Sharon Osbourne Extreme: My Autobiography

by Sharon Osbourne; Penelope Dening

The business of who we had as agent was an important one. It wasn't just a question of getting our hands on the money, it was a question of how good a deal was negotiated, and the level of venues we played. Even before we left Los Angeles, I'd had a phone call from someone who said he wanted to represent Ozzy.

  "He's got an agent," I said.

  "I'm sure he has. But he needs me."

  Bill Elson was from ICM and he was the head of the music division, and ICM is global and Big-Time. My father had put Ozzy with this small agency called Magna Artists, based out of LA. I could have said I don't want to play St. Louis, I want to play Kansas City, and they would say, "Well, I'm very sorry. That's where you're going because that's where your father wants you to go." It wasn't their fault; they weren't part of any intrigue, but my father was Mr. Big and that was that. Why would they listen to me? This was 1981, and I was a twenty-seven-year-old girl. I was just fucking the singer.

  But instinctively I wasn't happy with Magna from the start. They had no other artists in Ozzy's genre; they mainly did country--people like Kris Kristofferson. And although in many ways I was still very naive, I was learning to go with my gut, and my gut would tell me when things weren't right.

  So when Bill Elson called, I said, "OK, come and see us on the road." He did, and he courted us. He would fly out to different cities and talk to Ozzy and talk to the band, and we warmed to him. And in the end we really liked him.

  He was older than us, around forty and a real family man, and totally straight--he always wore a suit and tie. He would come out to bloody Nevada in a suit and tie. Most important to me, he desperately wanted to represent Ozzy, even though he knew the situation with my father and knew his reputation.

  So finally I told Don that this man from ICM wanted to be Ozzy's agent, and that I wanted to have a meeting with him. My father said he would send "one of the boys." And so this Italian arrives, Johnny J., K. or L. And the first thing he does is show me the gun down his boot, just in case I haven't understood his role, which is to intimidate me and relay everything back to my father. So he sits there through this meeting and never says a word, because these people never do. And Bill gives me the sales pitch and it was a good sales pitch: "My contacts are bigger and I can get Ozzy more money. I can get Ozzy wherever you want Ozzy, and I will work for you." Of course, I liked what he said, and it made sense. So then I called my father and said we wanted to change agents, and I wanted him to meet with Bill Elson.

  "I don't think your father was too impressed with me," Bill said when he called to tell me how it had gone. But Bill could have been the head of the CIA and it wouldn't have impressed my father, because he knew he couldn't control him. And to show his contempt, he conducted the whole meeting at the Helmsley Palace lying on his bed in a white terry dressing gown, with Bill perching on the dressing-table stool.

  "He's a cunt. An idiot, a schmuck. We're fine as we are."

  "But Ozzy likes him, Don. I like him. And we have to do the work on the road. I have to talk to these people."

  "He's a cunt."

  But in the end we did go with Bill, because Ozzy and the band insisted they needed better representation and Bill told Don he would keep him in the loop. But I knew that wasn't going to happen; Bill knew that wasn't going to happen, and so did Don.

  After the dove incident, the story grew. And over the months kids started throwing things on the stage for Ozzy: anything from dead bullfrogs to snakes and rats would be thrown from the auditorium. In Rio there was a time somebody threw a live chicken onstage. In Japan they're more polite, and once we had chicken in a foil-wrapped takeout bag that we all ate afterwards in his dressing room. But that was later.

  The bat incident, the story that has become part of the Ozzy Osbourne myth, happened on the second leg of the tour. We were in Des Moines, Iowa, the heart of the American Midwest where nothing ever happens. And somebody threw this thing on the stage. Ozzy thought it was rubber, put it in his mouth and ripped its head off. But not only was it real, it was alive.

  Once I realized that he'd had bat's blood in his mouth, I was horrified, and right after the show went with him to the local hospital for an anti-rabies injection. Not just a little pinprick in your arm but a syringe the size of a cigar was injected directly into his stomach.

