"Who did you say?" I asked Ozzy when he told me his name. It meant nothing to me.
"Lee Kerslake. David says he was with Uriah Heep."
So I went over to London and met with Lee Kerslake. I didn't really like him, but we had run out of time.
Anyway, they went in and recorded The Blizzard of Ozz in about six or seven weeks at Ridge Farm Studios, near Dorking, in Surrey. I went over again when it was finished. And it was brilliant. One of those things that was just on. The right time, the right place and everything was perfect. But the instant I saw the band together, I could see the dynamics didn't work, but we were too far down the line and there was nothing I could do. I said what I had to say, and then went back to LA.
But something at least had changed. I knew now I had to get away from my father. I couldn't take his affairs and I couldn't take working for him. I'd heard all these stories from my mother, and I now realized he was a liar and a thief and a hypocrite. OK, so that might be his business. But also as a human being, as a father, as a husband, I saw that he was a creep. And it was then that I started to question everything. And the full realization of what I'd been doing for him over these last few years suddenly became clear. I had signed my life away for him: every bank loan, every mortgage, it was my name at the bottom of the paper.
And so what happened to all these bank loans? My father defaulted. And in America, if a company goes out of business, there are companies that buy up the debts. Then, if and when they manage to collect on them, they keep whatever they get.
The First Los Angeles Bank was one of the places we banked in California, and I'd made friends with the bank manager there. She was very kind to me, and was a nice woman. My father wanted me to get a loan from her. And so I did. In my name, with him as guarantor. It was just to get us through the next month, he said: the usual cash-flow problem. So I borrowed the money, paid it into the company and that was that.
He never paid her back.
Over the years I forgot about it. Not forgot entirely: I always lived in dread that one day it would come back to haunt me. And it did. In 2004, nearly twenty-five years later, the company that had bought this debt found me. How? Through the publicity generated by The Osbournes. The fact that it was not my debt, that I had never seen a penny of the money, was neither here nor there. It was my signature on the loan. I was responsible for its repayment, which, when interest was added, amounted to $300,000.
It was Wimbledon all over again. Everything was closing in. I'd come back to the house and find the entrance was barred with red tape saying Caution. I knew what it meant. In America when you don't pay your taxes, they come and repossess your house. So I would call my father. He said he would "deal with it." I don't know what that meant: talking to his lawyers, or his tax advisers, saying it's "in the mail" or borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. This happened several times, but my father always managed to pull back from the edge.
So I would just turn the car around and go back down the hill to the Beverly Hills Hotel, as I knew that, no matter what, we could always go back there. You wouldn't be allowed in the house for any reason, not to get a change of clothes or a toothbrush or any damn thing. It was no big deal. I'd just go and buy more, like when you lose a piece of luggage. I got used to it.
It was the same when the police came. My father had had a visit from one of his Mafia hoods from New York and the next day the FBI arrived at the house. First there was a call from the guardhouse, where we always had a guard with a big fucking gun at the front gates.
"Miss Arden, we need to ask you a few questions."
So OK.
"Yesterday we recorded you had a visitor, a Joe Pagano. We'd like to know what your relationship is with this man."
"Hey, listen. I don't know him, and I don't want to know him. Speak to my father. You'll find him at his office."
I wasn't interested. I didn't want to know.
I had to get out. But I had to move as diplomatically as I could, because I had no lawyer and no money. There were only his people. If I went to a lawyer, who would pay for it? I couldn't. And if the bill was sent to the company, my father would find out and all hell would break loose. I knew I had to tread very carefully.
Then in August 1980 my brother's wife had a baby, three months premature, and they didn't think the baby was going to live. Although my father controlled everything, David was the front man in London, just as I was in LA. My father called and asked if I'd go back to London to keep the office going. The business was going downhill, he said, and he gave me carte blanche to do whatever it took to prevent a further slide. And so I went and discovered that it was a mess, far worse than I had realized: the company was virtually bankrupt.
