May 8, 2026 • 40 mins
The story behind the final two Black Sabbath albums with the original line up.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
My name is Eric Gasco and you're listening to the
Distorted History podcast and program. I didn't give you many names,
and you're a blunder. Hey look, I'm Raisling. I'm got
(00:24):
the barah. A long struggle for freedom, it really is
a revolution. Welcome to Sound Stories, our monthly bonus episode
covering some aspect of music history, where this month we
continue these so downfall the original Black Sabbath lineup, leading
(00:47):
to Ozzy being fired and going on to start his
own solo career. Now, at this point in our tales,
Sabbath was coming apart at the seams. They had been
going pretty much NonStop for nearly a decade, and it
saw solace for their exhaustion. Any number of drugs and alcohol,
with cocaine in particular, proven to be an answer to
their problems in the short term, while in the long
(01:08):
term only boozing and drug and was not doing them
any favors. Really, the band, more than anything else, could
have just used and extended to bring to rest and
recharge their creative batteries, which were running pretty low at
this point as well. The problem was, as we learned
last time, their manager Patrick Meehan, had not only been
ripping them off, but had engineered things so that they
(01:28):
virtually didn't own anything themselves, not even their own songs.
The band then couldn't just stop to take a break
or they would all be in an unimaginable financial disaster,
which had meant that even though they were actively involved
in a bitter legal battle to free themselves from Mehann's clutches,
the band still had to work on the new album, which,
due to everything going on, would bear the name Sabotage
(01:50):
and an album that did not receive quite the reception
they would have liked. That being said, they still had
to get out there and toward to support it. But
before we pick up on our tail from this point, first,
like always, I want to give credit to my sources,
which include Paul Wilkinson's Rat Salad, Black Sabbath e Classic
Years nineteen sixty nineteen nineteen seventy five, Dave Marsh and
(02:11):
Mike Stark's Black Sabbath and Oral History, Mick Wall's Black Sabbath,
Symptom of the Universe, Ozzy Osbourne's I Amazzi, and Tony
Iomi's Iron Man. My Journey through Heaven and Hell with
Black Sabbath in addition to articles by Eduardo Rivadavia, Chris Lord,
Joel Galston and Arren Starkly. A full list of these
and links to any additional websites that I use will
(02:33):
be listed on this podcast, Blue Sky and kofee pages. Plus,
for anyone who doesn't want to be bothered skipping through commercials,
there is always an ad free fade available to patreons
at patreon dot com slash distorted History. And with all
that being said, let's begin. While Sabotage wasn't selling quite
as well as they would have liked, the fact that
the matter was when it came to their live shows,
(02:53):
Black Sabbath was still a massive drawl as it continued
to perform in front of sold out crowds. Their chore
of Him America then was split in the three legs,
with a couple weeks rest scheduled in between each leg
to try and prevent the band from wearing out even
more than they already were. Then, after wrapping up their
tour of the stage, the band would return home to England,
where after a couple weeks off, they would launch into
(03:15):
a tour of Europe, which featured ten shows in the
UK in thirteen days before doing shows in Germany and Scandinavia,
and which point they would wrap up the year with
some one off shows in New York, Boston and Syracuse.
Now one notable aspect of the tour was the Bend
making use of a keyboardist live for the first time,
something which Tony Iomi insisted upon, even though everyone else
(03:35):
seemed to be against it. They just seemed to want
to keep Sabbath a four piece like they had always been,
with Ossi Reportley telling Iomi that they didn't need keyboards. Iomi, though,
was insistent, as he wanted to flash out the sections
where he stopped playing rhythm guitar, to play a solo,
and to just in general add some additional flavor to
their songs. Plus, as Iomi would point out, quote, we
(03:57):
were using more and more keyboards and orchestras on records,
and with a keyboard player we could reproduce some of
it on stage. So, over the objections of the others,
Gerald Jazz Woodruff was given the gig as he liked
the rest of the band was from Birmingham and at
least some of them were familiar with him and his skills. Meanwhile,
come the holidays, there might have been some hope that
Sabotage could have gone a boost in sales. The problem
(04:20):
was their former manager Patrick Meehan stabbed them in the
back once again as he released We Sold Our Souls
for Rock and Roll, a double album compilation of all
Black Sabbath's biggest hits and best songs off their first
five albums, something which he could do as again he
owned the rights to all those songs at this point. Now,
this wasn't a huge money making success for Mehan, as
(04:41):
the album would barely make it into the UK Top forty,
but the fact of the matter was it still potentially
damaged Sabotage's sales. Their former manager's antics assigned. Sabbath would
wrap up their Sabotage tour in January nineteen seventy six
at the Hammersmith Odeon in London, a show that had
actually been scheduled to take place a few months earlier
back in November as a part of their UK European tour. However,
(05:04):
the show had to be postponed when Ozzie, who was
both stoned and drunk at the time, crashed his motorcycle
and injured his back. Now his injuries were in extremely serious,
but they were enough to put the singer out of
commission for a week due to a combination of prescription
painkillers and morphine. Meanwhile, the band was coming to the
conclusion that they were in over their heads when it
came to acting as their own management. Miaomi in particular
(05:27):
was said to be desperate, as while they were mostly
free a Mehan, everything, especially their financials, were still incredibly
messed up due to his underhanded dealings, issues that the
band obviously could not handle on their own. So they
reached out to the infamous Don Arden, who had originally
offered to represent the band back in nineteen seventy, but
they had turned him down, a slight that Ardent typically
(05:49):
would not forgive. But Zabbath was still a huge band
at this point, so he was willing to make an exception. Now,
to understand the input of that last sentence, we should
talk about Don Arden for a bit. Don was himself,
at one point in time an entertainer in his own right,
having been a vaudeville style singer and comedian who eventually
went on to become a master's ceremonies type performer, one
(06:12):
who notably was not without some level of skill and
talent for his job. Yet, despite those skills and his ambition,
Don's chances of getting better opportunities in the world of
show business were limited, primarily because of his aggressive and
abrasive personality and of course, his short temper, which is
to say that Don Arden did not have the necessary
interpersonal skills to make the proper connections with the businessmen
(06:33):
who ran these shows to advance his own career. Somewhat confusingly, though,
those same undesirable character traits in a performer made him
an effective agent, which is a job he switched to
in nineteen fifty four, with the first major act that
Don took on being early rock and roll and rocketbilly
star gene Vincent. From there, Don also notably managed groups
like the Nashville Teens and the Small Faces, a group who,
(06:55):
rumor had it fellow agent Robert Stigwood, who eventually managed
the Begis, attempted to learn away from Don, which is
where we come to one of the stories that helped
to solidify Don Harden's reputation, because when Don learned that
Steigwood was trying to poach one of his top acts,
Arden showed up unannounced at Stigwood's offices with a pair
of goons in tow. Don then thrown to throw the
(07:17):
competing agent out of the window in his office, and
even reportedly dangled the other man at a said window
to make clear what would happen if Stegwood ever approached
any of his clients ever again. Now Arden will claim
that this was all just a bit of fearter. Indeed,
his thugs are just a pair of big muscular guys
that he hired for justice one instance, and that he
and they had carefully rehearsed the whole thing before going
(07:38):
over to Stegwood's offices. According to Don then quote, I
pretended to Goberzerk lived in the impresario bodily from his chair,
dragged him to the balcony and held him so he
was looking down to the pavement for forest below, at
which point Don tested the acting chops of his companions
as he inquired if he should drop Steakwood, a query
to which they said he should, just like they had rehearsed.
(08:00):
This encouragement, though, was, according to Arden, at least his
cue to dragstig Wood back inside, where he then quote
warned him never to interfere with my groups again. Yet,
regardless of whether this was a carefully choreographed show or
an example of Donald legitimately losing his cool and threatening
a fellow agent's life, this was just a part of
the legend of infamy surrounding Don Arden. For example, when
(08:22):
before I gig, John Hawkin, one of the members of
the Nashville Teens, went to pick up a check for
one hundred and twenty pounds from Don's offices, and he
instead received one for just twenty pounds. The keyboardist was
understandably quite upset. Hawkin then started amending the full one
hundred and twenty pounds that they were owed, at which point,
according to Hawkin, Arden left from his chair, grabbed the
young keyboardist by his throat, and slammed him against a
(08:44):
wall as he told him that quote, I have the
strength of ten men in these hands, A clear and
obvious threat if I've ever heard one. Arden then reportedly
started dragging the upstar musician over tortoise third story office window,
But before he could potentially follow through on the threat
that he had made this s take, Hawkin managed to escape. Meanwhile,
singer songwriter Lindsa d Paul not only would sue Arden
(09:05):
over money, but she would also say the manager quote,
it was a time in my life that I'll never
forget and I'll never forgive him. If anybody was near suicide,
and if ever I was, it was then because it
was awful. The thing with Arden, though, is that while
it seems pretty safe to say that he was a
bad guy, it's daily impossible to say just how bad
he actually was, as Don would actively take advantage of
(09:27):
rumors like the ones I claimed that he had been
appointed by the Mob to oversee their activities in London.