  Anyway, the next afternoon we are in this shitty hotel room in the heart of corn country, and we turn on the television for the news. And suddenly there it is. God knows what was happening in the rest of the world, but the headline in Iowa was Ozzy Osbourne Bites Head Off Bat. And we laughed and laughed and laughed. Big bands have whole departments churning out publicity and are lucky if they get a mention on page 97. We hadn't even lifted up a phone--I'd been far too worried about Ozzy getting his shot--but the story was soon front-page news around the world. The publicity was not wholly good. We were banned from Boston to Baton Rouge. We were even banned from playing Las Vegas, which has to be the most decadent city in the entire world. It's unbelievable how rumors can turn people into morons. People of responsibility, mayors, governors, would take up this fight to ban us. It was like Chinese whispers. The most ridiculous idea was that we sacrificed dogs. At that time we traveled with Mr. Pook, my Yorkshire terrier, and a dog named Bonehead that, in fact, we had given to Randy. Jet was too big to tour.

  At the end of July 1981 we were playing Fort Lauderdale, on the coast of Florida, and at sometime during the day Rachel had been down in the coffee shop of the hotel and had left our key on a table by mistake. She didn't think to mention it to me, but just got another one from the desk. And late that night, after the show, I went up to the room to pack; we had an early flight the next day, to New York and then straight on to the Concorde for England. I was feeling very tense--we were playing a big festival at Port Vale, just down the road from where Ozzy lived in Staffordshire, and Thelma and the children would be there. The English press would be there, so I had other things on my mind when I put my key in the door than the three guys with clipboards who appeared to be checking the sprinkler system.

  It wasn't until we were on the plane that I realized we'd been robbed. Ozzy was dozing, so to find out how the time was going, I opened my jewelry case, flicking the little gold clasps to lift up the top. They had been very clever, leaving enough things inside--fashion jewelry, bangles, beads and shit--so that I wouldn't notice the change in weight, but everything of value had gone.

  Rachel would always hide it so carefully, just like Ozzy's jewelry, which she would fold into his socks. Not that he had that much in those days, just his gold cross. The Cartier traveling case had been hidden in the back of the closet under a quilt. So I sat there in this plane rigid with panic. I couldn't tell Ozzy, just couldn't. But once he woke up, he knew something was wrong and was getting increasingly desperate, saying, "What have I done? Tell me what the fuck have I done?" But I couldn't tell him what had happened until I'd sorted out the insurance.

  As soon as we got to New York I called Batyu Patel, the accountant in LA. He laughed.

  "Sorry, Sharon. But you see I never made the cover." My father had stopped it, he said. But for me to file a police complaint I would have had to go back to Fort Lauderdale. The Port Vale gig was too important. I only told Ozzy once we were on the Concorde and headed for London because I didn't want him to be faced with having to make that decision, and he just put his head in his hands.

  I had lost everything. Because the business was basically in the shit, I knew if I left stuff at home my father would just take it, either to pawn it for cash or to give a piece to his girlfriend. So this time I'd thought, Fuck it. I'll take it with me. And I had a huge watch collection. I had three different Rolexes and five different Cartiers. And then there were my diamond earrings, and my ring collection. They had stolen probably about $500,000 worth of jewelry, including Ozzy's things that we didn't find out about till later, because Rachel had taken some of his stuff back with her to LA.

  April 20, 2005, 4:00 p.m.

  In the Bentley, heading fo
r Malibu

  The in-car phone goes off.

  It's Dana Kiper, my LA accountant, who has been with me for ten years.

  "Dana, just believe me, the woman is insane. I mean she has gorgeous stuff but she is un-fucking-believable. Never once did she mention insurance. Never once was it discussed. If she had told us, then I would have made arrangements."

  Dana loves a good drama, and now she thinks she has one, but she hasn't. The aptly named Goldie Ringstrom is a jeweler. She doesn't have a store, doesn't have a catalog, she just has clients who are referred to by first names only. Halle or Barbra or Elizabeth. It was in the hope that a Sharon would join the list that she lent me a shitload of diamonds for the Oscars this year: and not only the ones that I wore but the ones I didn't wear, because--as every woman knows--you always need a choice.

