I Am Ozzy

  We had arguments about that, actually. I’d say, ‘Look, if it works, who cares if it’s simple? I mean, you can’t get much easier than the riff to “You Really Got Me” – but it’s awesome. When I first bought that single, I played it until the needle on my dad’s radiogram broke.’

  Randy would just shrug and say, ‘I guess.’

  One thing Sharon’s brother managed to get done when we were in England was find us a bass player – Bob Daisley, an Aussie bloke who’d been signed to Jet with a band called Widowmaker, which was how David knew him. I liked Bob immediately. He was a proper rock ’n’ roller – he wore denim jackets with cut-out sleeves and had his hair all blown out – and we’d go down the pub and do a bit of coke once in a while.

  Another good thing about Bob was that he wasn’t just a bass player. He could chip in with songwriting, too.

  And we had a laugh together – at first, anyway.

  Getting a drummer wasn’t so easy.

  We seemed to audition half of Britain before we finally came across Lee Kerslake, who’d played with Uriah Heep. He was all right, Lee – one of those big old pub blokes. Solid drummer, too. But the guy I’d really wanted – Tommy Aldridge, from the Pat Travers Band – wasn’t available.

  Another early member of our line-up was a keyboard player from Ipswich called Lindsay Bridgewater. He was a very educated boy, was Lindsay, and he’d never met the likes of us before. I told him, ‘Lindsay, you look like a fucking school teacher. I want you to backcomb your hair, put on a white cape, get yourself some black lipstick and some black eyeliner. And while you’re playing, I want you to growl at the audience.’

  The poor bloke didn’t last long.

  I’d be talking out of my arse if I said I didn’t feel like I was in competition with Black Sabbath when we made Blizzard of Ozz. I wished them well, I suppose, but part of me was shitting myself that they were going to be more successful without me. And their first album with Dio was pretty good. I didn’t rush out and buy it, but I heard some tracks on the radio. It went to number nine in Britain and number twenty-eight in America. But by the time we’d got Blizzard in the can at Ridge Farm Studios in Surrey, I knew we had a cracking album of our own. We had a couple of cracking albums, actually, because we had a lot of material left over when we were done.

  And it was magic to be in control – like I’d finally pulled something off. Then again, even if you think something’s brilliant, you never know if the general public’s going to pick up on it. But as soon as the radio stations got hold of ‘Crazy Train’, it was a done deal. The thing just exploded.

  When the album came out in Britain in September 1980, it went to number seven in the album charts. When it came out in America six months later, it peaked at number twenty-one, but it eventually sold four million copies, making it one of Billboard’s Top 100 bestselling albums of the decade.

  Reviews?

  Didn’t read ’em.

  A few nights before the tour started, I got Sharon in the sack for the first time. It had taken fucking long enough. We’d been at Shepperton Studios in Surrey, rehearsing for our first gig – which was going to be in Blackpool under the fake name of The Law – and we were all staying at the same hotel across the road. So I just followed Sharon back to her room. I think I might even have used my extra-special pick-up line: ‘Can I come back and watch your telly?’ The usual reply to this was, ‘Fuck off, I ain’t got one.’

  But this time it worked.

  I was shitfaced, obviously. So was Sharon – she must have been. All I remember is her deciding to take a bath, and me ripping off my clothes and jumping in with her. Then one thing led to another, as things tend to do when you jump in a bath with a chick.

  I fell for Sharon so badly, man.

  The thing is, before I met her, I’d never come across a girl who was like me. I mean, when me and Sharon went out, people used to think we were brother and sister, we were so similar. Wherever we went, we were always the drunkest and the loudest.

  We got up to some crazy shit in those early days.

  One night in Germany, we went to a big dinner with the head of CBS Europe, who were releasing Blizzard of Ozz over there. He was a big, bearded, cigar-chomping bloke, and very straight. I was out of my fucking clock, of course. So we’re all sitting there at this huge table, and halfway through the meal I get the idea to climb on the table and start doing a striptease. Everyone thinks it’s funny for a while. But I end up stark bollock naked, take a piss in the CBS guy’s carafe of wine, kneel down in front of him, and kiss him on the lips.

  They didn’t think that was very funny.

