Don Arden RIP

Don Arden, legendary rock manager and father to Sharon Osbourne died last Saturday. He certainly has an assured place in Metal history through his (often gangsterish) management of Black Sabbath. As  the Jewish Chronicle makes clear, his Jewish roots helped to shape him (for better or worse):

SHARON Osbourne may not have been at her father’s funeral in North Manchester on Wednesday, but she has conveyed her condolences in a family announcement in the JC’s Social & Personal columns today.

Music impresario Don Arden, 81, died in Los Angeles on Saturday after a four-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease. Thirty family and friends attended the funeral at Agecroft Cemetery in Salford.

Although Mr Arden had lived in America since 1977, his sister Eileen Somers told the JC that being buried in his home city was “according to his wishes and mine, and in consultation with Sharon”. His celebrity daughter had been expected to join the mourners, but, according to a source, “things had gone wrong” at the last minute.

She did, however, ask Mrs Somers —administrator of Manchester’s Higher Crumpsall Synagogue — to include her in the S&P death announcement, along with Ozzy, Jack and Kelly, the other stars of the hit TV show, The Osbournes.

Born Harry Levy, Don Arden started out as a stand-up comic and singer. He went on to become a showbiz agent and managed some of rock music’s biggest names, including Gene Vincent, the Small Faces, ELO and Black Sabbath. Known as the “Al Capone of pop”, he famously once dangled rival manager Robert Stigwood from a fourth-floor balcony after accusing him of trying to steal one of his acts.

Sharon Osbourne has said: “There was nothing unusual seeing my dad threatening someone, or brandishing a firearm.”

In 1982, he put Sharon in charge of Ozzy Osbourne, whom she later married. However, Sharon switched Ozzy from her father’s record company, Jet, to Epic Records, leading Arden to sue her for $1 million. A lengthy feud ensued, but they were reunited in 2002.

This week, she remembered him as “a maverick, a pioneer, a visionary, whose name will live forever in the chronicles of rock history.”

Mrs Somers told the JC that, when diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, the first thing he lost was his Hebrew. “He was in shul and couldn’t remember the davening. It was very upsetting. By the time he died, he could no longer walk or talk.”

He had been “a very good Jew in his heart” and had made donations to the Higher Crumpsall congregation, whose choir he had sung in as a child. He was training to be a chazan when army service intervened.