Sharon Osbourne Extreme: My Autobiography

by Sharon Osbourne; Penelope Dening

  The show was unbelievable. At the end, Ozzy knelt down and kissed the stage. "Thank you, thank you, I love you, love you," he said, his voice breaking with emotion. And we all cried, the three of us: Ozzy, Randy and me, sobbing with tears of joy, and we could still hear voices from the auditorium calling for more . . . He had done it.

  Glasgow was closed, so we went back to the hotel to celebrate. This was in the days when you could ask the concierge to get you something after hours, so about twenty of us were there, friends from the press, a couple of people from the office, and we're tipping the guy and buying drink after drink, until even the concierge was legless.

  And finally it wound down, and then of course, bedtime came . . . And Ozzy and I ended up together again, and it was like:

  "Oh shit . . ."

  "Oh what . . ."

  "Oh why . . ."

  "Oh God . . ."

  It was really weird. It was only the second time we'd been together in any sense other than a business sense, yet we knew each other so well.

  In fact, it could have started nearly eighteen months earlier, when Ozzy was staying at Le Parc, when we were trying to put the band together in LA. I was going to San Francisco for the weekend with Gary Moore and his girlfriend, so, Ozzy being on his own, I said why don't you come with us, get out of the hotel? And we had a lovely time, just doing touristy things, going out, going shopping, going to Fisherman's Wharf. On the Saturday night we went to a restaurant and Ozzy behaved exceptionally badly, getting drunk, falling into plant pots and the rest of it, so I packed him off in a taxi to the hotel. But when I got back to my room, I remember thinking about him alone, and wondering if perhaps I should call him. Because although he'd been horribly drunk, he had been very funny. And he told me later how he'd been lying there wondering if I'd gotten back and whether he should give me a call. Neither of us did. Because in those days he was always phoning home, always talking about his wife, so it never crossed my mind that he might be interested in me.

  And he was so sweet and nice and funny, even when he was drunk, and I just enjoyed his company and I really wanted to keep that safe and continue being part of what I was part of. And it was like, Oh God, what's going to happen? . . .

  I remember those next few weeks as some of the most carefree of my life. No pressure from my father, no calls from my mother. I was on the road and I was in love, not that I admitted it to myself or him. I had a Range Rover and Ozzy had a Mercedes and sometimes we'd go in his car, sometimes in mine, and one of the band would drive the other. And it was the same with the rooms: I would always book two, but we would always end up together. And I kept on thinking that it would have to end, but we were having so much fun, and then it would be the next gig and the next gig. And every show was sold out, and the shows themselves were everything a rock show could be and more, and The Blizzard of Ozz went straight onto the charts and soon it was in the Top Ten, and he was getting unbelievable reviews, and we were adding more and more shows as the momentum kept building. In the end we added sixteen extra dates.

  But when we played Birmingham, of course, Ozzy's wife would come with his children and it was so horribly hard. On the one hand I felt guilty, and yet I was twisted and tortured with jealousy. That first time in Birmingham Ozzy wanted an after-show party for all his family and the press, and I literally couldn't go near him, so of course then it was as if I'd been stabbed.

  Because I liked him so much. More than liked him. And as for Ozzy, it was a really weird situation. Although in the seven years he'd been married he had never been faithful, there had never been a permanent other one, just groupies. So whenever Thelma was around, I'd be around Randy, so that she would think that we were together. Randy had a girlfriend in California, named Jodie, and we all knew each other and got on great, so it was the perfect arrangement. Or as near perfect as anything could be in that situation.

  My little bubble of happiness was punctured when we reached London and my father and brother decided to show up. Don kept telling me how this wasn't right and that wasn't right, that Randy overplayed and what was I going to do about it. He had always hated Randy and had never rated him as a guitar player, whereas Bob and Lee were "top-notch." And then, of course, he was lording it over Ozzy, bragging how he'd turned him around and how all his success was due to him. But that's the way it always was. I didn't care; I wasn't looking for any awards.

  The tour carried on right through till Christmas. Our last show was at Canterbury, a cathedral city east of London. And there was something so cozy about it, the cold weather that made us huddle into each other as we walked the streets, the ancient stagecoach inn where we stayed, the great cathedral that we walked around, all done up in Christmas candles. And I decided to have an end-of-tour party, so I booked the function room in the hotel and we asked those same two boys who'd wanted Ozzy's autograph back in Glasgow, and who'd been at every gig since, to come and join us. And the food was like something from the war, curling Spam sandwiches, sweating cheese and potato chips, but those kids were having the time of their life.

  As this was our last night together, there was nothing else to do but be crazy. And, of course, Ozzy and I and the two fans were the last ones to leave. We were just on our way along the corridor back to the main staircase when Ozzy suddenly stopped. Somebody had left their shoes outside their room to be cleaned. They were big brown lace-ups. Without saying anything, and quite as if it was the most natural thing in the world, Ozzy lowered his trousers to his ankles, squatted down, put his bum in the air, put the shoe to his bottom and shat. While the two boys were in total shock, I was cracking up on the floor. And at this point, while Ozzy was still in mid-shit, the concierge came by.