  At Oscar time, everyone is desperate to lend you jewelry. Why? Because it gets talked about: on TV, in magazines, framed by plunging necklines and beaming smiles. The Oscars is the jewelry equivalent of a trade fair. And they're all hoping that it'll be their stuff that you slip into your ears before the cameras begin to roll, that their diamonds will be the ones causing the cameramen to fit Polaroid filters to cut the glare. And so they troop in, the girl with the blond hair and long legs, the two clean-cut guys, and the hand-tooled leather boxes lined in silk.

  And so three days before the Oscars they're all there doing the same thing, the dress designers, the shoe designers, the stylists. Everybody is carrying this bag and that. And then Goldie (whom I have never met in my life) leaps up from the mass of plastic bags and shoe boxes and comes to greet me with the "Hi, Sharon, you look so great!" Though it's Minnie who gets the biggest welcome. Since my chat show, Minnie is herself a celebrity. It's like a Tupperware party with these women pulling at things in plastic bags and scrabbling around on the floor for diamonds that have fallen out. Mattie is the long-legged girl she has helping her keep track. Meanwhile Goldie herself never stops for a breath.

  "Look, if something isn't what you want then I can change it. I can lengthen it. So tell me what you're looking for. Do you want funky or diamondy? So what are you guys wearing? Debra has this in yellow diamonds. I like the pink. See, this becomes a choker and it's so chic. Oh you're so right. This is chicer. Quite expensive but it's quite funky. So try the pink diamonds. These all become necklaces too. Do you like the black ones? I love the black ones. You know what, they're pretty without the circle of white diamonds, but the center I like. Bring me some of those without the circle, Mattie. Oh and this is a beautiful piece, I think I'm going to give it to Elizabeth on Sunday. It's her seventy-fifth, you know. But she'll probably end up telling me what she wants. Find her the turquoise snake. Show her the diamond bangles."

  And so I took the diamond bangles, and a choker and two pairs of earrings, and two bracelets, and another necklace, and two brooches, because it wasn't just the Oscars. Four days later I had the MTV Awards in Sydney with eight costume changes, and so I needed jewelry to go with that. And I like wearing jewelry, and not only on camera. I'll wear something like the bangles for a few weeks without taking them off, and then send them back.

  And I did wear the choker and the earrings, then they got returned the next day, together with a 12-carat diamond ring--the band was so thin I thought it would break. And the things for Australia got returned when I got back to LA.

  And now Dana says that Goldie is billing us for the insurance.

  "Don't waste any more time on this, Dana. Because she's got everything back. I know she's got everything back. And when Tiffany's lends me jewelry or Van Cleef lends me jewelry, they always cover the insurance. So just forget it, Dana. The woman's a lunatic and you can tell her to go fuck herself."

  11

  Leesburg

  One night in March 1982 we were in Florida again, driving through the night on our way from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Orlando, where we had a festival date with Foreigner the following day. Later we found out that there was some problem with the air-conditioning, so the driver had told our tour manager that he could get it sorted out at the hub, the bus company's headquarters, and that we were going to be passing anyway, so they might as well stop. I knew nothing about it. When we had gotten on the bus in Knoxville, I was out for the count in our little back lounge, though Ozzy stayed up later. What I also didn't know was that the driver had his wife on board, sitting up front with him in what's called the shotgun seat. If I'd been asked, I wouldn't have allowed it. When you're so long on the road, the bus becomes your home, and the last thing you want is another person pissing in the toilet. No interlopers, ever.

  Ozzy says that he didn't get to bed till about six. But I remember him telling me how Randy had been saying how he wanted to give up rock and roll and go back to college. And Ozzy had said, "Wait a few more albums and you can buy your own college."

  The next thing I remember is a terrible noise, and then being thrown onto the floor. Crash was the word that filled my head. There was a roar of noise, and the first thing I do is look out of the window, and all that I see is a green field, and then the screaming starts. Ozzy has now stumbled to his feet and is forcing open the doors leading to the rest of the bus, and you couldn't see down the corridor because halfway along it was completely bent, and there was stuff all over the floor and we had no idea what was going on.

