“They Were All Odd and Hairy”: Sharon Osbourne’s Hilarious First Impression of Black Sabbath

It’s hard to imagine a more memorable rock ‘n’ roll power couple than the Osbournes, but given Sharon Osbourne’s hilarious first impression of Black Sabbath, their love story seems all the more unlikely. Love at first sight? Not hardly.

Love at first sound, however, might be a little closer to the truth.

Sharon Osbourne’s First Impression of Black Sabbath

When Sharon Osbourne first met Ozzy Osbourne, she was still Sharon Levy, and Ozzie had a wife and two kids. Sharon was working with her father, Don Arden, who managed and promoted musical acts like Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others. When Black Sabbath showed up at Arden’s office, they weren’t looking for romance. They were looking for a manager.

“They were all odd and hairy,” she recalled in an AXS TV interview. “I’d been used to dealing with artists that were American. They were slick, and they were really put together, and they smelled nice. Suddenly, these guys come in, and they’re hairy, and they’re very, you know, from the north of England, and they don’t look or dress like anything I’ve ever seen. So, I was very nervous of them.”

Despite her initial trepidations, she and her father attended a Black Sabbath show later that night at a club in London. Sharon told AXS host Dan Rather that the band’s performance blew her away and was unlike anything she had ever seen—especially from her and her father’s artist roster.

The Couple’s Rough Start Didn’t Stop There

Black Sabbath hired Sharon Osbourne’s father, Don Arden, as their manager in 1976. Arden and Osbourne, at that point still Sharon Levy, worked together, but Arden used his daughter’s name on all official documents, including contracts and taxes. Sharon’s falling out with her father and Ozzy Osbourne’s termination from Black Sabbath happened around the same time, linking the future couple together in the late 1970s.

Sharon signed on as Ozzy’s manager in 1979, and as she explained to Dan Rather, “We were working together, and it just became something else. He was so funny and quick-witted and, yet, very vulnerable. I just thought he was the funniest, sweetest guy I’d ever met because he was so vulnerable about everything, and that just attracted me to him.” But just because the attraction was there doesn’t mean the start of the relationship was easy.

Ozzy’s first wife, Thelma Riley, divorced the rock singer in 1982 after his struggles with substance abuse and frequent touring schedule proved too difficult to withstand. Sharon, meanwhile, had effectively estranged herself from the rest of her family. “It was just us fighting the world,” Sharon recalled. “So, that’s what we did, and we won.”

One can only wonder what Sharon Levy would’ve said if someone had told her that one of those “odd and hairy” men would eventually be her husband, business partner, and father to her three children, Aimee, Kelly, and Jack.

Photo by Matt Baron/Shutterstock