Ozzy Osbourne - I Am Ozzy

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?

Anyway, at some point I remember Sharon coming up to us, very excited, and saying,

‘Great news, guys. The tickets for the Palladium in New York just went on sale, and they sold out in an hour!’ We were all cheering and whooping and doing high fives. Then Sharon went off to take a phone call. When she came back she had an even bigger smile on her face and said, ‘You’ll never guess what: the Palladium want us to do two shows in one night.’

I couldn’t believe it: everything was really taking off. But Bob and Lee went very quiet then disappeared for one of their little chin-wags. When they came back, they said, ‘Well, if we’re doing two shows, we want double our travel expenses and double our pay.’ That was a bit much for me. None of us had seen any real dough at that point, and the Ardens had put up the cash for everything—the studio time, the hotels, the food, the equipment, the staff, you fucking name it. Where did they think the money was coming from—the sky? The fact was, every last penny had to be paid back to Don, but Bob and Lee didn’t have to worry about that because they were basically session players.

I wanted them gone after that. I said to Sharon, ‘If we carry on like this, every five minutes there’s going to be another row, and I’ve had enough of that bullshit.’

So that was the end of Bob and Lee, although I worked with Bob a few times over the years, until he started suing me every other day of the week.

It’s sad, y’know, what money does to people. Always money. But I honestly believe that if Bob and Lee had stayed on, I wouldn’t be where I am today. The bad vibes would have made it impossible to get anything done. Luckily, Sharon had been working on replacements for them for a while—they’d been getting on her tits for a long time—and she managed to sign up Tommy Aldridge, the drummer I’d wanted from the start, and a bass player called Rudy Sarzo, who’d worked with Randy in Quiet Riot. And that was that.

When the second album was finally done, we packed up our stuff, got on a plane, and went to LA for a week of rehearsals and record company meetings before the tour began in Maryland.

Don’t ask me who bought the doves.

All I know is that Sharon showed them to me when we were in the limo on the way over to the Century City headquarters of CBS Records, a few days after we’d flown into LA.

‘Aren’t they beautiful?’ she said. ‘Listen. They’re cooing. Aw.’

Our meeting with CBS was a big deal.

Although Blizzard of Ozz had been a hit in England, we badly needed success in America, ’cos we were broke. Everything depended on it. Since going out on the road, we’d been living hand-to-mouth, sleeping in flea-infested hotel rooms, one of us handcuffed to a briefcase full of all the cash we had left in the world. Which was fuck-all, pretty much. We hadn’t even been paid the advance for Diary of a Madman, ’cos Sharon couldn’t prise it out of her father’s sweaty hands. Meanwhile, Thelma was talking about a divorce, which meant I could lose everything all over again.