By the time the police came and the fire department came, we had worked out who had been on the plane. Just the bus driver, Randy and Rachel. And they were all in bits, it was just body parts everywhere. And all these people wanted was for us to leave town. It was one of those places in the South where everyone knows that one and this one. So they said we were all pissing around, and that we were dive-bombing the bus, that we were stupid rock and rollers. All this shit. And there was no mention of the bus driver from hell.
The funny thing was that Rachel and Randy didn't really get along. Rachel used to call him a little white bastard. We couldn't afford a wardrobe girl in those days, so Rachel looked after all the stage clothes, mended them, and washed them and ironed them. And she was a very special woman, and Ozzy and I adored her and she adored us and took really good care of me. She was like the mother that I never had. And she'd been so badly treated all her life. And it was just ironic that she and Randy didn't even like each other yet they died together. And just like Randy had said he wanted to stop doing rock and roll and go to college, Rachel too had said this was going to be her last tour. Rachel was fifty-eight when she died. She was tired and she had a weak heart, but wanted to do this one last tour to raise some money for her church: she wanted to buy an electric typewriter.
When Ozzy got back from getting this old man out of the house, we clung to each other, and we were just screaming and weeping and shaking, and we just couldn't put all the pieces together to make one good picture, because everybody was in shock.
We had to stay there for two days; although everyone wanted us gone, people had died, there were procedures to follow and we couldn't leave. And then we had to go and tell Randy's mum, Delores, what had happened. But first we had to call her, and her son-in-law, married to Randy's sister, came out to identify what remained of the body. His mother had three children, two boys and a girl, but Randy was the light of her life. She had taught Randy piano, taught him how to read and write music, taught him guitar, everything. And Randy, this gorgeous, talented human being, was twenty-five.
Two funerals, two very different funerals in one week. Randy's was held in Los Angeles and he was buried in San Bernardino, California. On the coffin they had a photo of him and also a picture of Ozzy and him onstage in San Francisco, which was one I had always loved. And the church was full of young kids, young musicians, his school friends, all mourning this beautiful young guy taken in his prime, and his family, his mother, his sister, his brother, his girlfriend, Jodie, a lovely little thing, and everyone wearing black and so dignified. All you could hear was sobbing. It was like an ocean of sobbing.
And then there was Rachel's in a very orthodox black Baptist church, and people were crying and it was like a wave of moaning. They were wearing white and all different colors and there were gospel singers. A whole different thing. They were genuine, embracing, warm, fantastic people. Rachel had talked to everybody at the church about our friendship and they all felt that they knew me.
There's not a day goes by that I do not think of them and it upsets me that Rachel never got to see my children.
We canceled the tour for two weeks while Ozzy and I went back to the Howard Hughes house to take stock. Tommy Aldridge came with us. Rudy went to stay with his family. He was a local boy; he'd come from the same band as Randy. We were all completely wiped and in shock, yet somehow I had to get a replacement for Randy.
My father and mother had flown in for the funerals. They didn't give a toss about Randy or Rachel--well, she was just the maid, you know. I never discussed what had happened with them because they never asked. All they knew was there had been an accident and that these two people were dead. In fact, they hadn't come to pay their respects--the visit had quite another motive. The morning after Randy's funeral, my father bangs on the door of my cottage. He's wearing a white terry dressing gown.
"How's the tour doing?"
Nothing like, Hey, kids, my heart goes out to you . . .
"Have you got the cash?"
"What cash is that, Don?"
"The cash you've been getting on the road."
"Oh, that cash."
And of course he meant the cash I'd been accumulating and keeping in my suede tote bag. About $50,000. Cash he owed to Ozzy.
"It's Ozzy's money."
"Sha, give me the fucking cash."
"We've got to get this sorted out. It's not right what you're doing."
"What the fuck do you mean? Bring it to me. Now."
So I go into my bungalow and I bring out the bag, and walk towards the fountain and I open the bag.
