I photographed Black Sabbath several times before I met Ozzy, including in 1979 when Van Halen opened for them. Everyone says that Van Halen blew Sabbath off stage, but that isn’t true. I thought Van Halen were hysterically funny. I saw them at Lewisham Odeon on the night that David Lee Roth said: “Lewisham, you’re the rock’n’roll capital of the world.” But as for blowing Sabbath off… that didn’t happen. It’s a bit like Iron Maiden; as good as a support act might be, people pay their money to see the headliners.
It was on the first Blizzard Of Ozz tour in 1980 that I began to get to know Ozzy. I went with [former Classic Rock editor] Geoff Barton to cover him for Sounds and we hung out for quite a while. He was incredibly funny. Later on I went to America with Ozzy, and that’s when I started to appreciate his sense of humour.
A girl with long black hair came up to us, wearing a black dress and with black make-up. She said: “Hello Ozzy”. He looked at her, then at me, and retorted: “Fuck me, where’d she park her broom?” Ozzy always had the greatest one-liners.
Thinking about it now, back then I don’t think he had many male friends around. He’d left Sabbath, and he was being managed by Don Arden, though Sharon would take over, and of course they went on to have a relationship. Ozzy had moved on from a lot of things in his life and was starting afresh.
Then, of course, Sharon became his new manager, took him to America and he truly became Ozzy Osbourne – not just Ozzy from Black Sabbath. He became an institution.
Those first two albums, Blizzard Of Ozz and Diary Of A Madman, were great and, again, I loved the humour in the background. In the show, during Goodbye To Romance he would introduce a little person dressed up as Ronnie Dio. They would come on with a drink and Ozzy would throw it in his face. It sounds like a really terrible thing to do now, but at the time it was very, very funny.
Ozzy and Sharon made a great team. Sharon had learned so many things from her father, and she would walk through brick walls on Ozzy’s behalf. Along the way some tough and unpopular decisions were made, and former bandmates have bitched about being sacked or whatever, but although those decisions may not have come from Ozzy, you knew damned well that he would have been in on them. Sharon would have had to give Ozzy a reason, it wasn’t just: “I’m going to get rid of this person”.
I suspect that Ozzy had the viewpoint that he was the singer in the band and Sharon was the manager. After what had happened with Sabbath, he probably didn’t want to involve himself more than was necessary.
There’s this perception of Ozzy as being a bit of a buffoon. That’s completely untrue. He really wasn’t. I found him very switched on. He allowed that view to persist, I think, to keep people away. He just didn’t like people bothering him.
For example, last year I was with him at his house in LA and we were talking about Sabbath’s first tour of America in 1970, and although it was more than 50 years ago he could still remember it all – who was in the support band, their wives’ names, what happened to them… everything. I was shocked that his knowledge of such things was almost encyclopaedic. Believe me, while he was happy to play up that image for The Osbournes, Ozzy was nobody’s fool. He really wasn’t a stupid man.
On the whole I think he was a happy guy. I spent a lot of time with him and I believe that to be true. But he was always moaning, that was just Ozzy’s way.
It went like this: you’d go to do a photoshoot with him, and you’d have to warm him up. You’d joke around with him for a bit. He’d tell some jokes and stories – mostly unrepeatable ones – and you’d have a good laugh. But the process was important. Try to do pictures of Ozzy from a standing start and they’d be terrible.
A few years ago when Judas Priest were special guests for Sabbath, I wanted to do a shot of Ozzy and Rob Halford together. He was adamant: “I’m not doing it.” Then Rob walked in and Ozzy was like: “Okay, where are we doing this?” because he felt guilty for having been difficult. He put on some eyeliner, did his hair and we were in business. That was Ozzy.
Which reminds me of one of my favourite Ozzy stories. We were in the desert in White Sands, New Mexico, for his son Jack’s TV show. I wanted to shoot Ozzy in the middle of these sand dunes, one of the most beautiful places on earth. He was tired and things were running very late. Ozzy arrived in his RV at almost 7pm, just as the light was beginning to fade.
When I told him about the shot I had in mind, he instantly replied: “I’m not fucking doing it.” I told him: “Yes, you are”, and marched him up this dune. It was a really big one, and I found it hard to get up there. He still didn’t want to do the picture. I insisted: “You are fucking doing it.” As I produced the light meter, out of Ozzy’s pocket came a harmonica, and he proceeded to play Black Sabbath’s The Wizard for me. There was just Ozzy and me, it was my own private show – in the middle of a desert.
Even when he’d finished playing, he said: “I’m not doing the picture”, and walked off, back to his driver. In the end I said: “YOU ARE FUCKING DOING IT!” He gave in and let me shoot just five frames – but they were five fantastic frames.
If Ozzy needed to wind himself up for photographs, gigs were just the same. He’d sit in his dressing room imagining all of the things that could go wrong. A lot of singers are like that.
We were at Madison Square Garden in New York and Ozzy was a bundle of nerves. When I said that the show was the same every night and there was little room for mistakes, he went through every possibility. But once Ozzy got out there on that stage there was nobody quite like him – he owned it. He turned from John into Ozzy. And I can tell you that once he was out there under the lights, with the fans screaming his name, he had a great time.
And of course, with Back To The Beginning he got exactly what he wanted. He played with Sabbath – and Bill – again and said goodbye to the fans that loved him so much. On the day of the show, I purposely kept away from Ozzy. We did a photoshoot with all of the bands on soundcheck day, but on the day he was due to perform I knew he didn’t want me in his face.
Like everyone else, I had been pretty sceptical over how it might go. But he really did deliver. Was it the greatest Black Sabbath show ever? No, of course it wasn’t. But it was the perfect way for them – and for Ozzy – to go out.
The audience loved him and the bands on the bill showed him so much love and respect. Every band but one – I won’t reveal which – parked their egos at the door. When I saw him afterwards to show him some pictures, he was in a fantastic mood. I’d never seen him that contented before. With all of the build-up and preparation, he was thrilled that he had been able to do the show, and he went out on a real high.
There was a lovely moment during the show. I was shooting it with my son Oliver, and at one point Ozzy saw us both, pulled this brilliant facial expression with his arms in the air and burst out laughing. Right in front of our eyes he turned into the Ozzy that you wanted him to be. Once I had that shot, I really didn’t need anything else. It was used all over the world. But more importantly it was a wonderful personal moment for Oliver and myself.
Ozzy was in such a great mood at Villa Park, there was an aftershow drinks reception and he went along. Those are the kind of things that Ozzy would normally avoid like the plague, he’s straight back to the hotel. But there he was, talking to people and getting into the spirit of things. Him doing that was little short of amazing, and it said a lot.
It’s been a couple of days since Ozzy died and while it was obvious that he was pretty unwell, I’m still shocked. I thought he’d outlive all of us.
Ozzy knew that he was loved, but he was stunned by the audience in Birmingham and would have been completely stunned by the reaction to his passing. I mean, they gave him the first 10 minutes on the 10 o’clock news. Not just a brief mention, but 10 whole minutes. And it was a global thing, right across the world – there were candles on his star on Hollywood Boulevard and tons and tons of flowers on the Black Sabbath Bridge in Brum.
Had he known about it all, Ozzy would have felt as special as one of his beloved Beatles. And that’s a wonderful thing