  We didn’t get a record played in Germany for years afterwards. I remember being on the plane, flying out of Berlin, with Sharon ripping up the contracts and saying, ‘Well, that’s another country gone.’

  ‘It was worth it for the striptease though, wasn’t it?’ I asked.

  ‘That wasn’t a striptease you were doing, Ozzy. It was a fucking Nazi goose-step. Up and down the table. That poor German bloke looked mortified. Then you put your balls in his fucking wine.’

  ‘I thought I pissed in his wine?’

  ‘That was before you pissed in his wine.’

  Then we went to Paris, and I was still wasted from Berlin. I was crazy drunk, because people kept giving us all these free bottles of booze. By then, everyone had heard about what went on in Germany, so these very nervous record company people took us out for a drink at a nightclub. Everyone was talking about business, so to relieve the boredom I turned to the bloke next to me and said, ‘Hey, will you do me a favour?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  ‘Punch me in the face.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Punch me in the face.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Look, I asked you to do me a favour, and you said you would. You promised. So punch me in the fucking face.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Just punch me.’

  ‘Mr Osbourne, I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.’

  ‘Come on! YOU FUCKING PROMIS—’

  BLAM!

  The last thing I saw was Sharon’s fist approaching my face from across the table. Then I was flat out on the floor, my nose bleeding, feeling like half my teeth were gonna fall out.

  I opened my eyes and saw Sharon looking down at me. ‘Are you happy now?’ she asked me.

  I spat out some blood and snot. ‘Very happy, cheers.’

  Later that night, I was lying in bed in the hotel room, having the worst comedown from cocaine you could ever imagine. I was shivering and sweating and having all these paranoid fantasies. So I rolled over and tried to give Sharon a cuddle, but she just moaned and pushed me away.

  ‘Sharon,’ I whimpered, ‘I think I’m dying.’

  Silence.

  So I tried again: ‘Sharon, I think I’m dying!’

  Again, silence.

  One more time: ‘Sharon, I think I’m—’

  ‘Die quietly then. I need to sleep. I’ve got a meeting in the morning.’

  We’d wind each other up all the time, me and Sharon.

  One night, we went for a drink together in a hotel. We took a seat in the corner, then I went up to the bar to get the beers in. But I got distracted by a guy in a wheelchair – a Hell’s Angel. We ended up having a bit of a laugh, me and this bloke, and I ended up completely forgetting I was supposed to be taking the drinks back to Sharon. Then I heard this voice from the corner of the room.

  ‘Ozzy! OZZY!’

  Oh shit, I thought, I’m gonna get a right old bollocking now. So, on my way over, I came up with this ridiculous story. ‘Sorry, darling,’ I said, ‘but you’ll never guess what happened to that guy. He was telling me all about it, and I just couldn’t tear myself away.’

  ‘Let me guess: he fell off his motorbike.’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘It’s much worse than that. He’s suffering from blowback.’

  ‘He’s suffering from what?’

 
‘Blowback.’

  ‘What the fuck is blowback?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  The word had just popped into my head, so now I was desperately trying to think of what it could be.

  ‘No, Ozzy, I don’t know what blowback is.’

  ‘That’s crazy.’

  ‘WELL, WHAT THE FUCK IS IT, THEN?’

  ‘It’s this thing you can get from a chick when they give you a handjob. What happens is, they’re wanking you off, and then just as you’re about to blow your wad, they put their thumb over the end of your knob, and sometimes – if you’re really unlucky, like that poor bloke over there – the sperm flies straight back down your tubes and, well, y’know…’

  ‘For the millionth time, Ozzy, no, I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, it, er… knocks out your spinal column.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ said Sharon, looking really shocked. ‘That’s awful. Go and buy that poor man another drink.’

  I couldn’t believe that she’d bought it.

  I never gave it another thought until a couple of weeks later, when I was sitting outside a Jet Records board meeting. All I could hear was Sharon saying the word ‘blowback’ over and over again, and all the blokes in the room going, ‘What? Blowback? What the fuck are you talking about?’

  Then Sharon came storming out, bright red in the face, and screamed, ‘You fucking BASTARD, Ozzy!’

  Smack.