Arden would even have purposely perpetuate this myth by refusing
the comment on it, as from his perspective such a
reputation could be useful now. As for his actual managerial skills,
ardna reclaimed responsibility for the Animal's rise to international fame,
and he would also manage Elo or the Electric Light Orchestra,
(09:50):
who would also go on to become massively successful under
his guidance. Additionally, led Zeppelin's manager, the massive former wrestler
Peter Grant, had worked for Don Arden for a time,
likely learning more than a few lessons both in management
and in intimidation. During that period, which actually brings us
to another infamous Don Arden's story, as when Jimmy Page
(10:10):
was first looking to put together the group that would
become led Zeppelin and his search for a singer, he
considered Steve Burried of the small faces who seemed like
he might be right for the picking, considering that it
was fairly well known that Marriott and pretty much all
these small faces were unhappy with their manager, Don Arden.
The thing was, though, Arden was not about to just
let Marriott walk, so the self styled al Capono Pop
(10:32):
reportedly let Page know that unless he wanted to learn
how to play his guitar with broken fingers, he'd better
back off his client. You can begin to understand then,
why Arden might not have been too happy with the
fact that Black Sabbath had initially declined his offer of
managerial services, and also why he was when to let
that pass, considering that even with their recent setbacks and disappointments,
(10:53):
they were still one of the biggest bands in the world.
To then end upon taking over responsibility for Sabbath, according
to Arden, my number one priority was to get them
some money that meant go into the record company in Vertigo.
In the UK Warner Brothers in America and making them
understand that the band were still viable and now in
good hands, something which everyone involved kind of needed at
(11:14):
this point, as the band needed money with their financial
situation still very much in tatters thanks to Meehan and
his crooked practices, and the labels likely could have used
some assurances about Sabbath since they hadn't been quite as
successful lately, and this also worked for Don because he
has their manager. Of course, got a cut of this deal. Indeed,
according to Arden, quote I got a nice big advance
(11:36):
from them and used to put the band back in
the studio to make another album, which again was the
primary way other than touring, that the band was going
to make money thanks to Mehan currently owning their entire
back catalog, which is exactly why Don wanted them to
quote stop worrying about the money and start thinking about
music again. In an attempt to do just that, they
(11:56):
set off to Miami to get to work on their
next album at Criteria Studio, a location that Bill mord
would know was becoming a bit of a popular studio
at the time as it was used by the lacks
of the Beeje's Fleetwood, Mac and the Eagles. In fact,
according to Iomi quote, the Eagles were recording Hotel California.
Why we were there. They sometimes had to stop because
of us, because we were too loud and it was
(12:18):
leaking through into their studio. All in all, according to Bill,
criteria fit what they were looking for, both in terms
of technological advancements in their equipment and because the location
offered the band the opportunity to live an acquired environment
for a time. As Ward would state that quote, we
were always looking for a place of refuge. In general,
all of us had the idea that if we move
somewhere that's comfortable, we'd write better or we'd play better. Miami,
(12:42):
they felt, offered a similar kind of relaxed, sunny environment
as La did, without the established scene of various people
just wanted to come and hang out with the band
twenty four to seven to get it taste of the
rockstar lifestyle. Meanwhile, they moved to Miami was also a
part of Don Arden's plan to avoid paying British taxes. Now,
as for the direction that this new album was going
to take, after Sabotage had become more of a straight
(13:03):
ahead rock record due to their anger and frustration over
their legal issues, Tonaomi was once again fully into the
idea of creating more elaborate compositions, a choice had made
more sense several years earlier when they were in the
midst of other major bands doing elaborate concept albums. Doing
it now, though, was very much ignoring the latest trend
in the music scene, which was the rise of punk.
(13:24):
Rock pass nineteen seventy six, so the first waiver releases
from groups like These Six Pistols and The Damned, which
was then followed up in nineteen seventy seven with groups
like The Clash, The Stranglers and The Gem in addition
New Catalysts others who followed in their wig. The most
important thing about punk though, was it, or wasn't just
your typical musical trend that was popular one minute and
gone the next, and wasn't just an advancement over something
(13:47):
that came before it or something that was just new
and unique instead and was an active rebellion against the
established bands that had come before them, who they saw
as becoming self indulgent and pretentious. Punk then presented a
bit of a sea change, which meant that Iomian by
extension Sabbath were at this point chasing after a sound
and a scene that had to some degree already gone
(14:08):
out of style. Meanwhile, during this time, there were also
new and upcoming hard rock bands like kiss Ac DC
and Van Halen that win placed up against this era
of Sabbath simply felt more vital and exciting, which all
meant that while Sabbath had always just kind of been
out of step with the rest of the music world,
they no longer felt like weird outliers who were doing
(14:28):
their own thing. Instead, they were starting to feel like
a band that was stuck in the past and out
of touch. Ozzie in particular seemed to be bothered by
this new direction, as he claimed that quote Tony was
always saying, we gotta sound like Farder or we've gotta
sound like Queen. But I thought it was strange that
the band's We'd Want's influence were now influencing us. The
thing was, as Ozzie himself would admit, he couldn't really
(14:51):
say much because quote, I lost a plot with the
booze and the drugs, and I was saying a lot
of bad things, making trouble being a dickhead. Although he
of course, wasn't alone in his drug use, as he
stole very much continued to have coat dealers on call
who were just waiting to supply them with more. But
Ozzie seems to have been in the worst state of
them all. Regardless, his work started on what would become
(15:13):
Technical Ecstasy and very much seemed to be a follow
up to Sabbath Buddy Sabbath, meaning that Iomi intended to
go any more polished and more experimental direction much like
that previous album, which meant that's what the album was
going to be, not only because Tony was the de
facto leader of the group, but also because the others
barely ever showed up in the studio. That being said,
(15:34):
Tony was not necessarily all alone from the running process,
as hired keyboardist Gerald Woodruff, unlike the rest of the band,
actually showed up at the studio, giving Iomi someone to
bounce ideas off of, while the rest of the guys
just kind of at this point expected Iomi to come
up with something because he always did. This, of course,
was both incredibly frustrating and stressful for Iomi because he
(15:55):
knew if he didn't come up with something, then nothing
was going to get done, which in the end, men
it took something like six weeks to run and rehearse
the album before they were ready to start recording it.
This old process was so long and drawn out, though,
that they actually ran out of money and when they
were only halfway through recording the album, a turn of
events that Ozzie found to be particularly vexing, as quote,
(16:16):
by now, our albums were getting ridiculously expensive to make.
We'd recorded Black Sabbath in one day. Sabotage took about
four thousand years. Technical Ecstasy didn't take quite as long,
but the cost of doing it in Florida was astronomical.
Now you would think this is the point where their
new management would step in. Yet, for as excited as
Don was to sign Sabbath, the fact of the matter
(16:39):
was they weren't the same band he had initially tried
to acquire years earlier. They were no longer this exciting
new act on an upper trajectory and stanned. Their sales were,
if anything, on the decline, while at the same time,
another of Arden's clients, Elo, were most definitely on the rise. Indeed,
nineteen seventy five's face the music had reached the top
ten in the US, something that's Sabbath then achieved in
(17:01):
a while. Now Arden then was seemingly much more focused
on this new Golden Goose and their worldwide hit singles
than they clearly in decline and arguably out of touch
Black Sabbath, which is all to say that when the
members of Sabbath attempted to get into contact with Don
to get some more money to finish off their album,
he was nowhere to be found. This then left the
group and the lurge until Warner Brothers stepped up and
(17:23):
advanced a band some additional funds. Yet while this would
allow them to finish off their latest project, the problem
was the band had once been so unique that a
whole new genre would form in response to their music,
were seemingly not that group anymore. Sure it was for
now these same four guys, but they had, whether purposely
or not, started sounding more and more like the other
(17:45):
bands on the radio, which was especially a questionable choice
given that at least part of the public were now
actively rejecting that radio friendly sound in general. Granted, there
would be bands in the years to come that would
find success with a soft rock, more radio friendly tone,
but the thing was they weren't groups that had started
from a much different place only to end up making
that style of radio friendly music. For Sabbath, then to
(18:08):
end up in that place felt kind of unnatural. They
felt more like a band in the midst of an
identity crisis than a truly inspired group of musicians treading
new ground. Now, some people do really seem to like
technical ecstasy, but it does feel to me like a
band who really isn't sure of who they are at
this point. For example, it's all right featuring drummer Bill
Ward on vocals as a Beatles vibe to it, while
(18:30):
on other points on the album they sound like they're
trying to be the rolling Stones of their who instead
of just trying to be Black Sabbath, a sentiment than
Ozzy definitely seemed to feel extended to even their album's artwork.
As he would state quote, it was more that we
didn't seem to know who we were anymore. One minute
you had an album cover like Sabbath Buddy Sabbath with
a blow of being attacked by demons on it, and
(18:52):
the next you had two robots having sex while they're
going up a fucking escalator, which was the artwork for
Technical Ecstasy, a statement that might sound not sensical, but
it is apparently what the team and Hypnosis, the design
studio responsible for Pink Food and many other band's iconic artwork,
was actually going for. Basically, they just heard the album
titled Tanacal Ecstasy and instantly thought of robot sex, and
(19:14):
this is what came out of it. As for the
album itself, I have to say that I make a
point of listening to all these albums over and over
again when working on these kinds of episodes, as I
want to give them a fair shake and have some
kind of thoughts to interject here and there. However, when
it comes to the two albums that make up this episode,
I had a much more difficult time wanting to do that,
(19:35):
which I think says quite a bit about these albums. Now.