The Blizzard of Ozz, Ozzy's first solo album, was about to be released. The tour was about to start, first England, then Europe, and it was going to cost. And then we had all these other artists signed with the record label who wanted advances and payments, and we had huge overheads and a huge staff. Even the secretaries had secretaries. I went in, cut half the staff, put the buildings up for sale and got rid of half the artists--which wasn't that simple because they were all under contract, they all had deals. When they complained, I told them there was no money, so what were they going to do?
"Listen," I said. "You can try suing, but we haven't got anything, mate, so either join the queue, or you can take ten grand and fuck off. And if you're good you'll make it, so good luck."
It was clear that if we wanted to stay in the industry, we had to trim down and consolidate, and this was the only way to do it. But then my father made my brother come in and take the buildings off the market, and the next I heard a band I'd just gotten rid of was back in the studio with a 200-piece orchestra behind them.
"Who's going to pay the bill?" I demanded.
But my priority now was with Ozzy. He was booked to do the Reading Festival. Everyone would be there, other bands, the press, not to mention the fans. So I went down to see him in rehearsal, and I panicked. The band was nowhere near ready to perform at a festival, let alone a big deal like Reading. They had never stood on a stage together, let alone performed, and it was obvious they needed to go out and do warm-up gigs. Reading was only two weeks away and Ozzy was supposed to be debuting, and I just couldn't risk it, so I decided to cancel and find a replacement. Fortunately for everybody we got Slade. It was great for them; it resurrected them and they were fabulous.
Next I had to get Ozzy out there performing some unannounced shows to break in the band. And so we did four little gigs, Blackpool--an English version of Atlantic City--being the first. I was so nervous. After all I'd been through with them, I felt like they really were my baby. And so we went to Shepperton Film Studios in west London to do a big full-scale rehearsal, trying to pull the show together before they went out. The album was being pressed and was about to be released any day. I knew it was important to make Ozzy's band completely different from Sabbath. Ozzy's approach was totally different, and the image of the band was totally different, though it was still Ozzy's genre. As for the music, it was a lot more melodic and a lot more accessible for radio than Black Sabbath had ever been. Everything was hanging on it. Ozzy's future was hanging on it. But I was so happy to be doing it for him, and I threw myself into it like I hadn't thrown myself into anything before. My only focus was Ozzy.
Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake were beginning to drive me mad, always wanting this or that changed, and I wasn't prepared to tolerate it. "Listen, you are stand-ins. And if you don't like the routing of the tour, or you don't like anything else, then go." They were, "We're in the band," and I was, "No, this isn't a band, it's Ozzy. And I manage Ozzy and Randy, I do not manage you and you are totally nonimportant to me."
So there was a lot of turmoil. At least Ozzy, Randy and I knew by then that they weren't staying: we had their replacements already lined up. For years Ozzy had a dream drummer he had always wanted to work with named Tommy Aldridge. He played with an American band called Pat Travers,
which was quite famous at the time, and they had played the same gigs when Ozzy was with Sabbath. And I'd met Tommy one day at the office of Ozzy's agent, Rod McSween, and I'd sounded him out. He said he would love to work with Ozzy, but that he had one more tour commitment with Pat Travers and then he was out.
The same thing had happened with the bass player. Randy had found us the bass player from his former band Quiet Riot. His name was Rudy Sarzo and he was on board. Just a question of finishing his commitments. And the four of them were so great together, and we had a blast. Eventually.
Ozzy's first show was Blackpool, a tiny venue where they would play to an audience of between two hundred and three hundred. It was too far to drive, I decided, so I went up by train. It stopped at Birmingham, and who should get on but Ozzy's wife, Thelma. I recognized her because we had met once before, when she and Ozzy had come to our annual Christmas party in Wimbledon.
We sat opposite each other, which was appropriate, as there wasn't much to connect us. She was a mum, I wasn't. In fact, she was on her second marriage and had a child by her first husband. I was very loud, very confident, she wasn't. She was one of those women who would go with the kids and stand with a placard at Greenham Common, protesting against the U.S. military presence. And I was, "Where the fuck's Greenham Common?" She was a tree-hugger, a hippie. She went to Oxfam, I went into debt. She knew nothing about the music business. We instantly figured each other out and knew there was no common ground.