  "Can I help you, sir?" he said.

  Ozzy waved his key in the air and said, "It's OK, I'm staying here." We walked on, leaving his shit sticking out of the shoe like ice cream in a cone.

  We knew we wouldn't be seeing each other for a while, and I couldn't bear to lose one minute of the time we had left together. I didn't know what to do, where to go. Should I go to America, or go back to Wimbledon for Christmas? I was just so, so lost. We stayed awake all night, talking, holding on to each other like monkeys in a tree. I just didn't want the morning to come.

  But it did, and we gave each other our Christmas gifts. Ozzy had bought me a plate we'd chosen together from a china shop, and I got him a silk shirt and some cologne. He was used to wearing functional, practical things, chosen because they'd give him a good five winters' wear, and to see his face when he put on this shirt made me want to weep. He'd been a rock star for ten years, yet had no experience of really beautiful clothes, things that felt as lovely as they looked.

  Ozzy should have left straight after breakfast as he was expected back by Thelma for Sunday lunch, but neither of us could bear it. So we said we'd have one last Christmas drink. It was like, anything to delay the moment. And the two fans were with us in the bar, and we all had one last drink together, and another last drink and another last drink and a friend who was giving him a lift was saying, "Come on, Ozzy, we've got to go. We've got to go now." But neither of us wanted to go and we just sat nestled into each other, clutching hands, while the two kids from Newcastle told us how they slept in telephone booths or bus shelters throughout the tour and we hadn't realized it before. We asked how they were going to get back home.

  "Hitchhike," they said. Then Ozzy told them he would give them a lift to Birmingham, which would take them halfway there. And they were so excited, they couldn't wait to get going, but not me.

  This would be the first time we'd been apart for months and I felt devastated, and I cried, clinging on to Ozzy for dear life, as if he was going off to a war zone rather than back to his family, though I think he feared it might be the same thing.

  We said a final good-bye at the station. Ozzy took my bags and put me on the train and waited on the platform till it left. My face was so wet with tears that I could hardly see. I stood in the corridor and we just stare
d at each other as the train pulled out. We didn't even wave and when finally he was no more than a dot on the platform, I was too embarrassed to go and find a seat, because I was just sobbing. I was numb. Even though we'd planned that Ozzy was going to tell his wife and leave, part of me didn't quite believe it, because I knew what he felt for his children.

  What went on over those few days in Stafford I can only surmise. I was a mass of nerves, and if I had any intuition that things weren't going right, it was drowned out by the tension involved in a family Christmas in Wimbledon.

  And then my father had a phone call. Ozzy and Thelma wanted to come down and talk to him, he said. Ozzy and Thelma . . . ?

  Instead of him telling Thelma he wanted to leave, Ozzy had simply admitted he was having an affair with me. But it was over, he said, and he told my father that I had to go and that David had to come back in.

  And that was it. Nothing I could do. Ozzy was still signed to my father.

  Our affair had been an open secret. I had never discussed it with my father, but the crew knew, all the guys in the office knew, so it was inevitable that my father knew. And my brother lashed out as if he was Mother Teresa and the Pope rolled into one.

  "You're nothing but a home-wrecker," he ranted. "And him with children, how fucking dare you."

  "And you're nothing but a fucking hypocrite. You, who were fucking married and engaged to someone else at the same time, you pillock."

  And it was true. It wasn't only his "fiancee" who never knew David was married; he hadn't even told our parents. He didn't tell anyone for more than two years. In fact, I was angrier with David than I was with my father, who was in an awkward situation because he didn't want to lose an artist, so what could he do except agree to everything?

  But when Randy was told that David was back in charge, he went insane. Randy was signed to me. Since the tour had started, Randy had been the overnight sensation. "It can't work without her. She's got to come back," he said. I told Randy to just give it time. I'd been the one keeping it all together right from the beginning. It would all fall apart, I told him. My father had had nothing to do with the tour, and my brother was long since out of the loop. That was the reality.

  And within ten days it was chaos in the camp. Nobody should have been surprised, including Ozzy. He knew that everybody else was unhappy that I'd gone, and he also knew in his heart that it would fall apart. The tour was finished, but it was like, What do we do now? What's the plan of action? And I wouldn't tell David what I'd planned, what I'd done, what I hadn't done. I wasn't telling anybody anything. So Ozzy phoned me up, and asked me to come back. Our relationship was over, he said, but he wanted me to come back. And I agreed. Both of us knew it wasn't over. I knew he was talking shit.

  And did I feel angry with Ozzy? Not at all. Just dead. I understood the position he was in. I knew he loved me. I knew he wanted to be with me. But I also knew he loved and adored his children and wanted to be with them.

  So I was just, "Move on. I've got a responsibility to Randy, and I'm going to finish this." But when the working day was over, I walked away. No jokes, no drinks. But it tore my heart out, seeing his beautiful smile when he didn't think I was there. Finding something he'd left in my car, stupid things that made my throat seize up. All I had to comfort me was an old T-shirt of his I'd found stuffed in my suitcase that I kept under my pillow and buried my face in before I went to sleep at night, filling my lungs with the smell of him.

