Ozzy Osbourne - I Am Ozzy

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.