  Sharon was managing me virtually single-handed when we did the Blizzard of Ozz tour. It was the first time in my career that I’d ever seen anyone plan things so carefully. Before we even started, she said, ‘We can go two ways, Ozzy. We can open for a bigger act, like Van Halen, or we can headline smaller venues. I think we should headline smaller venues, because that way you’ll always have sold-out shows, and when people see sold-out signs, they want to go. Also, you’ll be seen as a top-billing act from day one.’

  It turned out to be a brilliant move.

  Everywhere we went, the venues were full, and there were more people queuing up outside.

  Mind you, we worked our arses off for it.

  This was my chance, and I knew I was only going to get one. Me and Sharon both knew it, actually, so we went out and did every radio station, every television station, every interview we could get. Nothing was too small. Every record or ticket we sold counted.

  I learned that when Sharon’s on a mission, when she wants to get something done, she’ll fucking throw herself at it, lock, stock and barrel, and she’ll not stop fighting until well after the bell’s rung. When she’s got a bee up her arse, you can’t stop her. Whereas, with me, if it hadn’t been for her pushing all the time, I doubt I would have had the same success. In fact, I know I wouldn’t.

  Sharon didn’t take anything for granted. It was in her blood and how she was raised. She used to tell me that her family either had the horn of plenty, the cornucopia, or nothing. One day they had the Rolls-Royce and a colour TV in every room; the next they were hiding the car and the tellies were being repossessed. It was a real boom-and-bust household.

  I trusted Sharon, like I’d never trusted anyone before on the business side of things. And that’s essential for me, because I don’t understand contracts. I choose not to understand them, I suppose, because I can’t stand all the bullshit and backstabbing.

  But Sharon wasn’t only good with money. She knew how to manage my image, too. She had me out of my grubby old Black Sabbath get-up in a second. ‘When Randy’s mum came over from LA, she thought you were a roadie,’ she told me. Then she got a hairdresser over to bleach my hair. It was the eighties – you had to be flamboyant like that. People laugh at it, but when you go to a gig nowadays, you don’t know who’s in the band and who’s in the audience, because they all look the fucking same. At least when somebody got on stage with a big glossy hairdo, they looked special.

  Mind you, my stage rags got so outrageous at one point, people used to think I was a drag queen. I’d wear spandex trousers and these long coats studded with rhinestones. Looking back now, I’m not embarrassed by those clothes, but I am embarrassed by how bloated I was. I was a fat, boozy, pizza-eating fuck. You should have seen my face, it was fucking massive. It wasn’t surprising, either, given how much Guinness I was putting away on a daily basis. I’m telling you, man, one pint of Guinness is like eating three dinners.

  Another person I learned to trust on that tour was Tony Dennis. He was this little Geordie bloke who kept turning up to the gigs every night, without fail. It was the middle of winter, but all he’d wear over his T-shirt was this little jeans jacket. He must have frozen his nuts off when he was queuing up to get in. He came to so many shows I ended up letting him in for free, even though I couldn’t understand a fucking word he said. It was all, ‘Why-eye, y’nah, Tuhni I-uhmi, haweh man, lyke.’ For all I knew, he could have been calling me a cunt.

  Anyway, we were in Canterbury, and it was minus five or something, and I asked him, ‘How do you get around, Tony?’

  ‘I just hitch-hike, man.’

  ‘And where d’you sleep?’

  ‘Train stations. Telephone boxes. Ahl awa the place, y’nah?’

  ‘I tell you what,’ I said. ‘If you want to take care of the bags for us, we’ll get you a room.’

  And he’s been with me ever since, has Tony. He’s like a family member. He’s a great guy, a really wonderful human being. I’m so reliant on him, and he’s so efficient, it’s amazing. Nothing’s ever too much trouble for him, and I trust him completely. I could leave a big pile of dough on the table, come back two years later, and it would be exactly where I’d left it. He was there for my children, too, in the dark years. They still call him Uncle Tony. And all because of that one night in Canterbury when I asked him how he got around.

  After our first night in the hotel opposite Shepperton Studios, me and Sharon were bonking all over the place. We couldn’t stop. And we didn’t carry on behind closed doors, either. The people around us knew exactly what was happening. Some nights Sharon would go out of one door and Thelma would come in the other. I was knackered all the time, having two women on the go. I don’t know how those French blokes do it. When I was with Sharon, for example, I’d end up calling her ‘Tharon’, which earned me more than a few black eyes.