"All right, you want it? You fucking get it." And I put my hand in the bag and begin throwing handfuls of these bills up into the air, all hundred-dollar bills. Five hundred notes tossed into the air in handfuls, falling into the fountain, till the air is filled with floating greenbacks, and Jet is jumping up and thinking this is some great new game, and my father is bending down, scrabbling and clawing at the tiles in the courtyard, screaming and cursing, trying to pick up bills and stuffing them into his pockets, grabbing them from the fountain, and from the other bungalow I can hear the sound of laughing, and it's Ozzy and Tommy leaning out of the window. They'd heard my father screaming and they'd opened the window to see what was happening, and now they are hysterical with laughter, because my father's dressing gown is too short and every time he bends over to pick up the money, they see his hairy balls flapping in the morning air.
Although I hadn't planned it, I had known something like this would happen and originally I had wanted to burn the money in front of him, just to let him see all those bills go up in smoke, but I thought it would be too complicated, too difficult to burn, and that it wouldn't work. And I was very tired and exhausted. And I knew that Ozzy's money had gone, and all I could think of was, I can't let this happen to him again. And my father must have known. Because I hadn't shown him respect in months. When I spoke to him on the phone it was like, "Whaddya want? OK. Bye." Our relationship hadn't gotten back on track since 1979 and the business with Jeff Lynne and finding out about his mistress. But I wouldn't have turned against my father for that. It was because he was a hypocrite. Don Arden was the sort of man who judged people on a moral level by the way they ran their lives. One of our lawyers was named Martin Machat, and Martin had a mistress, an Irishwoman, and yet he was still married to his wife and had three children. And my father would spit blood over how disgusting it was. How the mistress was a whore, and how could he do this to the mother of his children. Yet he was doing exactly the same thing.
Our relationship was fucked. And with each day that went by I would find out more things about him. Because once people saw how things were between us, they started to talk. Until then, nobody had said anything because everyone was terrified of my father and they thought that blood was thicker than water.
Meantime I buried myself in what I had to do: trying to find someone to stand in for Randy. You couldn't find a replacement. Most guitar players are an extension of their guitar, Randy's guitar was an extension of him. He was playing from the soul; he was never trying to compete.
We were in the middle of a huge tour; how could I even begin? Gary Moore was my first call. No dice. Then I began calling other guitar players I knew in America, and they wanted this much money, that much money, and finally I called an Irish guy named Bernie Torme, and he said he'd come out and help.
I felt like an empty shell. I knew it wouldn't be long now before I left this place. Rachel's death had made it inevitable. Over the last few months, she had been quietly packing up the things to get ready to go into storage: my record collection, my bits and pieces. I thought with sadness of the rest of the house and everything I had bought, things I had taken pride in collecting, things I couldn't take. I just stayed in bed, staring at the walls of my little bungalow and remembering everything that it had meant to me. How I had felt the first time I had seen the house, five years before, and my disbelief at just how beautiful it was, and h
ow perfect. And how month after month, I'd wake up to hear laughter coming from the kitchen, and I'd go in and there would be Rachel standing at the stove giving Ozzy his breakfast. And his lovely smile as he turned round from his place at the kitchen table and saw me standing in the doorway and how his face lit up. And how he always had these stories and how all three of us would be laughing. And Rachel, in her Southern drawl, always telling me, "Miss Sharon, I don' know wha' I's gonna do wi' you!"
It was then that I noticed that something was wrong with my books. The afternoon light from the west had lit them up, and it was as if somebody had tried to squash too many in. So, being a neat freak, I hauled myself up from the bed to see what was wrong. One book looked as if it hadn't been properly closed, so I pulled it out. I was right. Squashed between its pages was a Ziploc bag full of white powder.
