Iron Man (20 page)

No show.

We had to pull the gig, which really went down well. We left it
to the last minute, thinking he might turn up. He had disappeared in the past and then just ended up in somebody's house, out of it, but never on a gig day. So we were half worried to death, and half pissed off, thinking, we have a hall full of people, they are never going to believe us if we go on and say: ‘We can't find Ozzy.'

We then really started to panic. Even though Van Halen played, the audience was going mad and we had to get out of there quick. We got in touch with radio stations and every fifteen minutes they'd do a bulletin: ‘Has anybody seen Ozzy?'

This went on and on and we were awake all bloody night wondering what the hell was going on. Then Ozzy phoned my room: ‘What's happening?'

‘Fucking hell, what do you mean, what's happening. Where the hell are you!'

‘I'm in my room.'

‘You're not in your room!'

‘Yes, I am!'

‘No, you're not!'

One of those.

‘I took this Night Nurse, I don't know what happened, I fucking passed out.'

So that was the story. We were convinced he had been kidnapped and that there was going to be some ransom note. But he was in the hotel. We felt like killing him. But Ozzy's disappearing act was only light entertainment in comparison with what would happen over the next couple of months.

Things would only get worse . . .

After the world tour, the whole band moved to LA for eleven months. Again it was a tax thing, so we thought we'd ship out there, write the next album and record it. But it turned into a highly frustrating, never-ending process.

Don Arden was managing us by then, with his daughter Sharon assisting him. I did a lot of the dealings for the band, so I was in contact a lot with her, talking about where we were going to live, rehearse, record and whatever else.

We all moved into this great house, where we turned the garage into a rehearsal studio. The next move would be to come up with ideas, but that didn't happen. Again we were doing a lot of coke. Going out partying, and further partying at the house, and then trying to write this stuff; it was hard. But what made it next to impossible was that Ozzy wasn't into it. He was on another planet. We'd try and motivate him, saying: ‘Any ideas?'

‘No, I can't think of anything.'

And then he'd pass out on the couch. It was frustrating, because it was going on and on and we were getting nowhere. I'd be going to Warner Bros. Records because they'd want to see the progress, and they'd go: ‘How's it going?'

‘Oh, great!'

But we had done nothing.

‘How are the tracks sounding?'

‘Oh, really good!'

Bloody hell, what was I supposed to say? ‘We've been here for six months and we haven't done shit'? They didn't want to hear that. It got more embarrassing every time I went down there.

We'd been there for months and Ozzy hadn't really sung much at all. We couldn't have a good conversation with him, because he took more booze and drugs and was pretty much out of it. We'd all be at times, but he was on a totally different level altogether. We could still create, but drugs and drink affect certain people differently. I think Ozzy just lost interest in it all. We had about three ideas down, musically, but we didn't know where to go next without Ozzy's input. We'd write a song and then he'd go: ‘I don't want to sing on it.' He sang a bit on ‘Children Of The Sea', and then he sort of fizzled away. It finally got to a point where we said: ‘If Ozzy can't do it, we're going to have to either break up or we are going to have to bring somebody else in.'

Ozzy wasn't yet involved with Sharon then. As a matter of fact, I was involved with her first, but we only had a friend-like relationship. It never was a love relationship. I had to deal with her all the time and I liked her as a person. I said to Sharon: ‘We are having such a problem with Ozzy.'

She went: ‘Oh, give him time.'

I said: ‘We've got to get going. The record company is asking us where the music is.'

It got to the crunch and we had to give Ozzy an ultimatum: ‘You have to do something, otherwise we are going to have to replace you.'

And that's what happened. Bill spoke to him and said: ‘Look, we're going to have to move on.'

It was sad. We had been together for a decade, but it got to a
point where we couldn't relate to each other any more. There were so many drugs flying around, coke and Quaaludes and Mandrax, and there was booze and late nights and women and everything else. And then you get more paranoid and you think, they hate me. We never fought, but it's hard to get through to people, to communicate and solve things when everybody's out of it. For some reason I became the asshole in it all. Ozzy seems to think it was me who pushed it, but I was only speaking on behalf of the band and trying to get the thing going. Somebody had to make a move, somebody had to do something otherwise we'd still be there now and we'd all be out of it. So that was it.

I thought, maybe we should break up and I'll do something else. It was at that point that Sharon introduced me to Ronnie James Dio at a party. She suggested I should do a separate project and do that with Ronnie. I approached him and said: ‘I'm in a terrible situation. I don't think it's going to work out any more with what we got. Would you be interested in doing something else?'

Ozzy wasn't the only nearest and dearest leaving me. My marriage to Susan ended around the time I moved with the band to LA. In some ways I can understand why. Sue was left alone at this huge house while I was on tour and as soon as I came back I'd be in the studio. It must have been very lonely for her. She also saw the other guys going on holiday with their wives while I stayed behind, working in the studio. I didn't see that I needed to look after the relationship more. With me it was all work, work, work. I got blinded by it. You've got to do what you've got to do, haven't you? But because of that our relationship went astray.

