Unbreakable: My New Autobiography (7 page)

‘Well, there always has to be one shmuck who gets in late and walks in while I’m singing, and here’s the shmuck,’ she says, pointing at Ozzy. In fact, Ozzy didn’t even know who Bette Midler was. He was a working-class kid from Birmingham and his taste in music didn’t extend to musical theatre. She peers at him with his long hair and eccentric style of dress – obviously rather different to the sartorial tastes of the rest of the audience – and goes, ‘Are you sure you’re at the right show?’ And Ozzy dies of embarrassment. He doesn’t know what to do. I, on the other hand, am dying of laughter, along with everyone else. Ozzy is OK, but on the way back to the apartment he never stops saying, ‘Where are we, Sharon? I want to go home…’

Fast-forward thirty-plus years. Again, we’re in the front row and Bette says nothing, but comes down among the audience in the middle of a song, takes Ozzy’s hand and sings to him. He certainly knows who she is this time, and he absolutely loves it. After the show, we go backstage and sit in a little anteroom. There is a knock at the door, and in comes an enormous birthday cake, wheeled by the diva in person, still wearing her showgirl costume and full make-up, singing ‘Happy Birthday, dear Ozzy’ as it has never been sung before.

The next day was his actual birthday, and it was back to Caesar’s Palace, this time to Il Mulino, where I had booked the whole restaurant. Because it wasn’t just family any more. The numbers were swollen by friends who had flown in from all over the world. It was a lot to take in, but he was bowled over.

As my special birthday present, I had a ring made out of a diamond solitaire Ozzy had once bought me when the children were small but which I had never worn because it had been a guilty gift following some really bad behaviour on his part, when he actually thumped me. The diamond was beautiful, however, so I decided on a reincarnation and had it reset on a thick gold band with big diamond crosses at either side. Ozzy will tell anyone who’ll listen that he doesn’t particularly like jewellery, but take a look at him on any given day and he’s covered in the stuff. Rings, bracelets and always one, sometimes two or three, necklaces, usually involving crucifixes, skulls and diamonds. I don’t like jewellery, my arse. Anyway, he loved it. He also loved the whole birthday shebang. I mean, talk about doing it in style. Las Vegas for three days… ‘I don’t usually like surprises,’ he said, ‘but this one was different,’ adding, ‘besides, you don’t like surprises either.’

‘How the fuck would you know?’ I said. ‘You’ve never
planned
a surprise for me in your entire life.’ He has certainly given me plenty of surprises, but unfortunately not of the pleasant kind.

The milestone birthday over, Ozzy’s thoughts, and therefore mine, as his manager, turned to what the next decade would hold for him, work-wise.

Ozzfest, the annual heavy-metal festival we had established in 1996, was still going strong, but for Ozzy, Black Sabbath was never far from his mind. There’s an invisible thread that holds them together. Sabbath has been a huge part of Ozzy’s life.

He was at school with Tony Iommi, Sabbath’s guitar player. Right from the start they were chalk and cheese. Tony had much, much more confidence. His parents owned a grocery shop, while Ozzy’s parents were both factory workers. Tony – an only child – always had enough to eat. Ozzy was one of six, and the only way to be sure of getting fed was to get to the table first. A can of Campbell’s condensed soup and half a loaf of bread often had to make do for all the family.

After leaving school, Ozzy worked in a factory tuning car horns, and then in a slaughterhouse. But at the age of nineteen, he put an ad in the local music shop saying that his name was Ozzy Zigg, that he was a singer and was looking for a band. Tony and another local boy called Bill Ward turned up at Ozzy’s house and knocked at the door. Tony played lead guitar and Bill was the drummer. Ozzy didn’t play an instrument, but he had his own PA system bought on the never-never, his father acting as guarantor. Even owning your own microphone was rare – a whole system was magic, and this was why they’d come. When Ozzy opened the door, Tony said to Bill, ‘Oh shit. I was at school with him.’ Ozzy just said, ‘Oh, shit.’ Tony had been the school bully. Together with Terry Butler, always known as Geezer, this unlikely group of Brummie lads became pioneers in the genre of harder-edged music.