  We had four months to go before Tommy Aldridge, the drummer, and Rudy Sarzo, the bass player, were available, and four months before The Blizzard of Ozz was released in North America. Meanwhile Ozzy and Randy had been busy writing the second album while they were on the road: they would get the structure of the song and then Lee and Bob would come in and put in their bass and drums. But I found them a pain in the arse to deal with. They were such a lot of work. You knew that whenever they called it was going to take five phone calls to sort out. "I don't like this photo you're using . . . I didn't get the pickled relish . . . the wine's not cold . . . my suitcase is dented."

  I just had to bite my tongue. So it was, Right, guys, let's get in the studio, record the album so we have that under our belts and then we can just keep touring.

  And that's what we did. I booked them into Ridge Farm Studios, where they had done the first album. Same engineer, and coproducer Max Norman. And for the rehearsals and demo, we went to a studio in Monmouth, on the border of England and Wales, an old fishing lodge by a trout stream in the heart of the countryside. Ozzy had been there with Sabbath and he felt comfortable there, which I was learning was always a big thing with him, and it was only an hour away by car from his family in Stafford.

  The whole point of these places is that there are no diversions. Writing and recording an album is an intense, emotional experience and these emotions can't be allowed to dissipate by letting in too much of the outside world. We were several miles out of the little town and the only relaxation was a pool table, drinking and staring at the river. The studio itself was housed in a high barn attached to the house. It had been soundproofed but basically looked just as it must have three hundred years before. The house itself was very old, a jumble of small rooms with staircases all over the place. The perfect setting for a farce. Which proved very appropriate, because as soon as we got down there, Ozzy's and my relationship got going again.

  With Thelma living not far away, she would regularly turn up without warning, and I would have to hide in another room, going out one door as she'd be coming in another, going down one staircase as she'd be going up another. It might sound funny now, but in reality it was horrible and sometimes it got really, really close. I wasn't there all the time and I'd be going up and down from London. But the more she would see me, of course, the more determined she was to make life difficult. It was hard on everyone. It was hard on Ozzy, hard on his wife, hard on me, and hard on Randy, who was still having to pretend that he and I were involved.

  I don't know if Thelma loved Ozzy. But he was her husband and the father of their two children, and there was also her son from her first marriage whom he'd adopted. In a strange way it was not unlike my mother's situation with my father: a second marriage and not wanting to let that one go the same way as the first, hanging on to it even though it was completely dead and they had nothing in common. Thelma's trump card was the children, and she knew how to play it, turning up with them in tow.

  Ozzy, I knew, was going through hell because of Louis and Jessica. He was leading two lives. But both of us had missed each other so much. And as much as I would pine for him, he would pine for me. It was something that neither of us had planned. It was just one of those things that happened so naturally you knew it was right. And both of us felt better with each other than without each other.

  I had never enjoyed sex before I met Ozzy. But from our very first night together it was like, Oh my God, so this is what people mean. And now I knew how good it could be, and how loving it could be. And it was like, Yes, I finally get it and finally understand, and everything that had gone before was nothing. And he was so loving and gentle and cuddly, and for the first time I felt able to be myself, to be completely myself without needing to pretend. This man, this funny, crazy, clever man accepted me for who I was. He didn't care if I was fat or thin; the body might sometimes be useful, but it's not relevant. And I had never understood it before, all those songs, those films, those books--this was what they meant. And it was like a miracle that he seemed to feel the same way about me. And as much as I used to get butterflies and couldn't wait to see him, it was the same for him. Sometimes when we weren't together we would talk for four hours on the phone. And we just kept getting closer and closer. Yet already the passion was very volatile and unpredictable. The atmosphere at the farm didn't help, with everyone, apart from Randy, getting horribly drunk. And when Ozzy was pissed he would end up calling me Tharon, which was not calculated to put me in a good mood. I remember the glass smashing everywhere
when I threw billiard balls through the poolroom window.

  By the middle of March the demo was finished, and we went back to Ridge Farm to record the album Diary of a Madman. When that was done, we finally said good-bye to Bob and Lee, and Ozzy, Randy and I flew to America, where we picked up Rudy and Tommy. And the sound was immediately a whole lot better, and the stage performance was incomparably better. They were all so connected. Ozzy had always wanted to play with Tommy Aldridge. He had his ultimate guitar player, and Rudy Sarzo was a very easygoing guy and never complained about anything, and they were all personalities, they all contributed. For the first time it was a band, a real band. So they rehearsed, then boom: it was America, here we come!

  April 20, 2005, 3:00 p.m.

  In the Bentley, heading west down Sunset

  "Hello there, M'linda from Melb'n. It's Minnie's mummy here. Listen, luv, Gloria's gonna be calling with the name of a realtor. See if you can get me a viewing for the house on Benedict she was talking about. Tomorrow morning, after Ozzy goes into the studio. I'm on my way to Malibu. I think Thailand is going to be very hot and very sweaty, so I'm going to pull some things out from the beach house. I'll be back at Doheny by the time Ozzy is through in the studio. Oh, and can you see if Kay can do my color tomorrow, late morning, and Fariba can do my nails? If you need me, just call my cell. Bye."