I think a big part of my issue with these
songs comes down to the simple fact and that doesn't
really feel like Black Sabbath, or at least it doesn't
really have any of the things that I really look
for in a Sabbath record, Which isn't to say that
there aren't interesting moments here and there, but it just
seems that more often than not, those interesting bits are
(19:56):
sandwich in between, just really generic sounding parts that could
have come from any a number of other bands from
this era. It just really feels like a band that's
both kind of burnt out and lacking in direction, which
I think is something you gain even without knowing the background.
Because when I was initially thinking about doing this series,
I did listen through this stretch of albums and was
pleasantly surprised to see how long the quality lasted, and
(20:19):
how even when they were obviously trying new things, they
were still producing some really cool songs. Then I hit
these last two albums and it was like, oh yeah,
here's where they seem to lose the plot a bit. Indeed,
it seems like many actually got the impression even at
the time, because when Tancnical Ecstasy was released in September
in eighteen seventy six, it topped o at just thirteen
(20:40):
in the UK before vanishing from the charts in just
six weeks, while in the US it would not even
crack the top fifty on the Billboard charts. For Tony
Iomi in particular, who was so responsible for this album's creation,
this was a major blow. Yet the combination of his
ego and the epic amount of cocaine was consuming would
not let the guitarists reflect and take the blame. Instead,
(21:03):
he looked elsewhere, blaming the record companies for not promoting
the album properly, the radio stations for not giving Sabbath
a fair chance, and the music press would always seem
to have it out for them. Now, the one good
thing about this response was that Iomi wasn't just going
to take this lying down. He was determined to press
on and prove every one of his critics wrong. The
guitarists then became obsessed with trying to write the ship
(21:25):
and save the careers in doing so, though, since he
couldn't really reflect on his own shortcomings in that moment,
he needed someone within the band of blame. And for Tony,
the one glaring issue with Black Sabbath had always kind
of been Azsy. He had never really taken the weird
kid he had gone to school with seriously. Ozzie had
always been a bit of a joke to Tony, but
(21:45):
he became a kind of necessary evil that the guitarist
could tolerate and put up with due to the band's
overall success. Now though, in addition to everything else, Ozzy
was increasingly just a liability. Indeed, Ozzie's drinking and drugging
had gotten to the point that he was semi regularly
setting himself on fire due to passing out with a
lit cigarette, and even when that didn't happen, he Rudy
(22:08):
would typically have to physically carry the singer from wherever
he passed out from whatever combination of substances he had
consumed that night up to his room. Ozzie then became,
in Iomi's mind, just another one of these sources of
the band's recent failings. For Iomi, Ozzi just seemed to
be much more of a disaster than the rest of them. Granted,
Bill Ward, who often ran with Ozzie, had just as
(22:30):
many issues with drugs and drinking. The thing with more, though,
was when he came to the stage and in the studio,
he just typically seemed to be much more reliable at
this point. Now, with all that being said, the song
It's All Right wasn't some part of a plan for
life without Ozzy, and staid it was just something that
Bill had written, never really intending it to be a
black Seba song, as he felt it didn't really fit
(22:51):
the group's typical vibe. Indeed, it seems that he'd just
kind of sat on it for several years as he
was too shy to share it with them. Yet when
he finally did, they all liked it, and it seems
that it might have been Tony who pushed to have
it included on the album, with the guitarist don't in
that quote, we encouraged him to put it on because
we thought it was a good song, and Ozzie liked
it as well. In fact, Ozzie felt that Bill's voice
(23:12):
was a perfect fit for the song, as you would
note in his autobiography quote, He's got a great voice, Bill,
and I was more than happy for him to do
the honors. So it very much wasn't a situation of
testany waters to see how people would react to someone
other than Ozzy singing on a Black Sabbath record. The
thing was, though, while it's all right and very much
seemed to be Ozzy and the others being supportive of Bill,
(23:35):
the fact remains that by this point, according to Ozzie himself, quote,
I started to lose interest and I kept thinking about
what it would be like to have a solo career.
I'd even had a T shirt made with Blizzard of
Oz written on the front. While it might seem unfair
(24:06):
for Iomi to specifically target Ozzie for being a problem
due to his drunk abuse when all of them were
imbibing frankly ludicrous amounts of various drugs and alcohol, even
Ozzie himself would have meant that quote. My boozing was
so bad during the technical ecstasy sessions in Florida, I
checked myself between looney bin called Saint George's when I
got back home. Although this didn't really seem to hell
(24:27):
matters as apparently Saint George's wasn't the most forward thinking institution.
As per Ozzie quote, it was a big old Victorian place,
dark and digitally, they said, of a science fiction movie.
The first thing the doctors said to me when I
went in there was do you masturbate? Mister Osbourne. I
told him, I'm in here for my head, not my dick.
I didn't last long in that place. Meanwhile, it certainly
(24:49):
didn't hell matters. That seemedly everything else and the singer's
life was falling apart. His father was in the hospital
dying of cancer, his marriage to Thelma was falling apart
as she grew tired of his drunken, abusive pantics, and
now his lone refuge, Black Sabbath wasn't really all that
much fun anymore either. Now, Ossie's solution all these mounting
issues was seemingly just to drink even more and do
(25:10):
more drugs, with Ozzie later noting that he pretty much
did anything and everything that was available outside of heroin,
mainly because it had the same effect as booze and downs,
So after trying it just a time or two, he
just really didn't see the point and effectively saved himself
from that particularly dangerous addiction. As for Black Sabbath, quote
I'd had enough. There didn't seem to be any point anymore.
(25:33):
None of us were getting on. We were spending more
time in meetings with lawyers than we were writing songs.
We were all exhausted from touring the world pretty much
NonStop for six years, and we were out of our
minds on booze and drugs. Yet, while Ossi increasingly seemed
to see the writing on the wall, the others were
trying to press on as they gathered in Rockfield Studios,
near Monmouth, where they were supposed to be writing and
(25:55):
rehearsing new material before heading off to Toronto to record
it for their next album, with Toronto being another location
partially chosen in an effort to avoid a tax bill.
The thing was, well, they already had a title for
this album, Never Say Die, which was a reference to
them being at this for ten years. They didn't really
have much any way of music to go along with
that title, as Tony was once again having a bit
(26:18):
of a difficult time of it. Some of this was
due to the fact that even he was starting to
realize that Sabbath might have lost something along the way,
as upon returning to England following the Technical Ecstasy tour,
he really encountered punk, which quote just sounded so fresh
to me and it sort of reminded me of how
we used to be. I just thought, well, we've lost
it now, just lost all that anger and energy. And
(26:41):
it was hard because we'd solved millions of albums, we'd
been through these horrific management fights. The whole double whammy
of punkin Mihan just left a big dent in us.
Yet Foraomi when made all of this, and in particular
his own inability to come up with something for this
new album. Even more frustrating was the fact that the
one member of the band that he could usually on
to help him carry the load, Geezer Butler, wasn't having
(27:03):
any more luck than Tony was. So it seems that
the increasingly desperate guitarist decided that the answer to his
in eat band's problems was to fire a Butler. Indeed,
according to Geezer, they're just see to be at the time,
quote an error around the band that somebody had to
go first. It was me. They all had a meeting.
Then Bill came over to my house and said I
was fired. There was no reason. It was just that
(27:24):
I was out of the band. Everyone else thought that
I wasn't into it and then I should just go.
So I was a bit pissed off, but you know,
I didn't want to argue about it, and I wasn't
really that bothered, to be honest, I'd lost interest by then.
This firing, though, lasted for about a month before Geezer
got a call from Bill Ward asking if he would
meet up with them, a meaning that one result in
(27:46):
the others asking if he wanted to come back and
for Geezer quote, I wasn't doing anything else, so I said,
all right. The thing was for a temporary as his
firing was, it still had a lasting effect on the
band as it was now the sense of uneasy said
at any point any one of them other than presumably
Tony could be fired for no real good reason. Then,
(28:06):
on top of that, they got the news that they
were being sam with a massive million dollar tax bill
from the US. As it seems that, in addition to
everything else he'd done, Patrick Meehannon never actually paid taxes,
despite telling the band explicitly not to worry about it
because he was on it. Now, for Ozzy, this was it.
This was a proverbial mass straw, with all the lawyers,
(28:27):
the bills stress quote, there was no pun in being
in a rock and roll band just to worry about
money and ritz all the time. So Monday just walked
out of a rehearsal and didn't come back, a move
that for Tony was also kind of the final straw
for him as well when he came to Ozzy as again,
in his mind, Osbourne was the least important member of
the band and as such he had no right to
(28:48):
just run off like that, so he decided that the
time had come to replace Ozzy, a move that Bill
and Geezer were far less sure about, with Geezer stating
the quote, you didn't just go out to the shop
and buy another one. I Owei, though, was insistent, at
least partially because he had an album to write and
a studio already booked, a studio whose time they notably
(29:08):
had paid up front four, meaning they couldn't just wait
around for Ozzie to maybe decide to come back. They
needed to get to work, and thus they needed a singer. Now.
Maybe Tony wanted a singer who was different than Ozzy
in every way possible, or maybe he was just desperate
to get to work and just caught up someone they knew.