She wanted a divorce and went ahead with the papers. It was a shock. I got bitter about it all and as a reaction to it I went a bit mad. I went to LA and I was going for it. I had so many girls come in that I booked them at different times: I'd have one girl come at two o'clock and then another a couple of hours later, telling her: ‘We don't finish rehearsals till three, so if you come in at four . . .'

One time I was with this girl and I heard the buzzer going at the gate. I looked out of the window and it was this other girl. I said: ‘Quick! You got to go, it's my wife!'

She freaked out: ‘Aah!'

I said: ‘Go across the roof and get down the wall there!'

I got her out of the window and she climbed across the roof which sloped down, so she could jump off it easy. As she was crawling along, the maid and my guitar tech were outside looking up, shaking their heads.

I gave up the Kilworth house. When I came back home from LA I moved in with my folks for a while. In the meantime, Susan joined this sect in the UK where you give your money and all your possessions away, and you move in with them and live off the land. It was really awkward. I spoke to her parents about it all and they were in shock. They said to me: ‘You've got to come back and live in the house.'

But I said: ‘No, I can't. I can't see me coming back there now.'

I had somebody value the furniture. I put what belonged to me in storage, sold some of the other stuff and gave Susan the money. She didn't really want it, as she had moved into this sect and she'd given them all the money she was going to give them. I never understood exactly who they were, this sect, and neither did her folks.

Well after the marriage had ended, she phoned me out of the blue and said: ‘Please come and get me. I'm in trouble.'

She was up in Inverness, in Scotland. I was with a friend in a club in Birmingham and I'd had a few drinks. I panicked and said: ‘She's having problems, I've got to go over there!'

Me and this friend went up in my Rolls-Royce. Because it was a long way I'd drive a hundred miles and then he'd drive the next hundred. We finally got there, all stubbly and tired and shattered, and she went: ‘Why have you come up?'

‘Because you were having problems!'

‘Oh, well, I think it's sorted out now.'

I said: ‘You're coming with us!'

‘No, I'm not.'

‘Yes, you are!'

One of those. She didn't, so we got in the car and went. Drove back another 300 miles.

I saw her again just one more time, when I was in a relationship with Lita Ford. Lita was in LA while I was back home in Birmingham and Susan came to my house. She wanted to get back together. I said to her: ‘Look, I don't feel the same way about you any more and I've got a girlfriend now.'

It's hard to rekindle something like that. And that was the end of it. She moved to Australia and I haven't seen her since.

Ronnie was up for doing something together, but I didn't get in touch with him for a while because we were still in a state of confusion about Ozzy. After he left I finally said to Bill and Geezer: ‘Why don't we try Ronnie?'

I called him and said: ‘We're having another type of situation; would you be interested in having a go?'

We invited him over to the house and played him ‘Children Of The Sea'. Just like that Ronnie came up with this vocal melody for it. We were really impressed, because within a day we'd gone from nothing happening for ages to being able to come up with a song immediately. We played a bit of ‘Lady Evil', and Ronnie immediately sang to that as well. We thought, bloody hell, we're on to a winner! It gave us a bit of a lift. We were still feeling sad about Ozzy going, but it had run its course. Now we were pleased that we were actually able to do something.

Ozzy had left the house by then, but Don Arden was trying desperately to get him back into the band. Don finally had this band that he had always wanted . . . and we broke up! He couldn't accept that, he had to have the original line-up, so he insisted: ‘It's never going to work with Ronnie.'

I said: ‘But it is working! We've got some good stuff and we are rolling. And Ozzy is not capable at the moment of doing this, he's not into it at all.'

He kept going: ‘Give him another chance.'

We had lived all those ten months at the house and nothing was happening with Ozzy, so how come it would suddenly be happening in another couple of weeks? We also hadn't forgotten the fact that Ozzy had already left once, before
Never Say Die!
. It cost us a fortune, we weren't creating any more, everybody got depressed and pissed off with everything, so we didn't see how we could go on with him any more. Don still carried on: ‘We've got to get Ozzy back, we've got to get Ozzy back!'

We said: ‘Don, he's not into it. It's not going to work.'

And Don, of course, came back with: ‘You can't have a midget singing for Black Sabbath!'

As he would. But we had to draw the line. We were to go on with Ronnie.

Then Geezer left. He had marital problems, so he had to go home to sort it out and basically leave the band for a while. Ronnie played the bass for a bit, so suddenly we were a three-piece: Bill, Ronnie and me. We came up with a couple of things, but that's when I flew Geoff Nicholls over. I said: ‘We'll just get somebody in temporarily, who can help out while we are here.'

The first song the four of us came up with was ‘Heaven And Hell'. I played this riff and Ronnie just sang away to it. It was that instantaneous. And we said to each other: ‘Oh man, do we like this!'

Ronnie always drove up in his Cadillac. He had to raise the seat up, the car was that big. There were a lot of snakes where we lived. We found out that Ronnie was afraid of them, so I got this dead snake and I tied a piece of fishing line to its head and fixed it to the handle of the car door. I put the snake on the passenger's side and closed the door, so when Ronnie opened the driver's door he'd pull the snake towards him. It worked: he almost shat himself.

 

What an angel!

 

Out with Mum; I'm not amused