  And I was vaguely aware of a strange smell, and then Ozzy is screaming at me to "GET OFF THE BUS NOW!"

  And then I see Rudy, his hands in the air, and he's screaming Randy, Randy! And I manage to climb down from the bus, and we're on some grass, and there are people on their knees, doubled up and weeping, weeping, and I see that we're in the middle of a field, and there seems to be some kind of landing strip and some little planes dotted about, and then I see a white Colonial-style house with pillars and it's on fire.

  And I'm like, What's going on? And I see Jake, the tour manager, and I'm shouting at him: Where's Rachel? Where the fuck's Rachel? And he says that Randy and Rachel have been in this plane crash, and they're dead, and I'm holding my shoes and I just start laying into him with a shoe. And I still don't understand. A plane? But there's this strong smell of gas everywhere.

  And then Ozzy shouted that there was a man in the burning house, and so he grabbed the fire extinguisher from the bus and began to run towards it. And I just had no idea what had happened, and as I looked I saw that there were bits of plane everywhere, and bits of body parts. And it was just so hard to take in. I kept wanting to ask what's happened, what's happened, wanting somebody to tell me, but everybody was howling and wailing. And I can't remember how many minutes it was until I finally understood, properly understood the only thing that mattered, which was that Randy and Rachel were dead. They were dead. But even then I didn't understand.

  And nothing seemed to be happening, so I ran into this other house that wasn't on fire, a one-story trailer home, to get to a phone, and the door was open and there was a lady standing by a sink, seemingly washing up, and a man on the phone talking about getting the air-conditioning fixed on the bus.

  And I tried to say that there was a house on fire, and they needed to call the fire department, and our bus had been hit. And this man wearing a cowboy hat carried on talking into the phone about the air-conditioning. I was pleading with them to let me use the phone, and they just seemed to be standing there, doing nothing. And this wasn't half a mile away, it was less than a hundred yards. Why hadn't he run out to help, why hadn't she run out to help?

  And when finally the man hands me the phone, the only person I can think to call is my dad, and I'm sobbing into the phone and trying to explain where I am, and that we need help. And I'm saying to this woman, "Where am I?" But she had this strong Southern accent, and I couldn't understand, and everything she said was in slow time. And I just couldn't believe what was happening. And I was disoriented and confused and trying to put all these images together in my mind to try and piece together the puzzle.

  And it turns out that
the bus company owns a plane company and a helicopter company as well, and this bus driver is also a fucking pilot. So he drives through the night, and gets to this place and tells someone to sort out the air-conditioning and then says to the people on our bus, "Do you wanna go up for a ride?" So he gets out one of these planes, starts it up and takes a couple of the guys up for a ride. And then they come down and he says, "Anyone else wanna go?" And Randy and Rachel must have said yes. And what I have never understood about this whole horrible tragedy is why they went up there. Why they ever went up. Randy didn't like flying, and neither did Rachel.

  But for whatever reason they got to go up with him, and it seems that the driver's wife was standing outside, beside the bus, watching them, and he could see her from the cockpit of the plane, and he just decided to run the plane into his wife and try to kill her. And he dive-bombed the bus. What we later found out was that they were in the process of getting divorced. Plus the autopsy showed that his body was full of cocaine. And I heard later that he'd already killed someone in a helicopter crash, yet he had walked free.

  If the man on the phone had known this, then it would all make sense. And so when it happened, they were like, Oh shit, he's done it again, and wanting to distance themselves as if it might just go away.

  But it wouldn't go away. It will never go away. The horror of that day and what happened to two of the people I loved most in the world will never go away.

  The man in the burning house that the plane had crashed into was the woman's father. The trailer home they were in was the office part. The plane had caught the bus with one of the wings, which broke with the impact into two bits, and then it had gone into the house. And what had happened was that the old man was deaf and he didn't know that the garage of this house was on fire, and Ozzy was yelling at him to come out, but the old man couldn't see what had happened, and he was swearing and cursing at him to go away, thinking Ozzy was some kind of madman. At last he understood and found his own way out down a back stairway.