‘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.
‘What d’you want doves for, anyway?’ I asked Sharon, swigging from the bottle of Cointreau I’d brought with me.
Sharon gave me one of her looks.
‘Don’t you remember, Ozzy? Our conversation? Last night? They’re for the meeting.
When we get in there, you’re going to throw the doves in the air so they fly around the room.’
‘What for?’
‘Because that’s what we agreed. And then you’re going to say “rock ’n’ roll” and give them the peace sign.’ I couldn’t remember any of it. It was only eleven o’clock in the morning, but I was already on Planet Booze. I hadn’t stopped since the night before. Or the night before that.
I’d even forgotten why we were going to see CBS. But then Sharon reminded me: ‘They need a kick up the arse because they bought Blizzard of Ozz from my father for a pathetically small sum of money, so they’re probably expecting it to bomb, which is exactly what Black Sabbath’s last two albums did in America. You’re nothing in this country as a solo artist, Ozzy.
Forget about the sold-out shows in Britain. You’re starting from scratch here. When you go into this meeting, you’ve got to make an impression, show them who you are.’
‘With doves?’ I said.
‘Exactly.’
I put down the bottle and took the birds from Sharon.
‘Why don’t I bite their heads off?’ I said, holding them up in front of my face. ‘That’ll make an impression.’
Sharon just laughed, shook her head, and looked out of the window at the blue sky and the palm trees.
‘I’m serious,’ I said.
‘Ozzy, you’re not going to bite their heads off.’
‘Yeah, I am.’
‘No, you’re not, silly.’
‘Yeah, I fucking am. I’ve been feeling a bit peckish all morning.’
Sharon laughed again. I loved that sound more than I loved anything else in the world.
The meeting was bullshit. A bunch of fake smiles and limp handshakes. Then someone told me how excited they were that Adam Ant was coming to America. Adam Ant? I almost chinned the cunt when he said that. It was obvious none of them gave a shit. Even the PR
chick kept looking at her watch. But the meeting went on and on while all these suits with gold watches spouted meaningless corporate marketing bollocks, until eventually I got pissed off waiting for Sharon to give me the cue to throw the doves in the air. In the end I just got up, walked aross the room, sat down on the arm of the PR chick’s chair, and pulled one of them out of my pocket.
‘Oh, cute,’ she said, giving me another fake smile. Then she looked at her watch again.
That’s it, I thought.
I opened my mouth wide.
Across the room, I saw Sharon flinch.
Then I went chomp, spit.
The dove’s head landed on the PR chick’s lap in a splatter of blood. To be honest with you, I was so pissed, it just tasted of Cointreau. Well, Cointreau and feathers. And a bit of beak. Then I threw the carcass on to the table and watched it twitch.
The bird had shit itself when I bit into its neck, and the stuff had gone everywhere. The PR
chick’s dress was flecked with this nasty brown-and-white goo, and my jacket, a horrible yellow eighties thing with a Rupert the Bear-style pattern on it, was pretty much ruined. To this day, I have no fucking idea what was going on in my head. I mean, the poor dove. But I’ll tell you one thing: it made an impression, all right.
For a split second, all you could hear was everyone taking a breath at the same time and the photographer in the corner going click-click-click.
Then pandemonium.
The PR chick started screaming, ‘Ew, ew, ew!’, while a bloke in a suit ran over to the bin in the corner and