Either way, he ended up breaching out to another musician
who liked them had grown up in Birmingham, David Walker. Indeed,
(29:32):
both Tony and Bill had known Walker for years at
this point. Plus Walker had a bit of a career
of his own, having been the singer for the English
blues rock band Savoy Brown, as was he briefed in
with Fleetwood Mac. Yet, while he was an experienced singer
with some level of success, the fact of the matter
was Walker was nothing like Ozzie. He had a more rough,
bluesy style and naturally sang in a lower register, which
(29:54):
meant he couldn't really hit the notes that Ozzie typically did. Yet,
despite this, Sabbath and Walker started getting to work and
wrote a handful of songs together. Meanwhile, were got out
to the press that Black Sabbath at a new singer,
and they even did a performance on the BBC TV
show Look Here, a copy of which has recently been
rediscovered and posted on YouTube. It's see weird little time
capsule as you see a very unique version of Black Sabbath,
(30:17):
as they just had this totally different vibe to them.
They simply don't feel like spooky mental pioneers Black Sabbath,
but instead just more of your standard heavy blues rock band,
granted an extremely capable one, but still Walker makes him
feel like a completely different band than what you were expecting. Now.
Iomi was apparently kind of fine with this, if for
no other reason than unlike the rest of the band,
(30:39):
Walker actually showed up and helped him work on ideas
for songs. That being said, the others apparently weren't quite
as welcoming with Geezer in particular being quite stand offish
and at least in part because he, unlike the others,
had never met Walker before, because this was just a
weird and awkward situation. Meanwhile, as the rest of the
band were working on new music, which David Walker was
(30:59):
writing lyric for, Ozzie would give an interview to Tony
Stewart of NM. In this interview, Osbourne would declare that
if he hadn't quit the band, he Shirley would have
been dead in a couple of years. So while he
would admit that he felt bad for the fans because quote,
it's never going to be the same again for the
people who like Sabbath, then the fact of the matter was,
from his perspective, he really had no choice but to leave. Additionally,
(31:22):
Ozzy seemed to suggest that Sabbath had lost something over
the years, as he simultaneously stated that he didn't like
Tannacal Ecstasy and that in the old days, Sabbath had
been more like the new punk bands and that they
had been a people's band, a statement would suggest that
they weren't that anymore. It was also around this time
that Ozzie's father passed away on what also happened to
(31:43):
be Ozzie's daughter's birthday, a coincidence that did not do
the troubled singer any favors. Amidst this smial, though, Ozzie
would have second thoughts about leaving Sabbath and start thinking
about giving the band another go, or, to be more precise,
he just really didn't know what he wanted to do
so and was also running out of money, so the
troubled singer would reach out and see if he might
(32:05):
be able to come back. Now, whether not the band
or more precisely, Tonaomi would have taken Ozzie back at
least so quickly, is unknown, because it seems, as much
as anything else, don Arden really forced the issue, as
from his perspective, it was not even a question because
record companies and concert promoters were willing to hand over
significantly larger wants of cash. If Ozzie was finding the band,
(32:27):
and if David Walker was with Arden, Colling Walker ain't nobody.
Now from Ozzie's recollections, there apparently wasn't a ton of
communication between the two sides, and most it seems like
maybe Word acted as a peacemaker of swords over the phone,
but otherwise there were seemingly no actual discussions concerning his
leaving and coming back. As a result, nothing was really
(32:48):
done to get to the heart of their issues. Instead, quote,
it was obvious things that changed, especially between me and Tony.
I don't think anyone's heart was in what we were
doing anymore. For example, Oz recause an argument he had
with Iomi when he happened to mention having the idea
of doing a solo project, the mention of which seemed
to really annoy the guitarist, who insisted that if Ozzy
(33:09):
had written any songs, he should be bringing them to
the band. He was a part of, a statement likely
fed by Tony's frustrations of feeling like the others just
basically left him to come up with entire albums, while
from Ozzi's perspective, whenever he had brought in ideas previously,
he felt they had just been ridiculed by the others,
and so he didn't feel comfortable doing so. Basically, it
feels like Iomi wanted a situation where he wasn't so
(33:31):
much the soul writer in the band, but kind of
the editor, the guy with the final say and the
guy who had the ability to tweaker even decline ideas.
In doing so, though, he created a situation where the
others were uncomfortable bringing in ideas, thus making it so
Tony was effectively the sole voice in the band as
all the others looked to him to write the music.
A set of them made Tony feel resentful in having
(33:52):
this burden of being the lone creative voice in the band,
while the others were quietly resentful of him for being
the lone creative voice in the band. For his part,
even Ozzi would later admit that they were all kind
of at fault and it was wrong to just more
or less expect Tony to come up with everything on
his own, with the singer later stating that quote what
happened was eventually we were writing the music for the
(34:12):
wrong reasons. We were retired, the drugs and alcohol were
taking their toll, and is true to say that the
things they later said about Tony were somewhat unjustified because
we were all fucked up and expecting him to pull
us out of the shit for which he would spend
days in the studio, and he was out of his
box anyway while we left it upon his shoulders to
make us a good record, and if it wasn't good
and we didn't like it, we condemned him forward secretly
(34:35):
in our heads. This creative pressure was especially high at
this point in time, as Ozzie had returned just days
before they were scheduled to leave for Toronto, which was
especially a problem because not only did they have just
a handful of songs written at this point, but Ozzi
would declare that he did not want to work on
any songs that had been written for his replacement, thus
forcing the band to come up with all new material.
(34:56):
So upon arriving in Toronto, the band got to work writing, rehearsing,
and reworking songs in an old movie theater where the
heat wasn't working, which was kind of a problem considering
they were in Canada in January. There was nothing they
could do, though, so they'd just bottom up and worked
from nine in the morning until dinner, during which time
no one ever really talked to one another, with Geezer
noting how quote there was horrible vibes in the band.
(35:19):
By then. Ozzie was really only there because he didn't
have anything else to do. None of us really liked
the songs that we were doing, but we couldn't come
up with anything better, and we just sort of did
it and put the album out for the sake of
putting it out. Friomi, the main problem with Never Say
Die was due to all the disruptions, namely Ozzie leaving
and then coming back, they really hadn't had time to
(35:39):
grab the songs that they were used to doing. Stating
that quote, up to that point, we'd write something and
then live with it for a bit. Given these songs
time to grow, do we like it, Let's change this bit,
or let's change that. In Toronto, we never had that luxury.
That's why to me, Never Say Die is very much
off the wall. There are some tracks I like on it,
but it's hard to relate to that album because of
(36:01):
the way it was done. It was a bitter time
for us. Again, though they didn't really have a choice,
as they already had time booked at the Sound Interchange
studios in Toronto, and they were most certainly not any
position to flush all that cash down the toilet. They
needed to get into the studio and make use of
that time that they had already paid for to record something. Yet,
when they got to the studio and question They quickly
(36:23):
realized that quote, the sound was dead as a door knill. Now,
this was a mistake that Naomi would take full blame for,
as he more or less just picked the studio because
he'd heard the Rolling Stones had recently recorded there. However,
upon actually getting into the studio, he realized that maybe
he should have done some more research and asked some
more questions because the sound was so bad. They actually
(36:43):
tried rolling up the carpets to see if that helped
to bring some warm life into the space, but even
that didn't make much of a difference, which was just
another problem thrown on top of all the other issues
going on within the band. At that point, things and
obviously weren't going well, and when Ozzie got wor that
his wife Thelma had a miscarriage, the band all packed
up and headed home. Now, you might think, given this
(37:06):
kind of tragedy in this time to reflect, there might
have been an opportunity for reconciliation, But when they all
eventually came back together to finish work on the album,
nothing had changed. There was no real communication between the
various members of Black Sabbath. Basically, it was a situation
where they weren't arguing with one another, mainly because they
just weren't talking. Things all would apparently come to a
(37:27):
head when the group turned their attention to break out
a song in which they planned to bring a jazz
band into accompany them. Now, this was apparently bill Ward's idea,
as he said he could hear the brass parts in
his head and to him, it's what the song needed
and was calling out for Ozzy, though SymPy could not
get behind this plan. For him, it was just too
far removed from what Black Sabbath had been and so
(37:48):
he wanted no part of it, which, according to Ozzy,
is the reason why he won sing on the song
that followed it, Swinging the Chain. Why Omi remembers things differently,
as he claims that Ozzie refused to sing on Swinging
the Chain because it was a track they had written
for Dave Walker. The thing was they needed one more
song to round out the album and they had nothing else,
so with Ozzie bailing, it then fell to Bill Ward,
(38:09):
who had proven himself a capable singer on their last album,
to provide the vocals for the song. As Resona was
bill Ward and not Ozzie, who would provide the vocals
on the final track of the last album that would
feature Ozzy Osbourne for decades. In the end, then it
doesn't seem like any member of Black Sabbath really likes
Never Say Die. With Geezer putting it bluntly, quote it
(38:30):
was horrible. I hated that album. I hate that album
so much, even to this day. I can't stand the
bloody thing because it's just so false and fake. Yet
despite this, the album's title track, in Defines of the
band's Feelings, became a surprising success, as it proved to
be Sabbath's first hit single in England in eight years. This, however,
would not be enough to save the band's original iconic lineup,
(38:52):
as soon Ozzie would be gone for good and the
group will look to move on with a new singer.
That particular part of our tail, however, will have to
for now remain a story for another time. Thank you
for listening to Distorted History. If you would like to
help out, please rate and review the podcasts and tell
(39:13):
your friends if you think they'll be interested. If you
would like ad free in early episodes, I set up
such a feed over at Patreon, dot com slash distorted history.
