Sharon Osbourne has revealed that her strategy for catapulting her husband, Ozzy Osbourne, to solo stardom after his dismissal from Black Sabbath was rooted in “blind ignorance” and an unwavering belief in his success. In a recent interview with Music Business UK, the veteran music manager also shared what she considers the most crucial piece of advice for artists: protect your music publishing at all costs.
Reflecting on the early days of managing Ozzy following his departure from Black Sabbath – a period when all band members were struggling with substance abuse and dysfunction, with Ozzy reportedly “faring worse” – Sharon was asked about her game plan.
“Do you know what it was? Blind ignorance,” she admitted. “It was like, ‘We’re gonna make it,’ And that’s it. We did whatever we had to do. In the beginning, when we were booking Ozzy in America, the album hadn’t even come out yet. Promoters were booking him without the success of his first album.”
She described the anxiety this caused for promoters. “It was a long wait for these promoters, and most of them were sh**ting because they [were] blindly booking him.” However, their faith, and Sharon‘s tenacity, paid off. “It was fun to see it all happen,” she recalled. “I mean, so many dates went up on sale and just sold instantly… And then it just exploded. It was very organic.”
When asked for the best music business advice she has ever received, Sharon Osbourne was emphatic: “Oh, God, hold on to your publishing! Never let your publishing go, until you get to the stage where you think you want to bail, and then you sell it all for a fortune.”
She elaborated on the enduring value of owning one’s song rights. “You look at where your songs could end up; you could get a couple of million each time your song is used in an advertisement,” Sharon explained. “Other people could cover your song and have a hit with a song that wasn’t a hit for you.”
She also issued a stern warning to contemporary artists about dealing with record labels. “It’s something which, now, I know a lot of artists, they go in, and they want deals, [and the] record companies want their publishing. It’s like, ‘F**k you, no way.'”
“Everybody’s life is different. Artists who have worked and built a great body of work, it’s like, ‘Hey, sell it. It’s your big payday. Go for it.’ And there’s some that want to say, ‘No, I want to hand it over to my children.’”
“It’s whatever is right for you at that time in your life. But if you had 100% of it, you can imagine what it would be worth, instead of giving it to a publisher, and you get your whatever it is, 40-50% and they still retain the rest. It’s like, ‘F**k them’, because publishers usually just sit there and wait for it to happen.”
In July, the original lineup of Black Sabbath will come back to their hometown of Birmingham — the birthplace of heavy metal — for a farewell show at Villa Park, joined by metal heavyweights including Slayer, Metallica, Pantera, Lamb of God, Mastodon, and others.
Ozzy recently told The Guardian about upcoming performance: “We’re only playing a couple of songs each. I don’t want people thinking ‘we’re getting ripped off’, because it’s just going to be … what’s the word? … a sample, you’re going to get a few songs each by Ozzy and Sabbath.”
