Few people have shaped metal like Sharon Osbourne. For more than 45 years, she’s successfully steered the career of her husband, Ozzy Osbourne, but that’s only one of her many achievements. By creating Ozzfest in 1996, she became responsible for some of the most stacked bills in the genre’s history, and gave a platform to rising bands such as Slipknot and Limp Bizkit, who would go on to runaway success. With The Osbournes, she helped pioneer modern reality television, turning her family into unlikely TV stars and ultimately taking metal to the White House.
It was inevitable Sharon would go into showbusiness, because she was born into it. She learned her trade from her father, a notorious hardman manager nicknamed ‘The Al Capone Of Pop’, but broke away from him when she started working with Ozzy following his dismissal from Black Sabbath. She would go on to marry him, but also save his life, putting an end to his fears about being a washed-up has-been by turning him into a solo star who became bigger than his former band.