By paying ten bucks a month, you will gain access
to the special ad free feed available on Spotify or
likely through your podcast app as long as it uses
an RSS feed. I will continue to post sources on
koffee and Twitter though, as it's just a convenient place
(39:35):
to go to access that information regardless. Once again, thank
you for listening and until next time, Vla
My name is Eric Gasco and you're listening to the
Distorted History podcast and program. I didn't give you many names,
and you're a blunder. Hey look, I'm Raisling. I'm got
(00:24):
the barah. A long struggle for freedom, it really is
a revolution. Welcome to Sound Stories, our monthly bonus episode
covering some aspect of music history, where this month we
continue these so downfall the original Black Sabbath lineup, leading
(00:47):
to Ozzy being fired and going on to start his
own solo career. Now, at this point in our tales,
Sabbath was coming apart at the seams. They had been
going pretty much NonStop for nearly a decade, and it
saw solace for their exhaustion. Any number of drugs and alcohol,
with cocaine in particular, proven to be an answer to
their problems in the short term, while in the long
(01:08):
term only boozing and drug and was not doing them
any favors. Really, the band, more than anything else, could
have just used and extended to bring to rest and
recharge their creative batteries, which were running pretty low at
this point as well. The problem was, as we learned
last time, their manager Patrick Meehan, had not only been
ripping them off, but had engineered things so that they
(01:28):
virtually didn't own anything themselves, not even their own songs.
The band then couldn't just stop to take a break
or they would all be in an unimaginable financial disaster,
which had meant that even though they were actively involved
in a bitter legal battle to free themselves from Mehann's clutches,
the band still had to work on the new album, which,
due to everything going on, would bear the name Sabotage
(01:50):
and an album that did not receive quite the reception
they would have liked. That being said, they still had
to get out there and toward to support it. But
before we pick up on our tail from this point, first,
like always, I want to give credit to my sources,
which include Paul Wilkinson's Rat Salad, Black Sabbath e Classic
Years nineteen sixty nineteen nineteen seventy five, Dave Marsh and
(02:11):
Mike Stark's Black Sabbath and Oral History, Mick Wall's Black Sabbath,
Symptom of the Universe, Ozzy Osbourne's I Amazzi, and Tony
Iomi's Iron Man. My Journey through Heaven and Hell with
Black Sabbath in addition to articles by Eduardo Rivadavia, Chris Lord,
Joel Galston and Arren Starkly. A full list of these
and links to any additional websites that I use will
(02:33):
be listed on this podcast, Blue Sky and kofee pages. Plus,
for anyone who doesn't want to be bothered skipping through commercials,
there is always an ad free fade available to patreons
at patreon dot com slash distorted History. And with all
that being said, let's begin. While Sabotage wasn't selling quite
as well as they would have liked, the fact that
the matter was when it came to their live shows,
(02:53):
Black Sabbath was still a massive drawl as it continued
to perform in front of sold out crowds. Their chore
of Him America then was split in the three legs,
with a couple weeks rest scheduled in between each leg
to try and prevent the band from wearing out even
more than they already were. Then, after wrapping up their
tour of the stage, the band would return home to England,
where after a couple weeks off, they would launch into
(03:15):
a tour of Europe, which featured ten shows in the
UK in thirteen days before doing shows in Germany and Scandinavia,
and which point they would wrap up the year with
some one off shows in New York, Boston and Syracuse.
Now one notable aspect of the tour was the Bend
making use of a keyboardist live for the first time,
something which Tony Iomi insisted upon, even though everyone else
(03:35):
seemed to be against it. They just seemed to want
to keep Sabbath a four piece like they had always been,
with Ossi Reportley telling Iomi that they didn't need keyboards. Iomi, though,
was insistent, as he wanted to flash out the sections
where he stopped playing rhythm guitar, to play a solo,
and to just in general add some additional flavor to
their songs. Plus, as Iomi would point out, quote, we
(03:57):
were using more and more keyboards and orchestras on records,
and with a keyboard player we could reproduce some of
it on stage. So, over the objections of the others,
Gerald Jazz Woodruff was given the gig as he liked
the rest of the band was from Birmingham and at
least some of them were familiar with him and his skills. Meanwhile,
come the holidays, there might have been some hope that
Sabotage could have gone a boost in sales. The problem
(04:20):
was their former manager Patrick Meehan stabbed them in the
back once again as he released We Sold Our Souls
for Rock and Roll, a double album compilation of all
Black Sabbath's biggest hits and best songs off their first
five albums, something which he could do as again he
owned the rights to all those songs at this point. Now,
this wasn't a huge money making success for Mehan, as
(04:41):
the album would barely make it into the UK Top forty,
but the fact of the matter was it still potentially
damaged Sabotage's sales. Their former manager's antics assigned. Sabbath would
wrap up their Sabotage tour in January nineteen seventy six
at the Hammersmith Odeon in London, a show that had
actually been scheduled to take place a few months earlier
back in November as a part of their UK European tour. However,
(05:04):
the show had to be postponed when Ozzie, who was
both stoned and drunk at the time, crashed his motorcycle
and injured his back. Now his injuries were in extremely serious,
but they were enough to put the singer out of
commission for a week due to a combination of prescription
painkillers and morphine. Meanwhile, the band was coming to the
conclusion that they were in over their heads when it
came to acting as their own management. Miaomi in particular
(05:27):
was said to be desperate, as while they were mostly
free a Mehan, everything, especially their financials, were still incredibly
messed up due to his underhanded dealings, issues that the
band obviously could not handle on their own. So they
reached out to the infamous Don Arden, who had originally
offered to represent the band back in nineteen seventy, but
they had turned him down, a slight that Ardent typically
(05:49):
would not forgive. But Zabbath was still a huge band
at this point, so he was willing to make an exception. Now,
to understand the input of that last sentence, we should
talk about Don Arden for a bit. Don was himself,
at one point in time an entertainer in his own right,
having been a vaudeville style singer and comedian who eventually
went on to become a master's ceremonies type performer, one
(06:12):
who notably was not without some level of skill and
talent for his job. Yet, despite those skills and his ambition,
Don's chances of getting better opportunities in the world of
show business were limited, primarily because of his aggressive and
abrasive personality and of course, his short temper, which is
to say that Don Arden did not have the necessary
interpersonal skills to make the proper connections with the businessmen
(06:33):
who ran these shows to advance his own career. Somewhat confusingly, though,
those same undesirable character traits in a performer made him
an effective agent, which is a job he switched to
in nineteen fifty four, with the first major act that
Don took on being early rock and roll and rocketbilly
star gene Vincent. From there, Don also notably managed groups
like the Nashville Teens and the Small Faces, a group who,
(06:55):
rumor had it fellow agent Robert Stigwood, who eventually managed
the Begis, attempted to learn away from Don, which is
where we come to one of the stories that helped
to solidify Don Harden's reputation, because when Don learned that
Steigwood was trying to poach one of his top acts,
Arden showed up unannounced at Stigwood's offices with a pair
of goons in tow. Don then thrown to throw the
(07:17):
competing agent out of the window in his office, and
even reportedly dangled the other man at a said window
to make clear what would happen if Stegwood ever approached
any of his clients ever again. Now Arden will claim
that this was all just a bit of fearter. Indeed,
his thugs are just a pair of big muscular guys
that he hired for justice one instance, and that he
and they had carefully rehearsed the whole thing before going
(07:38):
over to Stegwood's offices. According to Don then quote, I
pretended to Goberzerk lived in the impresario bodily from his chair,
dragged him to the balcony and held him so he
was looking down to the pavement for forest below, at
which point Don tested the acting chops of his companions
as he inquired if he should drop Steakwood, a query
to which they said he should, just like they had rehearsed.
(08:00):
This encouragement, though, was, according to Arden, at least his
cue to dragstig Wood back inside, where he then quote
warned him never to interfere with my groups again. Yet,
regardless of whether this was a carefully choreographed show or
an example of Donald legitimately losing his cool and threatening
a fellow agent's life, this was just a part of
the legend of infamy surrounding Don Arden. For example, when
(08:22):
before I gig, John Hawkin, one of the members of
the Nashville Teens, went to pick up a check for
one hundred and twenty pounds from Don's offices, and he
instead received one for just twenty pounds. The keyboardist was
understandably quite upset. Hawkin then started amending the full one
hundred and twenty pounds that they were owed, at which point,
according to Hawkin, Arden left from his chair, grabbed the
young keyboardist by his throat, and slammed him against a
(08:44):
wall as he told him that quote, I have the
strength of ten men in these hands, A clear and
obvious threat if I've ever heard one. Arden then reportedly
started dragging the upstar musician over tortoise third story office window,
But before he could potentially follow through on the threat
that he had made this s take, Hawkin managed to escape. Meanwhile,
singer songwriter Lindsa d Paul not only would sue Arden
(09:05):
over money, but she would also say the manager quote,
it was a time in my life that I'll never
forget and I'll never forgive him. If anybody was near suicide,
and if ever I was, it was then because it
was awful. The thing with Arden, though, is that while
it seems pretty safe to say that he was a
bad guy, it's daily impossible to say just how bad
he actually was, as Don would actively take advantage of
(09:27):
rumors like the ones I claimed that he had been
appointed by the Mob to oversee their activities in London.