Ten years later, in 1979, Ozzy was fired and signed away his share of the name for a paltry $25,000. He was off his head with drink and drugs and couldn’t have read a bus ticket, let alone masterminded an exit deal from the band he’d been such an integral part of.

They were then based in LA, under contract to my father. I was doing the day-to-day and had rented them a house in Bel Air, where I’d turned the garage into a rehearsal room.

In those days you didn’t think about the implications of future earnings. Nobody thought two years ahead, let alone thirty or forty. At that time, no one had been in the rock ’n’ roll business for more than twenty years. Ozzy was flat broke and just wanted out, for whatever money he could get, and that’s what happened. Eventually, Geezer did the same thing and so did Bill. It all went to Tony. He ended up owning one hundred per cent of the Black Sabbath name.

Let’s not forget, these were four working-class lads from Birmingham, so they weren’t suddenly going to become business geniuses when it came to a severance deal. And besides, there was a period afterwards when Tony did so many reincarnations of the band with different people that the name wasn’t worth a great deal anyway. It became completely devalued.

Strangely, I was a friend of Tony Iommi’s long before I got to know Ozzy well when he produced an album for my father’s record label, Jet Records, by a band called Quartz. My father had tried to sign Sabbath back in 1970, and that’s when I saw them at the Marquee and was blown away. It wasn’t to be: they were hijacked by Don’s assistant and a bodyguard, who went on to make a fortune with them.

Even though my father never forgave Sabbath for doing the dirty on him, he was a businessman and when Quartz said they wanted Tony Iommi to produce their album, Don was more than happy. Suddenly we were on talking terms again, and that’s how, in late 1978, early 1979, Sabbath came back to ask my father for management. And of course he accepted.

When Ozzy was fired by the band in 1979, I took him under my wing. He was a real talent, a charismatic performer with great wit and likeability. I’d been unhappy at how he’d been treated – basically bullied – by them. The way I saw it, Ozzy had spent his life being bullied, at home, at school by Tony, among others, and now by Black Sabbath, because he was an insecure people-pleaser and everyone took advantage of that.

Sometime before, I had introduced Tony Iommi to Ronnie Dio (formerly of Rainbow) who then replaced Ozzy in Sabbath. So while Sabbath were in the studio doing a new album with Ronnie, Ozzy was in West Hollywood nursing his wounds and licking his paws. Tony and the gang didn’t like the fact that my father and I were still looking after him. They expected us to pull the plug. I didn’t see the need, so in the end they decided to leave us, going with another manager. It was that continuous on-off relationship my father had had with Black Sabbath taking yet another turn.

My job then was to find Ozzy a band so that he could write a new album and go into the studio on his own account. And the rest is history.

Over the years, Ozzy would play with Sabbath on and off. After he was fired, Sabbath did two studio albums and then a live record with Ronnie Dio. Then Geezer left, selling his portion of the name back to Tony. There is only a finite number of good musicians playing in Ozzy’s genre, and Geezer is one of the best bassists in hard rock. It wasn’t long before he was playing with Ozzy again, in Ozzy’s band, and when Ozzy was playing with another bassist, Geezer would go back to whatever formation Tony had come up with.

Then, from 1997 until 2005, if a project came up for Sabbath in which Ozzy was involved, I would manage it. The name Sabbath gradually began to get its credibility back. Too many reincarnations had put the name in the toilet. Without the original members, it had flatlined and had been on life support. And as far as Black Sabbath’s merchandising was concerned, it had no clout in the marketplace. Merchandise is not an add-on in this world. It’s a central part of the business.

From 1998 on, I took over responsibility for running the merchandising, cutting deals, approving the artwork and the rest of it. As the internet and social media grew in importance, I registered BlackSabbath.com as a domain name. All of this took time, effort and money.

In 2005, the British Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was inaugurated. It had existed in the States for many years. Ozzy was asked to be among the first artists to be inducted. He was touring with Black Sabbath when the invitation came, and I suggested that they induct Sabbath at the same time, and they agreed. Ozzy played at the induction with his own band, and also with Sabbath – with all the original members.

I had been lobbying for years to get them inducted into the US Hall of Fame, writing letters to everyone on the committee, so when it was agreed, in 2006, it was great news. It was an acknowledgement that Sabbath were now accepted by the mainstream. And, as is traditional, they were asked to play at the induction ceremony. Tony refused.

