While we were still living in Palm Springs, I began to go to meetings for relatives of alcoholics, called Al-Anon. But it made me so depressed listening to one sad story after another that I would come out feeling there was no hope and what the fuck was I doing. He would never be sober for any length of time. Unlike the family therapy group I'd gone to while Ozzy was in treatment, I didn't really connect with anybody else there. I never did it again.
When the six-month rental in Palm Springs was up, the children and I went back to England. It was May and London was looking lovely. Lynn found us a nice little house in Hays Mews, the other side of Berkeley Square from the flat in Mayfair where I had first seen Ozzy sitting on the floor with a tap around his neck. And it was perfect for the children. I could gate the stairs, and being in a mews it was safe from the danger of traffic. It was also easy for me to get to Hampstead to check on how work on the Hampstead house was coming along.
I'd put Aimee and Kelly in the double stroller and go to Hyde Park for an ice cream by the lake when the weather was good. We'd go on boat rides and we'd watch the riders in the park, the horses, and there would be the mothers and the nannies and the grannies. And it made me so sad to think that my mother didn't want to know her grandchildren; she never even acknowledged their existence. I had made one further attempt to reach out to her when I was pregnant with Aimee and doing up the cottage in Stafford after the fire. I'd phoned and asked if she'd like to help me choose a bath. She'd come on one condition, she said. "That your husband isn't there."
We agreed to meet at the Cavendish Hotel in Jermyn Street at two o'clock. She arrived at four. Because I'd been so nervous about the meeting, I'd asked Ozzy to wait until she got there. Finally she arrived with my half brother, Richard. My father was now spending so much time in Los Angeles with Meredith that he paid his stepson to be my mother's gofer. So we had a coffee and a sandwich and it was a very stilted conversation, and then she came with me to Harrods and I ordered the bath I wanted. And that was that. At least there had been no argument, no shouting, so it was a beginning, I thought.
The next day our American lawyer Fred Ansers got a phone call from my father in Los Angeles. A hysterical phone call, Fred told me, saying who the fuck did I think I was and how dare I humiliate my mother by taking her to buy myself a bath. He was raving like a maniac, Fred said.
At first I couldn't understand what it was about, because it clearly couldn't have been about a bath. And then the penny dropped. It was about money. Because this was my money I was spending and I didn't have to ask their permission. If I wanted to buy a bath in Harrods with gold taps then I could, because it was my money, not theirs.
Because she always thought that I would come crawling back, and I never did. She couldn't stand the fact that I went out and I was surviving and I was living a life; that I had a house, had gotten myself together. I'd had my children, I wasn't a whore, I was a married woman living a decent life, and neither of them could stand the fact that I didn't need them. And Ozzy's career was going better and better, and they couldn't stand that either. My father had never been the sort of person who, when people had left and gone on to get good jobs, had praised them or wished them well. He was never like, "You go, girl, great, I'm so proud of you." Everything was his. "I made Ozzy a star; she stole him from me." And my mother was exactly the same. If I had ever come back and my mother had seen that my jewelry was bigger than hers, she would probably have stabbed me.
I weakened just one more time. It was a few weeks after the Harrods bath incident, and my niece Gina told me that she had seen a photograph of Ozzy and me and Jet at the house in Wimbledon. This photograph was a wedding gift from a photographer friend of ours named Mark Weiss, and it was taken at the Howard Hughes house, standing in front of the living room fireplace, and it was the only picture I had of Jet. So in a moment of vulnerability, I called the familiar Wimbledon number, and my brother Richard answered the phone. I told him about the picture, and he said he'd have to go and ask his mother. If he'd jerked off, she'd have to know about it.
"Well?" I said when he came back to the phone.
"She says to tell you to go fuck yourself."
I never spoke to either my brother or my mother again.
I got the photograph when she died. Nothing else.
What kind of woman are you? was the question I had wanted an answer to for so long, but now I had answered it myself. One I did not want in my life.