Arden would even have purposely perpetuate this myth by refusing
the comment on it, as from his perspective such a
reputation could be useful now. As for his actual managerial skills,
ardna reclaimed responsibility for the Animal's rise to international fame,
and he would also manage Elo or the Electric Light Orchestra,
(09:50):
who would also go on to become massively successful under
his guidance. Additionally, led Zeppelin's manager, the massive former wrestler
Peter Grant, had worked for Don Arden for a time,
likely learning more than a few lessons both in management
and in intimidation. During that period, which actually brings us
to another infamous Don Arden's story, as when Jimmy Page
(10:10):
was first looking to put together the group that would
become led Zeppelin and his search for a singer, he
considered Steve Burried of the small faces who seemed like
he might be right for the picking, considering that it
was fairly well known that Marriott and pretty much all
these small faces were unhappy with their manager, Don Arden.
The thing was, though, Arden was not about to just
let Marriott walk, so the self styled al Capono Pop
(10:32):
reportedly let Page know that unless he wanted to learn
how to play his guitar with broken fingers, he'd better
back off his client. You can begin to understand then,
why Arden might not have been too happy with the
fact that Black Sabbath had initially declined his offer of
managerial services, and also why he was when to let
that pass, considering that even with their recent setbacks and disappointments,
(10:53):
they were still one of the biggest bands in the world.
To then end upon taking over responsibility for Sabbath, according
to Arden, my number one priority was to get them
some money that meant go into the record company in Vertigo.
In the UK Warner Brothers in America and making them
understand that the band were still viable and now in
good hands, something which everyone involved kind of needed at
(11:14):
this point, as the band needed money with their financial
situation still very much in tatters thanks to Meehan and
his crooked practices, and the labels likely could have used
some assurances about Sabbath since they hadn't been quite as
successful lately, and this also worked for Don because he
has their manager. Of course, got a cut of this deal. Indeed,
according to Arden, quote I got a nice big advance
(11:36):
from them and used to put the band back in
the studio to make another album, which again was the
primary way other than touring, that the band was going
to make money thanks to Mehan currently owning their entire
back catalog, which is exactly why Don wanted them to
quote stop worrying about the money and start thinking about
music again. In an attempt to do just that, they
(11:56):
set off to Miami to get to work on their
next album at Criteria Studio, a location that Bill mord
would know was becoming a bit of a popular studio
at the time as it was used by the lacks
of the Beeje's Fleetwood, Mac and the Eagles. In fact,
according to Iomi quote, the Eagles were recording Hotel California.
Why we were there. They sometimes had to stop because
of us, because we were too loud and it was
(12:18):
leaking through into their studio. All in all, according to Bill,
criteria fit what they were looking for, both in terms
of technological advancements in their equipment and because the location
offered the band the opportunity to live an acquired environment
for a time. As Ward would state that quote, we
were always looking for a place of refuge. In general,
all of us had the idea that if we move
somewhere that's comfortable, we'd write better or we'd play better. Miami,
(12:42):
they felt, offered a similar kind of relaxed, sunny environment
as La did, without the established scene of various people
just wanted to come and hang out with the band
twenty four to seven to get it taste of the
rockstar lifestyle. Meanwhile, they moved to Miami was also a
part of Don Arden's plan to avoid paying British taxes. Now,
as for the direction that this new album was going
to take, after Sabotage had become more of a straight
(13:03):
ahead rock record due to their anger and frustration over
their legal issues, Tonaomi was once again fully into the
idea of creating more elaborate compositions, a choice had made
more sense several years earlier when they were in the
midst of other major bands doing elaborate concept albums. Doing
it now, though, was very much ignoring the latest trend
in the music scene, which was the rise of punk.
(13:24):
Rock pass nineteen seventy six, so the first waiver releases
from groups like These Six Pistols and The Damned, which
was then followed up in nineteen seventy seven with groups
like The Clash, The Stranglers and The Gem in addition
New Catalysts others who followed in their wig. The most
important thing about punk though, was it, or wasn't just
your typical musical trend that was popular one minute and
gone the next, and wasn't just an advancement over something
(13:47):
that came before it or something that was just new
and unique instead and was an active rebellion against the
established bands that had come before them, who they saw
as becoming self indulgent and pretentious. Punk then presented a
bit of a sea change, which meant that Iomian by
extension Sabbath were at this point chasing after a sound
and a scene that had to some degree already gone
(14:08):
out of style. Meanwhile, during this time, there were also
new and upcoming hard rock bands like kiss Ac DC
and Van Halen that win placed up against this era
of Sabbath simply felt more vital and exciting, which all
meant that while Sabbath had always just kind of been
out of step with the rest of the music world,
they no longer felt like weird outliers who were doing
(14:28):
their own thing. Instead, they were starting to feel like
a band that was stuck in the past and out
of touch. Ozzie in particular seemed to be bothered by
this new direction, as he claimed that quote Tony was
always saying, we gotta sound like Farder or we've gotta
sound like Queen. But I thought it was strange that
the band's We'd Want's influence were now influencing us. The
thing was, as Ozzie himself would admit, he couldn't really
(14:51):
say much because quote, I lost a plot with the
booze and the drugs, and I was saying a lot
of bad things, making trouble being a dickhead. Although he
of course, wasn't alone in his drug use, as he
stole very much continued to have coat dealers on call
who were just waiting to supply them with more. But
Ozzie seems to have been in the worst state of
them all. Regardless, his work started on what would become
(15:13):
Technical Ecstasy and very much seemed to be a follow
up to Sabbath Buddy Sabbath, meaning that Iomi intended to
go any more polished and more experimental direction much like
that previous album, which meant that's what the album was
going to be, not only because Tony was the de
facto leader of the group, but also because the others
barely ever showed up in the studio. That being said,
(15:34):
Tony was not necessarily all alone from the running process,
as hired keyboardist Gerald Woodruff, unlike the rest of the band,
actually showed up at the studio, giving Iomi someone to
bounce ideas off of, while the rest of the guys
just kind of at this point expected Iomi to come
up with something because he always did. This, of course,
was both incredibly frustrating and stressful for Iomi because he
(15:55):
knew if he didn't come up with something, then nothing
was going to get done, which in the end, men
it took something like six weeks to run and rehearse
the album before they were ready to start recording it.
This old process was so long and drawn out, though,
that they actually ran out of money and when they
were only halfway through recording the album, a turn of
events that Ozzie found to be particularly vexing, as quote,
(16:16):
by now, our albums were getting ridiculously expensive to make.
We'd recorded Black Sabbath in one day. Sabotage took about
four thousand years. Technical Ecstasy didn't take quite as long,
but the cost of doing it in Florida was astronomical.
Now you would think this is the point where their
new management would step in. Yet, for as excited as
Don was to sign Sabbath, the fact of the matter
(16:39):
was they weren't the same band he had initially tried
to acquire years earlier. They were no longer this exciting
new act on an upper trajectory and stanned. Their sales were,
if anything, on the decline, while at the same time,
another of Arden's clients, Elo, were most definitely on the rise. Indeed,
nineteen seventy five's face the music had reached the top
ten in the US, something that's Sabbath then achieved in
(17:01):
a while. Now Arden then was seemingly much more focused
on this new Golden Goose and their worldwide hit singles
than they clearly in decline and arguably out of touch
Black Sabbath, which is all to say that when the
members of Sabbath attempted to get into contact with Don
to get some more money to finish off their album,
he was nowhere to be found. This then left the
group and the lurge until Warner Brothers stepped up and
(17:23):
advanced a band some additional funds. Yet while this would
allow them to finish off their latest project, the problem
was the band had once been so unique that a
whole new genre would form in response to their music,
were seemingly not that group anymore. Sure it was for
now these same four guys, but they had, whether purposely
or not, started sounding more and more like the other
(17:45):
bands on the radio, which was especially a questionable choice
given that at least part of the public were now
actively rejecting that radio friendly sound in general. Granted, there
would be bands in the years to come that would
find success with a soft rock, more radio friendly tone,
but the thing was they weren't groups that had started
from a much different place only to end up making
that style of radio friendly music. For Sabbath, then to
(18:08):
end up in that place felt kind of unnatural. They
felt more like a band in the midst of an
identity crisis than a truly inspired group of musicians treading
new ground. Now, some people do really seem to like
technical ecstasy, but it does feel to me like a
band who really isn't sure of who they are at
this point. For example, it's all right featuring drummer Bill
Ward on vocals as a Beatles vibe to it, while
(18:30):
on other points on the album they sound like they're
trying to be the rolling Stones of their who instead
of just trying to be Black Sabbath, a sentiment than
Ozzy definitely seemed to feel extended to even their album's artwork.
As he would state quote, it was more that we
didn't seem to know who we were anymore. One minute
you had an album cover like Sabbath Buddy Sabbath with
a blow of being attacked by demons on it, and
(18:52):
the next you had two robots having sex while they're
going up a fucking escalator, which was the artwork for
Technical Ecstasy, a statement that might sound not sensical, but
it is apparently what the team and Hypnosis, the design
studio responsible for Pink Food and many other band's iconic artwork,
was actually going for. Basically, they just heard the album
titled Tanacal Ecstasy and instantly thought of robot sex, and
(19:14):
this is what came out of it. As for the
album itself, I have to say that I make a
point of listening to all these albums over and over
again when working on these kinds of episodes, as I
want to give them a fair shake and have some
kind of thoughts to interject here and there. However, when
it comes to the two albums that make up this episode,
I had a much more difficult time wanting to do that,
(19:35):
which I think says quite a bit about these albums. Now.
I think a big part of my issue with these
songs comes down to the simple fact and that doesn't
really feel like Black Sabbath, or at least it doesn't
really have any of the things that I really look
for in a Sabbath record, Which isn't to say that
there aren't interesting moments here and there, but it just
seems that more often than not, those interesting bits are
(19:56):
sandwich in between, just really generic sounding parts that could
have come from any a number of other bands from
this era. It just really feels like a band that's
both kind of burnt out and lacking in direction, which
I think is something you gain even without knowing the background.