She didn't like what I represented, and I had no idea what she represented. She was just somebody's wife. We'd been thrown together because she was going to support her husband and I was going to work.
The place was even smaller than I'd imagined. Backstage was just some little room with no space to turn around, disgustingly grimy and with graffiti covering the walls. And we were all so nervous. And then the doors opened, and I smiled at Ozzy, gave him a hug and went out front. Roy Wood, my old friend from The Move, was there to give moral support. There was a real buzz of excitement because although this was a surprise gig, it had been leaked. And when Ozzy came out, he gave the peace sign that he always does, and the kids in the audience do it too. And I was standing next to Thelma, so as my right arm went up, I was grabbing Thelma's arm to hold it up, but she pulled it away. And while I was all "Isn't this amazing!," she looked at me as if I was out of my mind. And then it began, and I was screaming and clapping to egg the audience on. But I didn't need to, because it was brilliant, and at the end of the show I can remember crying because it was magic. And the crowd just adored Ozzy, and Randy was phenomenal, and it was one of those nights that you will never forget. One of those nights where everything was perfect and the adrenaline was high, and all the journey that Ozzy had been through, and all the torments and the cheating and the demoralization were over, and it was like, Oh my God. He's done it.
So we all went back to the B and B, somewhere in the backstreets of Blackpool, and the crew and the band and Roy, we were all celebrating. As for me, I felt like a butterfly who'd just emerged out of a hairy caterpillar. Since the trauma with my father I had gone down from a size 22 to a 6. And, although the place was a dump, I couldn't have cared less. We had a great night celebrating, and we were all drunk, except Thelma, and on the guest register I proceeded to write Fuck You, and changed everybody's name to some foul name. And we made a noise all night long. I behaved really badly. Why? Because I could, because I was very happy, because it was like, Oh God! We've shown them!
April 20, 2005, lunch
The Ivy, Beverly Hills
The valet takes the Bentley, and I can see Gloria's blond mane from the sidewalk. She is already sitting on the terrace. And I know I'm going to have fun. Gloria and I have known each other since 1979, when she was dating Geezer Butler, whose real name is Terry, and we've always had fun. Over the years, when Sabbath and Ozzy weren't talking, then we weren't supposed to talk either. But we always did. It's like Sabbath themselves. We always say there's this invisible thread that holds them all together. From time to time they disliked each other, yet they were bonded together, and whether they were with each other or they weren't, they remained a huge part of each other's lives. It's like a sibling thing, Gloria says. You can go for years without speaking but then pick up immediately as if it was only yesterday. Like the Sabbath lunch we had last year at the Peninsula Hotel in Chicago. All the wives and children came. It was like the second generation of Sabbath.
Our lives have been so intertwined over so many years that all the things we have said and argued and disagreed on, hurtful things we have said about each other and to each other, have only brought us closer. And there we all were with our families together as one.
And the band members themselves, they've gotten to the point where they're old enough to accept each other for what they are, and they know themselves so well they don't even need to talk. They can just walk onto a stage without even looking at each other. They know instinctively what they're doing.
"Is it true what Ozzy said on The Dr. Phil Show?"
"What did he say?"
"That you're thinking of selling Doheny?"
"I've been thinking of selling Doheny since I first bought it," I said. "But Ozzy doesn't want to move."
"Men never want to move."
"Kelly says I can't walk down the street without looking for houses. Jack says it feeds my spending habit. But I like decorating." And it's true. If I had another life, that's what I'd do. I'd become a decorator and get paid for it.
"It's just that I heard there's a house for sale just down the hill from us."
"You're kidding me!"
"No. It's completely tucked away, the main house is smaller than Doheny, but there's a separate guesthouse with its own swimming pool."
"What say we go see it?"