And I look at this stuff and I think of what it has done: to Ozzy, to that pig of a bus driver, to Randy and Rachel. And I get a yellow legal pad and then open the bag and pour the white powder onto it, a glistening, sparkling pyramid of cocaine. And then I open the window onto the courtyard and I call Ozzy, who I know is with Tommy in the guest bungalow, and I wind it right open until I can lean out completely. And when he comes to the door, he sees me leaning out of the window holding a yellow legal pad with a huge great pyramid of white powder balanced on top of it.
And he's like: "No, no, no, no . . ." He knew. It was one of those dreamlike moments when you know what's going to happen and you can see it in your mind's eye before it actually happens, and he knew what I was going to do.
And I say, "Are you looking for this?" I can see him coming across the courtyard in slow motion, with his hands held up in front of him, and he's waving his hands at me saying, "Please don't, please don't, no, no, no . . ." And Tommy Aldridge is standing behind him and his head is in his hands, and he's saying, "No, Sharon, don't. Don't do that!"
And then I just blew. It took more goes than you would think, but soon the air was thick with it, like snow coming down, and Ozzy was rushing around the courtyard trying to scoop it up, trying to find something he could put it in. And then Jet arrived for yet another new game. And first he was sniffing it, and then he was licking it, and then he'd dart to the fountain to lap up some water, and then he'd be back and licking some more. Then suddenly he started shitting, and he's running around the courtyard like a lunatic, licking this stuff and projectile shitting, yellow diarrhea going everywhere. It must have been cut with some laxative. And to this day I don't know why, but he couldn't get enough of it, even though it tasted so awful, he kept going back.
And I laughed and laughed. It was the first time I had laughed since that terrible morning, and I was shouting at Ozzy to look at Jet. "Just look at him, running around like a fucking lunatic, foaming at the mouth, shitting. If it does that to the dog, what do you think it's doing to you?"
In the end Ozzy wasn't so much angry as embarrassed that I had found out, and pissed off because all his money had gone to the dog and he and Tommy weren't going to be having a nice day talking bullshit to each other and sniffing cocaine. I ruined their escapist weekend. I should have gotten them to clean it up, but it was such a mess that I had to hose it down.
How we got through those next weeks on the road I do not know. I put in Bobby Thomson, a Scottish guy we'd had working as a bass tech, as tour manager and that was the only good thing that came out of this terrible tragedy. He was a wonderful man who was a true friend to us both to the end of his life, and whose family will always be a part of ours.
Ozzy had wanted to pull out of the tour completely. I had no choice but to say, "Fuck you, Ozzy. Randy would have wanted you to go on."
There were people who said they would stand in for us--AC/DC called up to see if there was anything they could do. Bernie Torme, the Irish guitar player I found, lasted two weeks. It's a lot to ask of someone to stand in a dead man's shoes, and he just couldn't cope. When we did Madison Square Garden, he had to go out to a waving forest of placards saying "Randy Rhoads RIP." And it was just devastating. So he helped us out for two weeks and I am forever in his debt, because if we hadn't gone on I don't think we would ever have picked up again.
And then a kid from San Francisco filled in. His name was Brad Gillis and he had a pop band called Night Ranger, and he stayed with us for the rest of the year, did the US tour and then Japan and Europe. Only after that did we get a proper replacement: a guy by the name of Jake E. Lee, known as Jakey.
Every March 19 we send flowers to their graves. Randy had always wanted to get a degree in classical music, so his mother set up a foundation with the money that continues to come in for him to put young people through classical training. I still find it hard whenever we go and visit his mother. She never got over it. And Ozzy is convinced that had he not been asleep, it would have been him on that plane and not Randy. He says he knows it without a shadow of a doubt.
And Randy was so good for Ozzy, they were so connected. Though he smoked like a chimney, he didn't do drugs and didn't drink. And he was always telling Ozzy to stop. And I can remember his voice--he had a very deep voice for such a slight body--saying to Ozzy, "Why do you do this so much; you're going to die. You're fucking mad."