Because when I was initially thinking about doing this series,
I did listen through this stretch of albums and was
pleasantly surprised to see how long the quality lasted, and
(20:19):
how even when they were obviously trying new things, they
were still producing some really cool songs. Then I hit
these last two albums and it was like, oh yeah,
here's where they seem to lose the plot a bit. Indeed,
it seems like many actually got the impression even at
the time, because when Tancnical Ecstasy was released in September
in eighteen seventy six, it topped o at just thirteen
(20:40):
in the UK before vanishing from the charts in just
six weeks, while in the US it would not even
crack the top fifty on the Billboard charts. For Tony
Iomi in particular, who was so responsible for this album's creation,
this was a major blow. Yet the combination of his
ego and the epic amount of cocaine was consuming would
not let the guitarists reflect and take the blame. Instead,
(21:03):
he looked elsewhere, blaming the record companies for not promoting
the album properly, the radio stations for not giving Sabbath
a fair chance, and the music press would always seem
to have it out for them. Now, the one good
thing about this response was that Iomi wasn't just going
to take this lying down. He was determined to press
on and prove every one of his critics wrong. The
guitarists then became obsessed with trying to write the ship
(21:25):
and save the careers in doing so, though, since he
couldn't really reflect on his own shortcomings in that moment,
he needed someone within the band of blame. And for Tony,
the one glaring issue with Black Sabbath had always kind
of been Azsy. He had never really taken the weird
kid he had gone to school with seriously. Ozzie had
always been a bit of a joke to Tony, but
(21:45):
he became a kind of necessary evil that the guitarist
could tolerate and put up with due to the band's
overall success. Now though, in addition to everything else, Ozzy
was increasingly just a liability. Indeed, Ozzie's drinking and drugging
had gotten to the point that he was semi regularly
setting himself on fire due to passing out with a
lit cigarette, and even when that didn't happen, he Rudy
(22:08):
would typically have to physically carry the singer from wherever
he passed out from whatever combination of substances he had
consumed that night up to his room. Ozzie then became,
in Iomi's mind, just another one of these sources of
the band's recent failings. For Iomi, Ozzi just seemed to
be much more of a disaster than the rest of them. Granted,
Bill Ward, who often ran with Ozzie, had just as
(22:30):
many issues with drugs and drinking. The thing with more, though,
was when he came to the stage and in the studio,
he just typically seemed to be much more reliable at
this point. Now, with all that being said, the song
It's All Right wasn't some part of a plan for
life without Ozzy, and staid it was just something that
Bill had written, never really intending it to be a
black Seba song, as he felt it didn't really fit
(22:51):
the group's typical vibe. Indeed, it seems that he'd just
kind of sat on it for several years as he
was too shy to share it with them. Yet when
he finally did, they all liked it, and it seems
that it might have been Tony who pushed to have
it included on the album, with the guitarist don't in
that quote, we encouraged him to put it on because
we thought it was a good song, and Ozzie liked
it as well. In fact, Ozzie felt that Bill's voice
(23:12):
was a perfect fit for the song, as you would
note in his autobiography quote, He's got a great voice, Bill,
and I was more than happy for him to do
the honors. So it very much wasn't a situation of
testany waters to see how people would react to someone
other than Ozzy singing on a Black Sabbath record. The
thing was, though, while it's all right and very much
seemed to be Ozzy and the others being supportive of Bill,
(23:35):
the fact remains that by this point, according to Ozzie himself, quote,
I started to lose interest and I kept thinking about
what it would be like to have a solo career.
I'd even had a T shirt made with Blizzard of
Oz written on the front. While it might seem unfair
(24:06):
for Iomi to specifically target Ozzie for being a problem
due to his drunk abuse when all of them were
imbibing frankly ludicrous amounts of various drugs and alcohol, even
Ozzie himself would have meant that quote. My boozing was
so bad during the technical ecstasy sessions in Florida, I
checked myself between looney bin called Saint George's when I
got back home. Although this didn't really seem to hell
(24:27):
matters as apparently Saint George's wasn't the most forward thinking institution.
As per Ozzie quote, it was a big old Victorian place,
dark and digitally, they said, of a science fiction movie.
The first thing the doctors said to me when I
went in there was do you masturbate? Mister Osbourne. I
told him, I'm in here for my head, not my dick.
I didn't last long in that place. Meanwhile, it certainly
(24:49):
didn't hell matters. That seemedly everything else and the singer's
life was falling apart. His father was in the hospital
dying of cancer, his marriage to Thelma was falling apart
as she grew tired of his drunken, abusive pantics, and
now his lone refuge, Black Sabbath wasn't really all that
much fun anymore either. Now, Ossie's solution all these mounting
issues was seemingly just to drink even more and do
(25:10):
more drugs, with Ozzie later noting that he pretty much
did anything and everything that was available outside of heroin,
mainly because it had the same effect as booze and downs,
So after trying it just a time or two, he
just really didn't see the point and effectively saved himself
from that particularly dangerous addiction. As for Black Sabbath, quote
I'd had enough. There didn't seem to be any point anymore.
(25:33):
None of us were getting on. We were spending more
time in meetings with lawyers than we were writing songs.
We were all exhausted from touring the world pretty much
NonStop for six years, and we were out of our
minds on booze and drugs. Yet, while Ossi increasingly seemed
to see the writing on the wall, the others were
trying to press on as they gathered in Rockfield Studios,
near Monmouth, where they were supposed to be writing and
(25:55):
rehearsing new material before heading off to Toronto to record
it for their next album, with Toronto being another location
partially chosen in an effort to avoid a tax bill.
The thing was, well, they already had a title for
this album, Never Say Die, which was a reference to
them being at this for ten years. They didn't really
have much any way of music to go along with
that title, as Tony was once again having a bit
(26:18):
of a difficult time of it. Some of this was
due to the fact that even he was starting to
realize that Sabbath might have lost something along the way,
as upon returning to England following the Technical Ecstasy tour,
he really encountered punk, which quote just sounded so fresh
to me and it sort of reminded me of how
we used to be. I just thought, well, we've lost
it now, just lost all that anger and energy. And
(26:41):
it was hard because we'd solved millions of albums, we'd
been through these horrific management fights. The whole double whammy
of punkin Mihan just left a big dent in us.
Yet Foraomi when made all of this, and in particular
his own inability to come up with something for this
new album. Even more frustrating was the fact that the
one member of the band that he could usually on
to help him carry the load, Geezer Butler, wasn't having
(27:03):
any more luck than Tony was. So it seems that
the increasingly desperate guitarist decided that the answer to his
in eat band's problems was to fire a Butler. Indeed,
according to Geezer, they're just see to be at the time,
quote an error around the band that somebody had to
go first. It was me. They all had a meeting.
Then Bill came over to my house and said I
was fired. There was no reason. It was just that
(27:24):
I was out of the band. Everyone else thought that
I wasn't into it and then I should just go.
So I was a bit pissed off, but you know,
I didn't want to argue about it, and I wasn't
really that bothered, to be honest, I'd lost interest by then.
This firing, though, lasted for about a month before Geezer
got a call from Bill Ward asking if he would
meet up with them, a meaning that one result in
(27:46):
the others asking if he wanted to come back and
for Geezer quote, I wasn't doing anything else, so I said,
all right. The thing was for a temporary as his
firing was, it still had a lasting effect on the
band as it was now the sense of uneasy said
at any point any one of them other than presumably
Tony could be fired for no real good reason. Then,
(28:06):
on top of that, they got the news that they
were being sam with a massive million dollar tax bill
from the US. As it seems that, in addition to
everything else he'd done, Patrick Meehannon never actually paid taxes,
despite telling the band explicitly not to worry about it
because he was on it. Now, for Ozzy, this was it.
This was a proverbial mass straw, with all the lawyers,
(28:27):
the bills stress quote, there was no pun in being
in a rock and roll band just to worry about
money and ritz all the time. So Monday just walked
out of a rehearsal and didn't come back, a move
that for Tony was also kind of the final straw
for him as well when he came to Ozzy as again,
in his mind, Osbourne was the least important member of
the band and as such he had no right to
(28:48):
just run off like that, so he decided that the
time had come to replace Ozzy, a move that Bill
and Geezer were far less sure about, with Geezer stating
the quote, you didn't just go out to the shop
and buy another one. I Owei, though, was insistent, at
least partially because he had an album to write and
a studio already booked, a studio whose time they notably
(29:08):
had paid up front four, meaning they couldn't just wait
around for Ozzie to maybe decide to come back. They
needed to get to work, and thus they needed a singer. Now.
Maybe Tony wanted a singer who was different than Ozzy
in every way possible, or maybe he was just desperate
to get to work and just caught up someone they knew.
Either way, he ended up breaching out to another musician
who liked them had grown up in Birmingham, David Walker. Indeed,
(29:32):
both Tony and Bill had known Walker for years at
this point. Plus Walker had a bit of a career
of his own, having been the singer for the English
blues rock band Savoy Brown, as was he briefed in
with Fleetwood Mac. Yet, while he was an experienced singer
with some level of success, the fact of the matter
was Walker was nothing like Ozzie. He had a more rough,
bluesy style and naturally sang in a lower register, which
(29:54):
meant he couldn't really hit the notes that Ozzie typically did. Yet,
despite this, Sabbath and Walker started getting to work and
wrote a handful of songs together. Meanwhile, were got out
to the press that Black Sabbath at a new singer,
and they even did a performance on the BBC TV
show Look Here, a copy of which has recently been
rediscovered and posted on YouTube. It's see weird little time
capsule as you see a very unique version of Black Sabbath,
(30:17):
as they just had this totally different vibe to them.