9
On the Road Again
Another reason for my bad behavior that night at Blackpool was entirely subconscious: I was in love with a married man, and I knew he liked the wild streak in me. That whole night in Blackpool I was hugging him and not wanting to let him go.
Forget those tattoos on his knuckles,* Ozzy needed a tattoo on his forehead: Don't Even Think About It. Not only did we work together--a no-no in terms of a relationship--but he was married, had three young children--two of his own and one stepson--he drank to excess and he did drugs to excess. Plus he always had someone in tow, even if he did nothing with them, simply because he hated being alone. During the last few days at Shepperton he'd had this ridiculous Japanese girl (he was going through his John Lennon phase) who didn't speak one bloody word of English. Her face looked like a grinning frying pan, and she'd sit cross-legged on the floor and just stare at him. She was a pain in the arse and I nicknamed her Panface. All I could imagine her saying was "suck me," "fuck me" and "yes." But what the fuck did I care, I was feeling so up; the rehearsal had been really buzzy and tight, and I felt that we were ready to conquer the world.
We had finished around two in the morning. The band and I were staying at a motel near the studios but by the time we got back there the bar had obviously closed, so my old boyfriend, Adrian Williams, and Ronnie Fowler, another guy from the office, came back to my room with some booze they'd brought with them, and Ozzy came too. And then Adrian left, and it was just the three of us. And by this time I'm well on the way and Ozzy is getting very fruity and tickly and touchy, and I'm like, Oh shit, here we go.
"Don't you think it's time you were going home?" Ozzy kept telling Ronnie.
"No, mate. I'm staying. I don't like what's going on here."
This happened a couple of times until it was gloves off and Ozzy said, "Ronnie, I'm telling you--fuck off home."
And that was it.
I thought it was a one-night stand. He was married; I'd met his kids . . . I was just another in a long line. It was only the drink talking, and in the morning we'd forget it had ever happened.
But God, did we have a great night. We had such a larky time, so much fun.
We laughed, we made love, we had a big bubble bath together and then we went back to bed again, and had another bath, and then I left for the office. I'd had no sleep at all. And all the way into London I was just giggling, with the occasional Oh my God! And then I called Randy.
"Oh my God, Randy, you'll never guess what I've done!"
"Oh my God, Sharon, I've already heard!"
And so then we went to Blackpool, and Thelma was there . . .
But even though I told myself that the whole thing was ridiculous and I had to forget about it, I was still getting those looks from Ozzy, and there was that undercurrent, and that vibe, and it's oh no, no, no, no, no . . .
It was all a complete surprise. For the past year and more I had been living like a nun, directing all my emotional energy into finding a way to leave my father and get a new life. Yet, in spite of everything, I was no nearer leaving him than I had ever been. In fact, I seemed to have been pulled deeper and deeper into the vortex. Randy might have been signed to me, but Ozzy was still under contract to Don, and although I had washed my hands of sorting out the London office, I was in charge of our thing on the road, but only under my father's auspices.
We did three more warm-up shows and they were all sellouts and the reception was tremendous. Thelma never showed her face again; she had done her support-your-husband bit, and that was it.
On September 12, 1980, we opened the first night of the tour in Scotland at the Apollo Theatre, Glasgow, and we were all really, really nervous. In the days of vaudeville, Glaswegians were said to be the most difficult of any audience in Britain, especially on a Friday night, which this was, when they got paid and got drunk. Ozzy was really nervous, on and off the toilet and shaking with stage fright--everything was resting on him. And the guys did the rehearsal, then the sound check, and it was all fine, and to get his mind off things, Ozzy and Randy and I went for a walk around the city, staring into shopwindows. And when we got back to the theater there were two boys from Newcastle, just over the English border, at the stage door waiting for Ozzy to get his autograph, and they told us the show was sold out, though we could barely understand as their accent was so strong. But it was true: before the doors opened they were lining up around the block, and we were all in shock.
Sharon Osbourne Extreme: My Autobiography Page 13