If he didn’t want to perform, then that was his prerogative. But it was strange. It made Sabbath the only band still alive and working never to have performed at their own induction.

The night before the ceremony, to be held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, we’d also been offered a special one-off gig at a small venue in New York City for a fee of one million dollars, to be split equally among the four. Again, Tony refused. No excuse: he just didn’t want to do it, he said. Again, this wasn’t a catastrophe for us or the other guys. But it was odd. You don’t want to earn $250,000 for an hour’s work? More power to you.

One week later, we found out why. Tony had got Sabbath back with Ronnie Dio.

Even though Ozzy had been touring with Sabbath at the time, and I was in regular contact with Tony’s manager, nothing had been mentioned. But as Tony owned the Sabbath name, he could do whatever he wanted.

So I’m like, OK, fine. Knock yourselves out. I asked for a meeting with Tony’s manager where I informed him that, if they went out with Ronnie Dio under the name Black Sabbath, I would sue. Given the band’s recent line-up, people would naturally assume that it was Ozzy they were paying to see on tour. After all, this was just days after Sabbath’s induction into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which had got global coverage.

I also told him that I was going to sue for Ozzy’s portion of the name back. I was still handling Sabbath’s merchandising, and all offers that came in for licensing for any of the music came through my office.

After everything they had been through, personally and professionally, nobody was man enough to turn around to Ozzy and say, ‘We want to go in another direction.’ They were acting like schoolboys, taking it back years, decades. Ozzy had a solo career, anyway. So why not be up front about it? Why not be respectful, out of courtesy if nothing else?

To cut a long story short, Tony Iommi did the right thing. They did go out with Ronnie Dio, they did play and they made an album, but all under the name Heaven and Hell. Which was absolutely fine for everyone, and we wished them well and we all got on with our lives.

Tragically, Ronnie Dio died of cancer in 2010. Although people imagined that we must have been at each other’s throats, nothing could have been further from the truth. There was nothing personal in this. We had no resentment against Ronnie Dio – none of it was his doing. But the truth is that, had they gone out under the Black Sabbath name, then the history of the band’s latest incarnation would never have happened.

Back in early 2010 – way before Ronnie died – the managers of the four original members started talking about the band – Black Sabbath – doing an album. While they were all great musicians, in my view Ozzy had become the face of the band. Yes, I’m his wife and I absolutely idolise him but I’m also a businesswoman. I had spent the last twelve years building up Sabbath’s merchandising arm, monitoring the business. I knew their worth with Ozzy and without Ozzy. The reality was that Ozzy had a stable solo career. As it stood, if any of the band’s images were used, they would each get a twenty-five per cent cut, but if it was just the band’s name, it all went to Tony. This seemed odd to say the least.

‘We’re only doing the album if Ozzy gets back a share of the Black Sabbath name,’ I told Tony’s manager.

Tony said no.

‘Right. Well then, in that case, we’re going to sue you.’

I told Geezer and Bill that we were going to court to try and get back a slice of the band’s name, and asked them if they wanted to join us in the lawsuit. Politically it was a difficult situation for them. Geezer was still working with Tony. They had also asked Bill to be in Heaven and Hell but, for whatever reason, it hadn’t worked out. The upshot was that they both said no. So I lawyered up and set the ball rolling.

Two months later, Tony moved to get the suit dismissed on the basis that it was ‘an effort to rewrite long-settled history’. This got thrown out of court.

We settled in July 2010 with Ozzy owning his rightful portion of the name. It had been a long, expensive and emotionally draining process, and I personally got very bad press from it, but I couldn’t give a shit as I was doing the right thing both for my husband and my family. Because long after Ozzy and I are gone, people will still be wearing Black Sabbath T-shirts and buying posters and other memorabilia. And it’s only right that some of the profits should be passed on to our family. It’s Ozzy’s heritage. Ultimately we’re happy with the settlement, and so is Tony. And that’s all that matters.

The curious thing is that, throughout all the legal battles, Tony and Ozzy and Geezer always kept up a friendly dialogue, never discussing business, keeping it only to personal stuff and music, which says a lot about them all – and it’s part of what makes them so wonderfully strange.