Another group of people who hated Ozzy and me at this time was Black Sabbath, because while Ozzy's band was a huge success, they were nowhere. Sandy Pearlman, the producer who had taken them on when they refused to stay under the same management as Ozzy, had lasted five minutes. And where did they go? Back to the Meehans. And when my father heard that this was going wrong--again--he went out of his way to get them back with Don Arden. He knew Sabbath would love nothing better than if Ozzy disappeared up his own arse, which was exactly what he wanted too, so he'd do whatever it took to make them bigger than Ozzy. Ronnie Dio, the singer they were so in love with when they kicked Ozzy out, had left after two records. My father put in a new singer, Ian Gillan from Deep Purple. But after a few years they split with him and went back to the Meehans, and from then on, for the next ten years, they would go back and forth between the Meehans and my father like a fucking yo-yo.
In June 1985 I had a call from my friend Gloria.
"Wouldn't it be great if Sabbath could get back together, just for this?" she said. She was referring to Live Aid. Six months earlier Bob Geldof had put together Band Aid and done a charity Christmas single, "Do They Know It's Christmas?" but this was much more ambitious. It would be live concerts, televised from London, Philadelphia and Melbourne.
And she was right; it was a great idea. And so, with Gloria and me acting as go-betweens, it was agreed. As nobody was being paid, we decided to say nothing to Don. It was hardly a state secret that he hated Ozzy's and my guts, and if he knew we were going behind his back, he would be sure to do something to stop it. So on July 13, Black Sabbath re-formed for Live Aid, nearly ten years since they had last stood on a stage together, and I watched them perform in the JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. My instinct about my father had been right. The day before the performance, when Ozzy was walking away from rehearsals, a man had come up and served him papers: Don Arden was suing Ozzy for enticement, saying he was trying to take Sabbath away from him. Gloria got a writ claiming the same thing: enticing her husband away from Sabbath. It was all a stupid waste of time and money. Live Aid was a one-off; it was for charity so no money was involved. My father did it because he couldn't bear to think we did something without him. It wasn't the first time Don had served papers on Ozzy. Once, shortly after we told CBS we were leaving my father, he served papers on Ozzy while he was actually onstage.
Getting to Philadelphia was a nightmare. As I was pregnant again, too pregnant to fly, Ozzy and I went on the QE2, and it was horrible, like a floating resort, and I had no idea that the Atlantic would be so rough. After all, it was midsummer, so I'd thought I'd be lying up on deck getting suntanned, like on a Caribbean cruise. Instead I was being thrown around the deck getting seasick, my legs feeling like noodles. After two days Ozzy went to the onboard doctor, who decided he was suffering from claustrophobia and mania. The doctor was so afraid, he put Ozzy to sleep for two days. So while he's in our cabin sleeping like a baby, I'm wandering around a fucking tugboat on my own. In the afternoon, there were these idiots playing some game where they pushed wooden horses with sticks, and there would be people dancing with numbers on their backs. It didn't help that I was the size of a tank.
Not only was I five months pregnant, but since 1980 I had put on an average of fourteen pounds a year, and continued to do so till 1989. Ozzy didn't care what size I was, at least, not when he was sober, but when he had an audience and he was drunk, that was different. On one level even I had to laugh, because his jokes were funny, but deep down it was misery. I can remember being out one night wi
th the guys from Slade and we were in some Greek restaurant in London, and Ozzy was being very funny and very witty at my expense. The way I looked, the way I dressed, the size of my arse, and I can remember looking at Slade's singer Noddy Holder and seeing the look in his eyes and just wanting to die.
When we got back home I would go crazy and I would hit him and hit him because it was the only thing I could do. Once I cut my wrists because my hand went through a window. Another time I took a knife and cut myself in front of him on purpose. I'd had enough of being humiliated, of being a laughingstock.
"This is what you are doing to me!" I screamed, holding up my bleeding wrists. Yet it made no difference what you said to him. He would nod as if he'd understood and taken everything in but then just go on and on like before. It was as if the alcohol had made him deaf. It was especially bad when he was making a record. I'd explain why this or that had to happen but he'd take no notice and go on and on and on about whatever it was he wanted changed or different, and it was like a dripping tap and I would literally bang my forehead on the wall above the bed and tell him to stop, to shut up.
