album called Apostrophe (’), which had a track on it called ‘Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow’. Fucking classic.
Anyway, so there we were at this hotel, and we ended up hanging out with his band in the bar. Then the next day we got word that Frank wanted us to come to his Independence Day party, which was going to be held that night at a restaurant around the corner.
We could hardly wait.
So come eight o’clock, off we went to meet Frank. When we arrived at the restaurant, there he was, sitting at this massive table, surrounded by his band. We introduced ourselves, then we all started to get pissed. But it was really weird, because the guys in his band kept coming up to me and saying, ‘You got any blow? Don’t tell Frank I asked you. He’s straight.
Hates that stuff. But have you got any? Just a toot, to keep me going.’
I didn’t want to get involved, so I just went, ‘Nah,’ even though I had a big bag of the stuff in my pocket.
Later, after we’d finished eating, I was sitting next to Frank when two waiters burst out of the kitchen, wheeling a massive cake in front of them. The whole restaurant went quiet. You should have seen that cake, man. It was made into the shape of a naked chick with two big, icing-covered tits—and her legs were spread wide apart. But the craziest thing about it was that they’d rigged up a little pump, so champagne was squirting out of her vagina. You could have heard a pin drop in that place until the band finally started to sing ‘America the Beautiful’. Then everyone had to have a ceremonial drink of the champagne, starting with Frank.
When it was my turn, I took a long gulp, screwed up my face, and said, ‘Ugh, tastes like piss.’
Everyone thought that was hilarious.
Then Frank leaned over and whispered in my ear, ‘Got any blow? It’s not for me—it’s for my bodyguard.’
‘Are you serious?’ I asked him.
‘Sure. But don’t tell the band. They’re straight.’
I saw Frank again a few years later, after he’d done a gig at the Birmingham Odeon.
When the show was over, he asked me, ‘Is there anywhere we can get something to eat in this town? I’m staying at the Holiday Inn, and the food’s terrible.’
I told him, ‘At this time of night, there’s only the curry house on Bristol Street, but I don’t recommend it.’
Frank just shrugged and said, ‘Oh, that’ll do, I’ll have a go.’
So we all went to this dodgy Indian joint—me, Frank, Thelma and some Japanese chick that Frank was hanging out with at the time. I told Frank that the only thing on the menu he shouldn’t order, under any circumstances, was the steak. He nodded, looked at the menu for a while, then ordered the steak. When it arrived, I just sat there and watched him try to eat it.
‘Like old boots, is it?’ I said.
‘No, actually,’ replied Frank, dabbing his mouth with a napkin. ‘More like new ones.’
By the mid-seventies, everything had changed with Black Sabbath. In the early days, we used to hang out with each other all the time, and whenever we arrived in a new place for a gig, we’d walk around the town like a little gang, trying out the pubs and clubs, hitting on chicks, getting pissed. But as time went on, we saw less and less of each other. When me and Bill did our road trips, for example, we hardly spent any time with Tony or Geezer. Then even me and Bill started to drift apart. I was the noisy fucker who would always be throwing parties and having chicks in my room and getting up to all sorts of debauchery, and Bill would just want to stay in his bed and sleep.
After all that time on the road, we’d just had enough of each other’s company. But when we didn’t spend any time together, all our problems grew in our heads, and we stopped communicating.
Then, all of a sudden, everything just blew up. For a start, the publishing rights to a lot of our early work had already been sold to a company called Essex Music ‘in perpetuity’, which was a posh way of saying for ever.
And there’d been other signs of trouble, like when London & County Bank went bust. I don’t know exactly what the deal was—I’m hardly the financial brain of Britain—but I know I had to sell the deeds to the land I’d bought from the cross-dressing farmer in order to save Bulrush Cottage. If me and Thelma hadn’t paid for the land with our own money, we’d have been fucked.
The biggest problem was our management. At some point we realised that we’d been stitched up. Although in theory Meehan would send us an allowance for whatever we wanted, whenever we asked for it, we didn’t actually have any control. We were supposed to have our own individual bank accounts, but it turned out they didn’t exist. So I’d have to go to his office and ask for a thousand quid or whatever. He’d say, ‘OK,’ and the cheque would turn up in the post. But after a while the cheques started to bounce.
So we fired him. Then all this legal crap started, with lawsuits flying around all over the place. While we were working on the follow-up to Sabbath Bloody Sabbath—which we ended up calling Sabotage, in reference to Meehan’s bullshit—writs were being delivered to us at the mixing desk. That was when we came to the conclusion that lawyers rip you off just as much as managers do. You get charged for every penny they spend while they’re working for you, down to the last paperclip. And they’re happy to fuck around in court for the rest of their lives, as long as someone’s paying the bills. If it takes fifty years to win, that’s fine, as far as those guys are concerned.
We had this one lawyer working for us, and I ended up hating him. I just couldn’t stand the bloke because he was taking the piss. When we were recording Sabotage in Morgan Studios, he came over to see us one day and said, ‘Gentlemen, I’m going to buy you all a drink.’ I thought, Wow, I can’t believe this, the guy’s actually getting his wallet out for something.
Then, at the end of the meeting, he took out this little notepad and started adding up what we’d all had, so he could bill us later. ‘Right. Ozzy, you had two beers, so that’s sixty pence,’
he went, ‘and Tony, you had one beer and—’
I said, ‘You’re fucking joking, right?’
But of course he wasn’t. That’s what lawyers do. They grease you down and stick their fist up your arse.
You can hear the frustration on Sabotage. There’s some heavy-duty shit on that album.
One incredible track is ‘Supertzar’. I remember the day it was recorded: I walked into Morgan Studios and there was an entire forty-member choir in there along with an eighty-six-year-old harpist. They were making a noise like God conducting the soundtrack to the end of the world. I didn’t even attempt to put a vocal over the top of it.
One song I’m very proud of on that album is ‘The Writ’. I wrote most of lyrics myself, which felt a bit like seeing a shrink. All the anger I felt towards Meehan came pouring out. But y’know what? All that bullshit he pulled on us didn’t get him anywhere in the end. You should see him now: he looks like a fat, boozy old fuck. But I don’t hate him. Hating people isn’t a productive way of living. When all’s said and done, I don’t wish the bloke any harm. I’m still here, y’know? I still have a career. So what’s the point in hating anyone? There’s enough hate in the world as it is, without me adding to it. And I got a song out of it, at least.
Aside from ‘The Writ’, I can’t say I’m very proud of much else that happened in that period.
Like pulling a gun on Bill while I was having a bad acid trip at Bulrush Cottage. The gun wasn’t loaded. But he didn’t know that, and I didn’t tell him. He was very cool about it at the time, but we’ve never talked about it since, which means it was probably quite a big deal.
I had a few bad acid trips around that time, actually. Another night we were at Fields Farm, Bill’s old rented house, which a couple of roadies had taken over, and we were getting badly fucked up for some reason. There was a terrible vibe that night, because a kid had just drowned in the lake on the property while pissing around in a canoe, and the cops had torn the place apart, dredging the lake for the body, and searching for drugs. Not exactly the best time to be doing acid, in other words. But that didn’t stop us. All I can remember is wandering off into a field and meeting these two horses. Then one of them said to the other, ‘Fuck me, that bloke can talk,’ and I freaked out, big time.
I hit Thelma, too, which is probably the worst thing I ever did in my life. I started to get overpowering with her, and the poor woman must have been frightened to death. What made it even worse was that we’d just had our second kid—little Louis. Thelma really suffered with me, y’know, and I really regret that. If there’s one thing I wish for in my life, it’s that I could take it all back. But of course you never can never take violence back—of any kind—
