While speaking to Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan on his new podcast “The Magnificent Others,” Ozzy Osbourne’s wife Sharon Osbourne spoke about how her dad originally tried, and failed, to become Black Sabbath’s manager.
“There was all the talk in the office [about] this band called Black Sabbath… Nobody’s heard music like that,” Sharon Osbourne, who had been working as a receptionist for her father Don Arden at the time, recalled.
Sharon then explained how Arden (aka the “Al Capone of Pop”) wanted to meet the band as soon as possible:
“My father sent his chauffeur… He went to the hotel, picked them up, and brought them to my father’s office. It was the first time they’d ever been in a Rolls Royce; my father knew how to put it on, impress.”
“So, they came to our offices… they sit in reception, there am I, and they’re all sat on the floor. They wouldn’t sit in seats, they had to sit on the floor. And I’m like, ‘What the **** is going on?’ I’m just taking my calls, trying not to have eye contact with anyone. And then I showed them into my father’s office.”
“And then, this gentleman, his name was Wilf, who was my father’s bodyguard and chauffeur, was to drive them back… and he didn’t. He took them to a pub. And one of the guys who worked for my father… he joined the meeting.”
“And so he met Wilf. They sat down with Sabbath. Sabbath told them they were terrified of my father, and Wilf and this guy, Patrick said, ‘Yes, and he’ll steal all your money! You don’t want to go with him! He will beat you up! He’ll do whatever, whatever, whatever.’ And they were terrified of him anyway, because they’d heard stories.”
“And that Friday, Patrick and Wilf left, and they took Black Sabbath. Well, they didn’t take them, because we never had them, but…”
Sharon went on to note that Tony Iommi eventually admitted to her that they made a mistake, and that Sabbath had a massive amount of difficulties with the management team they ended up signing with:
“In early ’79, Tony was in LA, and he said, ‘Everything we thought your dad would do, they did to us. They stole, they took everything.’… They would do a three-month tour of America. They would get 1000 pounds in a check, each, for the tour. But they would think that was a huge amount of money. They were happy with it. And then they’d say, ‘Do you think we have enough to ever buy a house?’”
“And Patrick would say, ‘Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, go, go buy a house. We’ll take care of everything for you.’ And they would buy houses. They weren’t big estates. They were regular houses, and they bought them, but they weren’t in their names. They were in Patrick’s. Even the cars that they drove, Patrick’s name was on the pink slip.”