They simply don't feel like spooky mental pioneers Black Sabbath,
but instead just more of your standard heavy blues rock band,
granted an extremely capable one, but still Walker makes him
feel like a completely different band than what you were expecting. Now.
Iomi was apparently kind of fine with this, if for
no other reason than unlike the rest of the band,
(30:39):
Walker actually showed up and helped him work on ideas
for songs. That being said, the others apparently weren't quite
as welcoming with Geezer in particular being quite stand offish
and at least in part because he, unlike the others,
had never met Walker before, because this was just a
weird and awkward situation. Meanwhile, as the rest of the
band were working on new music, which David Walker was
(30:59):
writing lyric for, Ozzie would give an interview to Tony
Stewart of NM. In this interview, Osbourne would declare that
if he hadn't quit the band, he Shirley would have
been dead in a couple of years. So while he
would admit that he felt bad for the fans because quote,
it's never going to be the same again for the
people who like Sabbath, then the fact of the matter was,
from his perspective, he really had no choice but to leave. Additionally,
(31:22):
Ozzy seemed to suggest that Sabbath had lost something over
the years, as he simultaneously stated that he didn't like
Tannacal Ecstasy and that in the old days, Sabbath had
been more like the new punk bands and that they
had been a people's band, a statement would suggest that
they weren't that anymore. It was also around this time
that Ozzie's father passed away on what also happened to
(31:43):
be Ozzie's daughter's birthday, a coincidence that did not do
the troubled singer any favors. Amidst this smial, though, Ozzie
would have second thoughts about leaving Sabbath and start thinking
about giving the band another go, or, to be more precise,
he just really didn't know what he wanted to do
so and was also running out of money, so the
troubled singer would reach out and see if he might
(32:05):
be able to come back. Now, whether not the band
or more precisely, Tonaomi would have taken Ozzie back at
least so quickly, is unknown, because it seems, as much
as anything else, don Arden really forced the issue, as
from his perspective, it was not even a question because
record companies and concert promoters were willing to hand over
significantly larger wants of cash. If Ozzie was finding the band,
(32:27):
and if David Walker was with Arden, Colling Walker ain't nobody.
Now from Ozzie's recollections, there apparently wasn't a ton of
communication between the two sides, and most it seems like
maybe Word acted as a peacemaker of swords over the phone,
but otherwise there were seemingly no actual discussions concerning his
leaving and coming back. As a result, nothing was really
(32:48):
done to get to the heart of their issues. Instead, quote,
it was obvious things that changed, especially between me and Tony.
I don't think anyone's heart was in what we were
doing anymore. For example, Oz recause an argument he had
with Iomi when he happened to mention having the idea
of doing a solo project, the mention of which seemed
to really annoy the guitarist, who insisted that if Ozzy
(33:09):
had written any songs, he should be bringing them to
the band. He was a part of, a statement likely
fed by Tony's frustrations of feeling like the others just
basically left him to come up with entire albums, while
from Ozzi's perspective, whenever he had brought in ideas previously,
he felt they had just been ridiculed by the others,
and so he didn't feel comfortable doing so. Basically, it
feels like Iomi wanted a situation where he wasn't so
(33:31):
much the soul writer in the band, but kind of
the editor, the guy with the final say and the
guy who had the ability to tweaker even decline ideas.
In doing so, though, he created a situation where the
others were uncomfortable bringing in ideas, thus making it so
Tony was effectively the sole voice in the band as
all the others looked to him to write the music.
A set of them made Tony feel resentful in having
(33:52):
this burden of being the lone creative voice in the band,
while the others were quietly resentful of him for being
the lone creative voice in the band. For his part,
even Ozzi would later admit that they were all kind
of at fault and it was wrong to just more
or less expect Tony to come up with everything on
his own, with the singer later stating that quote what
happened was eventually we were writing the music for the
(34:12):
wrong reasons. We were retired, the drugs and alcohol were
taking their toll, and is true to say that the
things they later said about Tony were somewhat unjustified because
we were all fucked up and expecting him to pull
us out of the shit for which he would spend
days in the studio, and he was out of his
box anyway while we left it upon his shoulders to
make us a good record, and if it wasn't good
and we didn't like it, we condemned him forward secretly
(34:35):
in our heads. This creative pressure was especially high at
this point in time, as Ozzie had returned just days
before they were scheduled to leave for Toronto, which was
especially a problem because not only did they have just
a handful of songs written at this point, but Ozzi
would declare that he did not want to work on
any songs that had been written for his replacement, thus
forcing the band to come up with all new material.
(34:56):
So upon arriving in Toronto, the band got to work writing, rehearsing,
and reworking songs in an old movie theater where the
heat wasn't working, which was kind of a problem considering
they were in Canada in January. There was nothing they
could do, though, so they'd just bottom up and worked
from nine in the morning until dinner, during which time
no one ever really talked to one another, with Geezer
noting how quote there was horrible vibes in the band.
(35:19):
By then. Ozzie was really only there because he didn't
have anything else to do. None of us really liked
the songs that we were doing, but we couldn't come
up with anything better, and we just sort of did
it and put the album out for the sake of
putting it out. Friomi, the main problem with Never Say
Die was due to all the disruptions, namely Ozzie leaving
and then coming back, they really hadn't had time to
(35:39):
grab the songs that they were used to doing. Stating
that quote, up to that point, we'd write something and
then live with it for a bit. Given these songs
time to grow, do we like it, Let's change this bit,
or let's change that. In Toronto, we never had that luxury.
That's why to me, Never Say Die is very much
off the wall. There are some tracks I like on it,
but it's hard to relate to that album because of
(36:01):
the way it was done. It was a bitter time
for us. Again, though they didn't really have a choice,
as they already had time booked at the Sound Interchange
studios in Toronto, and they were most certainly not any
position to flush all that cash down the toilet. They
needed to get into the studio and make use of
that time that they had already paid for to record something. Yet,
when they got to the studio and question They quickly
(36:23):
realized that quote, the sound was dead as a door knill. Now,
this was a mistake that Naomi would take full blame for,
as he more or less just picked the studio because
he'd heard the Rolling Stones had recently recorded there. However,
upon actually getting into the studio, he realized that maybe
he should have done some more research and asked some
more questions because the sound was so bad. They actually
(36:43):
tried rolling up the carpets to see if that helped
to bring some warm life into the space, but even
that didn't make much of a difference, which was just
another problem thrown on top of all the other issues
going on within the band. At that point, things and
obviously weren't going well, and when Ozzie got wor that
his wife Thelma had a miscarriage, the band all packed
up and headed home. Now, you might think, given this
(37:06):
kind of tragedy in this time to reflect, there might
have been an opportunity for reconciliation, But when they all
eventually came back together to finish work on the album,
nothing had changed. There was no real communication between the
various members of Black Sabbath. Basically, it was a situation
where they weren't arguing with one another, mainly because they
just weren't talking. Things all would apparently come to a
(37:27):
head when the group turned their attention to break out
a song in which they planned to bring a jazz
band into accompany them. Now, this was apparently bill Ward's idea,
as he said he could hear the brass parts in
his head and to him, it's what the song needed
and was calling out for Ozzy, though SymPy could not
get behind this plan. For him, it was just too
far removed from what Black Sabbath had been and so
(37:48):
he wanted no part of it, which, according to Ozzy,
is the reason why he won sing on the song
that followed it, Swinging the Chain. Why Omi remembers things differently,
as he claims that Ozzie refused to sing on Swinging
the Chain because it was a track they had written
for Dave Walker. The thing was they needed one more
song to round out the album and they had nothing else,
so with Ozzie bailing, it then fell to Bill Ward,
(38:09):
who had proven himself a capable singer on their last album,
to provide the vocals for the song. As Resona was
bill Ward and not Ozzie, who would provide the vocals
on the final track of the last album that would
feature Ozzy Osbourne for decades. In the end, then it
doesn't seem like any member of Black Sabbath really likes
Never Say Die. With Geezer putting it bluntly, quote it
(38:30):
was horrible. I hated that album. I hate that album
so much, even to this day. I can't stand the
bloody thing because it's just so false and fake. Yet
despite this, the album's title track, in Defines of the
band's Feelings, became a surprising success, as it proved to
be Sabbath's first hit single in England in eight years. This, however,
would not be enough to save the band's original iconic lineup,
(38:52):
as soon Ozzie would be gone for good and the
group will look to move on with a new singer.
That particular part of our tail, however, will have to
for now remain a story for another time. Thank you
for listening to Distorted History. If you would like to
help out, please rate and review the podcasts and tell
(39:13):
your friends if you think they'll be interested. If you
would like ad free in early episodes, I set up
such a feed over at Patreon, dot com slash distorted history.
By paying ten bucks a month, you will gain access
to the special ad free feed available on Spotify or
likely through your podcast app as long as it uses
an RSS feed. I will continue to post sources on
koffee and Twitter though, as it's just a convenient place
(39:35):
to go to access that information regardless. Once again, thank
you for listening and until next time, Vla
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