For a long, long time after Randy's death, Ozzy could not bring himself to say he had found a replacement, and without a writing partner, he couldn't write. Now finally we had our permanent replacement. Jake E. Lee. Jakey was half Japanese--his father had met his mother in the war. He was as dark as Randy had been blond, and very, very good-looking. Of course, nobody could replace Randy, but this was the first time Ozzy had somebody of whom he could say: "I have now found my new partner."
And I had a new baby, born on November 8, 1985. A girl, they'd said when I had my scans. So when Jack arrived, Ozzy was so excited he fainted. He was already drunk even before the baby was born; the pockets of his jacket were rattling with the nips he'd been swigging throughout my labor. We were both taken totally by surprise, having been told over and over by the hospital that it was another girl and so--poor Jack--I'd done up the room with everything pink. But if you've got two daughters already, it's nice to have a son, and not only for the dad. After the delivery, we spent a couple of hours together and then I fell asleep while he went back to the new house in Hampstead and continued to celebrate by taking one of the nannies to bed. I probably would never have found out if Lynn hadn't dropped by and caught him.
When Ozzy was going through the artistic process of writing and recording a new album he was always at his worst, because then everything was on the line. And this time Ozzy was bad. His drinking was bad and his behavior was bad. And at the same time as I was as having to cope with him, there was a lot of work going on with the album, Ultimate Sin: marketing campaigns and the tour to arrange, and the crew and all the band members were staying in London.
He was heavily back on the bottle, and I remember one big fight when he hit me very badly, then whacked my niece Gina with a vacuum cleaner as she was trying to separate us. I was used to the fact of Ozzy being excessively temperamental when he was writing and recording, and I got it and understood it, but I had the two girls running around and was breastfeeding Jack while trying to run a business, and I was very tired. But we got over that, we always did. We always got over that and life went on. But the drinking didn't get any better.
April 20, 2005, 6:00 p.m.
Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills
I have a Cartier-Bresson photograph to pick up from Ralph Lauren. So I park the car, and a few feet away is a beautiful young woman handing a baby to an older woman who looks like her mother, and she's wearing the most fabulous sandals. Birkenstocks, but sparkling.
"I just love your shoes," I say. "Where did you get them?"
"I designed them myself."
"Oh really, well . . ."
"Would you like me to send you some?"
It turns out this woman hasn't customized a pair of Birkenstocks, as I thought she meant, she actually designed them for Birkenstock. She turns out to be Heidi Klum, the supermodel, and the bulge in her tummy is Seal's baby. Only in Hollywood.
When you're a celebrity, it's like you're a member of the Famous Club. During Oscar week I was walking through the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel and there was Jamie Oliver. And we both looked at each other and went "Hello!" He was with Brad Pitt, and Brad and I have met a few times, but just in passing. And he is gorgeous, but I don't know him know him. So anyway, he and Jamie Oliver are friends, and Jamie had come over to cook for a pre-Oscar charity dinner. So that was all very jolly, and very Hollywood, don't you know?
14
Home
I always think of Hollycroft Avenue as our first proper home. There was a little Montessori school that Aimee went to for a couple of hours a day, and there was enough space for two nannies and Tony to live in, and I had a housekeeper named Anne who lived out, and she was always going above and beyond what was expected of her, and life was sweet. Ozzy had bought me a little white Mercedes. So I had my freedom, and I had my kids and I was in London and I felt human. I didn't have to sit in a pub where people called me the Yank and the Home-wrecker.
