian Epstein's NEMS empire, his artists, his building, his everything. They got involved with film production, merging with David Hemmings's company Hemdale.
And it was hard to take. But that's how it was. Cutthroat. And there was nothing you could do. Every band was stolen from. Everybody stole from everybody. They were just like pirates.
They didn't plan it. How could you plan to have a gold mine fall into your lap? No, the opportunity was suddenly there in front of them, and they went for it. What is harder to forgive is how they subsequently raped and pillaged Sabbath. All Sabbath got was a weekly wage of about PS200-PS300. The Meehans took all the royalties, took all the publishing rights and sucked them dry. Millions went missing. But we didn't know that then.
But it broke my father's heart. Not only did he lose a great band that went on to make millions, but those people he had trusted had betrayed him. Patrick Meehan had been with my father for years, and everything he knew he'd learned from him.
Don Arden was a pioneer in the industry. His skills were entirely his own. First you were an artist, and the next biggest thing was to be an agent, so he became an agent, then it was a manager, and then you owned your own record company, and that's what he did. He wrote the book. And they had stabbed him in the back. Like Peter Grant before him, only more so, Patrick Meehan was family.
The feud between my father and the Meehans went on for the next ten years.
With my father there was black and there was white. You were either with him or against him. And if you were against him, you had to die. You had to be eliminated, wiped out, never to be seen or spoken about again. The News of the World called him the Al Capone of music. If you were in his clan, he would protect you. If someone said something against one of his artists, he'd go around to the office and punch him out. But if you did anything outside his clan, he'd go down with one bullet left in his gun.
Of course, the young man in the sandals with the tap was Ozzy. He had just turned twenty-one. I can't even remember now if I registered his name. I certainly never considered any one of them as boyfriend material; the people I spent most of my time with were gay--I felt much more comfortable with them. They weren't a threat, I wasn't a threat, and we could just have a laugh.
A little over six months later, however, I became involved with someone who was very definitely not gay. Adrian Williams was in a band called Judas Jump that my father managed. It was a sort of supergroup made up of a couple of guys from Amen Corner, a guy from Peter Frampton's band, and Adrian was the singer. They had one semihit single and lasted one album before they disbanded. We began going out when I was seventeen, and he's stayed in my life ever since.
We were friends before we were anything else. He thought I was funny, I made him laugh. And I think he saw it as a bit of a challenge that I knew nothing about sex. Nothing. I remember him having to explain to me what a blow job was. And then I discovered I was pregnant.
What do you do when you're seventeen and that happens? You go to your mother.
"You've got to get rid of it."
"But --"
"There is no way you can have a child, Sharon. It will destroy your life."
"But --"
"You have to have an abortion."
There was a bitterness in her voice that I realize now had nothing to do with me. My mother had been only nineteen when she had Dixie, and whether she was pregnant before she married Mr. Shaw I don't know. But she was the eternal romantic. Her bedside table was always piled high with romances: Barbara Cartland, Georgette Heyer. She loved all that historical romance shit. I had read The Diary of Anne Frank when we were living in Mayfair, which just tore my heart out: that was real. Even at that age I couldn't take all that fantasy. It only confirmed what I already knew: that we had nothing in common. Nothing.
Abortion had only recently been legalized in England, but it was still an under-the-counter business. Basically you had to claim that it would be dangerous to either the baby or the mother for the pregnancy to continue. Girls couldn't just turn up and say they'd rather not have it. So I went to one doctor who sent me to another doctor who sent me to a third. And it was dealt with: too young, couldn't cope, psychological damage, whatever. Adrian paid.
The abortion clinic was a house on Avenue Road between Regent's Park and Swiss Cottage, and I was absolutely terrified. It was arranged for a Saturday and I had to be there at seven in the morning, and Adrian dropped me off. And I remember going through the doors, carrying my overnight case and seeing all these young girls, all terrified, all not looking at each other, and not a word being said. And every hour somebody's name would be called out, and a nurse would lead them away. And then it was my name, and I remember feeling the terror, as if my legs were going to give way. Then nearly forgetting to pick up my bag, and walking up the stairs to where it all happened. And I can remember lying down on the bed and screaming and crying. And when I came around I was still screaming and crying, and this nurse was telling me to shut up because I was disturbing everybody.
So I grabbed my clothes from where they'd been hung and got dressed. I was still dizzy from the anesthetic but I knew I couldn't stay. So I staggered outside, found a phone booth and called Adrian, and I was weeping and weeping for him to come and get me.
My eyes were so swollen with crying I could hardly see. They were like two puffballs, and I was bleeding, bleeding. The huge sanitary towel hanging between my legs, attached
to an elastic belt, was sodden. And Adrian drove me back to Wimbledon, put me into bed and then left. And I lay there Saturday night, all day Sunday, and on the Monday he came back. I couldn't move. All I had managed to do was dump the sanitary towel and put an ordinary towel between my legs and just lie there and try to sleep.
In all that time my mother never came in, never so much as put her head in the door or offered me a cup of tea. It was her way of saying, "You got yourself into it, you get yourself out." I do understand what she was trying to do. But on the other hand it was really hard. The only person I had to talk to was Mrs. Smedley. Just like Minnie, years later, when I had cancer, she never left my side.
Soon after that Adrian started working for my father and then moved into the house with me in Wimbledon and we were together for the next five years. But he wasn't ready to settle down, and neither was I. We were both so young. I know he was fond of me, but he was always embarrassed about my weight and didn't want his friends to see me, so that wasn't great for my self-esteem. I wasn't fat but I was definitely tubby. Obviously it must have suited him at the beginning, otherwise he wouldn't have done it. My parents said they would prefer him to be there and at least know where I was. But with him being a huge, huge womanizer, it was always going to be a problem.
As is often the way, Adrian was also attractive to men, and there was one guy who I knew was trying to fuck my boyfriend. I first met him at the stall in Kensington Market where he used to sell trousers he'd made himself, and his name was Freddie Mercury. At the time he was bisexual and living with a girl named Mary Austin. Freddie and I just hit it off right from the start.
A couple of years later, it must have been just before Christmas 1975, when Queen was already selling huge numbers of records, Freddie asked if he could speak to my father. They were unhappy with their manager, he said, and needed some advice about what to do. So Don talked to them and succeeded in getting them out of their management deal with whoever it was, and then it was like, "Would you look after us?" With two hit albums behind them, this was an offer you could not refuse. But less than a month later, at one of our famous Christmas parties, I introduced Freddie to another of my gay friends, John Reid, whom I'd gotten to know when he worked at EMI, and who was then managing Elton John.
Sharon Osbourne Extreme: My Autobiography Page 6