And Randy's death still affects Ozzy twenty-three years later. He can't play "Crazy Train," a song they wrote together, the song that was their first hit in America, a song that Ozzy was going to do nothing with until Randy said, "Hey, that's good, let's work on it."
It was the hardest thing ever. It was as if we'd entered a fog and couldn't get out. I couldn't look at a photo or hear Randy's voice for probably two years without hyperventilating. And I couldn't sleep in the bus anymore because I was terrified. And I would let nobody talk to the driver. The driver just drives.
And then there was Rachel. And it was something I never ever dealt with and I stuffed all the feelings about it deep down somewhere I thought I couldn't feel. And it felt like you had a big hole in your stomach and you would wake up in the morning and there'd be this pain, always this pain. I would just hold on to my stomach. I would moan like an Arab woman. I would wail and keen. And it was the same for Ozzy, he always had this pain. And we were permanently in fear from then on. Nobody outside those of us who had been through it could ever comprehend. Tommy and Rudy from the band, Bobby and Pete in the crew. It was just a small group, and we just used to look at each other sometimes and it broke your heart.
Since the second leg of the US tour began, Ozzy had been deep into his divorce. He had agreed to all Thelma's requests--as he should. But she still hadn't signed the decree absolute, the final bit of the divorce.
At the beginning I think Thelma had believed the pretense that I was having an affair with Randy. But at Christmas, after the first leg of the tour, Ozzy had taken her and his children on vacation for a month in the West Indies. And on the return journey she had told him that he would be served with divorce papers when he landed.
Ozzy had asked me to marry him just before we left England, when he knew that his marriage was over and that it was never going to work. I felt really bad for him. He was devastated about leaving his children, and terrified that they would turn against him and me. We were at my parents' house. And he went to the jewelry store just down the road in Wimbledon and he bought me a little diamond solitaire.
It was not till a year later, in June 1982, that the news came from his lawyers that Thelma had signed and he was now free to marry. We were in Los Angeles, about to set off for the Japanese leg of the tour, so we decided, Right, let's do it. We had a stopover in Hawaii anyway, so it was, Let's get married there!
I had hardly any time to get a wedding dress, but I went to a place on Sunset. It was very traditional, long ivory silk decorated with pearls. It was also far too big for me, but with no time to alter it, I just had to pin it in at the back. For Ozzy I got a white suit and a lavender shirt.
Only our families came out: Ozzy's mother and sister, and my mother and father. I had wanted
Nana to come too, but my mother refused, saying she would only get lumbered with looking after her.
We were booked into the Hyatt Hotel in Maui, an island off the coast of Hawaii, but the moment we arrived we could see it was the type of vacation hotel where you fight for the sunbeds every morning. It was so horrible that Ozzy went onto the balcony and pissed on everybody below and then we checked out.
Luckily on the other side of the island we found somewhere small and intimate and perfect. Because this was America, we needed to have blood tests done to get the license, but then we were set. Maui was totally different then. The airport was the kind of place where you put your bags on the runway and only small planes could land. And it was lovely, very small, just our families, the band and the crew. Ozzy's best man was Tommy Aldridge and my bridesmaid was his wife, Alison. But mixed with the happiness was a sadness: as I pinned myself into my wedding dress, I thought about how Rachel would have made it fit in ten minutes, and the absence of the two people we would most have wanted by our side was always there. It was barely four months since they had died. Ozzy and I got married on a hilltop overlooking the beach on July 4, 1982. I was twenty-eight and he was thirty-three.
And as my father was walking me down to pass me on to Ozzy, he wasn't saying, Do you love him, and I hope you're going to be happy. He was asking whether we were taking the stage set to Japan, and how big a production it was going to be. And my mother never said a word, at least not to me, though she talked to my bridesmaid.
"Oh," said Alison, looking at my mother's hand. "Sharon's wedding band is just like yours!"
"Hardly," she replied. "Mine is much bigger."
Sharon Osbourne Extreme: My Autobiography Page 17