Ozzy was still spending half the year on the road, and I would be constantly flying out to set up a tour, then flying back to see the children, then flying back out again to be company for him. And staying in hotels around the world, one night here, a couple of nights there, you're always losing things. No matter how many times you look under beds and in the wardrobes and check the back of the bathroom door, there's always something missing when you get back. And in the end you have to accept it as a travel expense. But then things began to disappear in the house. I noticed little things, like my tights and Ozzy's socks that I would always buy in bulk. And, of course, because of what happened in the Sidney Sheldon house, I immediately thought it must be the housekeeper. But that was obviously just me being paranoid. And yet this little voice saying, "It's her, it's her" wouldn't go away. Then one day she didn't turn up for work, and there was no phone call, nothing. So leaving the nanny in charge of the kids, I told Tony we were going to pay Anne a visit, and Gina was staying at the time so she came too.
And so we're knocking at the door, and there's no reply. But then Gina sees a curtain twitch, and it's Anne. She pulls back the curtain and points at her mouth, saying she can't open the door because she hasn't got her teeth in.
"If you don't open the door now," I shout, "I'm going to break it in." So she opens the front door a crack, but I put my shoulder to it and push. The house stank. I went straight into the living room and there was her husband, a builder with a huge fat belly, snoring in front of the TV with his great feet up on the coffee table. And suddenly I see what he's got on his feet. Not slippers, but Ozzy's stage shoes, his favorite Capezio dance shoes encrusted with rhinestones, and I go mad. And then I see that the piles and piles of what look like washing around the room are in fact piles of my dirty underwear.
She was arrested that night. There were only two bedrooms in the house and one of them was chockablock with my babies' belongings, from baby shoes and a christening gown to toys and nappies, not to mention jewelry, silver frames, silver mirrors, bed linen, cutlery and bits of my dinner service. There was mildew in all the cups, fungus on everything. The police went under the floorboards and found about PS12,000 in cash. In all they took out thirteen black garbage bags of stuff. When the case came up in court, her plea for clemency was that she was "on the change"--suffering the effects of the menopause--and she got two years suspended. As I couldn't prove the cash was mine they gave it back to her. Some of the jewelry was returned to me, though I could never bring myself to wear it. As for the silver picture frames and silver mirrors, like everything else she took, I gave them to charity.
I can never understand how somebody can enter into your life, into your confidence, become part of your family, and then steal. It's happened to me several times now. One woman is still in prison in LA as I write. Is it supposed to be some sort of excuse that I am wealthy? Because somebody has money in the bank, does that give these people the green light to take
what is not theirs? If you work at Gucci, why not steal handbags? The guy who owns Gucci is wealthy. What's the difference? Yet these people come into your home, that you've worked your arse off for, and say, Oh that's nice. I think I'll have that. Even at my lowest times, when I had nothing, I could never have taken anything from anybody. The idea of personally thieving, of going into somebody's house, is something that sickens me.
It's like with nannies. You trust these people with your most precious possessions, and so their standards should be higher than high. There was one nanny who was always offering to take Aimee and Kelly out in the double stroller. She liked walking, she said. We later discovered that where she liked walking to was the house I'd rented for the band at the time. She'd leave the children strapped in the stroller by the swimming pool, then go inside and fuck the drummer.
It seemed that whenever I came home there was another drama, and so much of it was connected with Ozzy being drunk. All his friends were drinkers, and it came as no surprise when he was arrested for drunk driving. And within a year of the Betty Ford experience, I knew I had to get him to try and straighten out again, and one morning when he was really sorry and ashamed of his behavior, he agreed. I'd done my research, I told him, and the place with the best results was called Hazelden, and it was in the US. There was nothing remotely similar in the UK. In the UK they would detox you, give you a bit of therapy, then throw you out to fend for yourself.
The Betty Ford clinic had been like a vacation camp: swimming pool, lovely weather, everybody laughing and having a good time. Summer camp for grown-ups. Hazelden was boot camp, though I didn't tell Ozzy that. All I said was that it had been recommended, and that a lot of the literature on addiction comes out of Hazelden, which it does. But not only was it hardly the Betty Ford environment, it was also hardly California. It was two hours outside of Minneapolis and it was winter.
Sharon Osbourne Extreme: My Autobiography Page 21