  Looking back now, of course, I should have just left Thelma.

  But I didn’t want to because of the kids. I knew that if we got a divorce, it would be terrible for them, because the kids always suffer the most in a break-up. And the thought of losing my family was unbearable to me. It was just too painful, I couldn’t take it.

  On the other hand I’d never known what it was like to fall in love before I met Sharon – even though we didn’t exactly have a normal romance. I mean, Sharon was piggy in the middle when I was still married to Thelma, and in the beginning she was drinking nearly as much as I was. When we weren’t shagging, we were fighting. And when we weren’t fighting, we were drinking. But we were inseparable, couldn’t stay away from each other. On the road we’d always share a room together, and if Sharon ever had to go away on business, I’d spend hours and hours talking to her on the phone, telling her how much I loved her, how much I couldn’t wait to see her again. I’d never done that with anyone before. In fact, I can honestly say that I didn’t have a clue what love was about until I met Sharon. I’d been confusing it with infatuation. Then I realised that when you’re in love, it’s not just about the messing around in the sack, it’s about how empty you feel when they’re gone. And I couldn’t stand it when Sharon was gone.

  But as badly as I’d fallen for Sharon, I knew things couldn’t go on the way they were. For a while, I’d thought I could have the best of both worlds – my family, and the woman I loved – but something had to give. So that Christmas, with the British leg of the tour over, I told Thelma everything, because for some stupid drunk reason I thought that would make things better. Not the most fucking brilliant idea I ever had.

  Thelma went up like a
bottle of pop, kicked me out, and told me she needed time to think.

  Then Don Arden put in his size-ten boot. He called Thelma to a meeting down in London and told her he was putting his son David back in charge of me, to get me away from Sharon. But the truth was, he was also shitting himself that Sharon was going to leave Jet Records and go it alone, which could end up costing him a fortune, especially if she took me with her – which is exactly what she did in the end. But Don should have known that if Sharon has her mind set on something, she’ll do it, no matter what. And if someone tries to stop her, she’ll just try twice as hard.

  David didn’t last five minutes.

  Before we took the Blizzard of Ozz tour to America in April 1981, we went back to Ridge Farm and recorded Diary of a Madman. To this day, I don’t know how we got that album done so quickly. It took us just under three weeks, I think.

  We were all living in this crappy little flat while we were doing the sessions, and I’ll always remember the morning when I woke up and heard this amazing acoustic riff coming out of Randy’s room. I burst through his door, still in my underpants, and he was sitting there with a very uptight-looking classical instructor, having a lesson.

  ‘What was that you just played?’ I said, while the instructor stared at me like I was the Loch Ness Monster.

  ‘Ozzy, I’m busy!’

  ‘I know, but what was that you just played?’

  ‘Mozart.’

  ‘Right. We’re nicking it.’

  ‘We can’t nick Mozart.’

  ‘I’m sure he won’t mind.’

  It ended up being the intro to ‘Diary of a Madman’ – although by the time Randy had finished messing around with it, there was hardly any Mozart left.

  The rest of the album was a blur. We were so rushed for time that we ended up mixing it on the road. My producer, Max Norman, would send tapes to my hotel room, and I’d call him on payphones and tell him to add a bit more bass here or a bit more midrange there.

  It was around then that Bob and Lee started to bitch and moan about everything, which drove me fucking nuts. I’d look over and they’d be huddled in the corner, whispering like schoolgirls. From the very beginning, Bob had always wanted to call the band a name, instead of it just being Ozzy Osbourne. I didn’t understand that. Why would I want to leave one band just to join another, with everyone going, ‘Shall we do this gig or that gig? Hmm, let’s think about that’? I mean, if Bob and Lee had come into Jet’s offices and said, ‘We want to be in an equal-share band with Ozzy,’ I would have said, ‘Nah, thanks, I’ve had enough of that. I want to be my own boss. See ya.’ But Bob could be pushy, and if it wasn’t for Sharon he probably would have bullied me into doing exactly what he wanted. You see, I have this problem where I just tend to roll over and go along with things. Sometimes I think it’s because I don’t play an instrument, which makes me feel like I don’t deserve to be in the room, y’know?