“Unplayable”: The 1983 Black Sabbath album that wasn’t good enough for America
Ever since the mop-topped Beatles first traversed the Atlantic Ocean back in 1964, the idea of ‘breaking America’ has been high up on the list of elusive accolades coveted by bands across the entirety of the rock and roll spectrum. Yet, it wasn’t always an easy task, and even a band as trailblazing as Black Sabbath struggled to command the US airwaves at times.
While at various points over the course of music history, the United States could certainly be accused of being behind the times, rock audiences were pretty on the pulse during the late 1960s. That fact is denoted by the fact that Black Sabbath’s hard rock-defining debut album managed to make enough of an impact in America to reach number 23 on the album charts, proving that there was clearly an appetite for their sound that stretched beyond the niche audiences of early hard rock appreciators.
Nevertheless, as Black Sabbath progressed, and the entire landscape of metal evolved, America’s relationship with the scene experienced a variety of peaks and troughs, particularly when the 1980s rolled around. As the ‘Satanic Panic’ made its way into the PTAs and noticeboards of America’s suburban middle-classes, metal suddenly found itself with quite a lot of detractors.
What’s more, Black Sabbath themselves were in a strange position during the early 1980s, having lost – or, rather, sacked – their legendary frontman Ozzy Osbourne in 1979, the group struggled to adapt to this new era. Born Again, released in 1983, was the product of this strange, transitional age, and despite having something of a cult following, the airwaves of America weren’t overly kind to it upon its release.
Admittedly, the album was already fighting an uphill battle, being the only one of Sabbath’s albums to feature Ian Gillan on vocals, and while the Deep Purple frontman certainly brought an interesting angle to the record, the band were still struggling to truly replicate the enigmatic energy of Ozzy. Even the vocalist himself, during a 2022 chat with RockFM, compared the album to the farcical nature of This Is Spinal Tap.
Namely, he said that the comedy film had more than a few references to Sabbath within it, “I don’t know where these might have come from, but one of them was, ‘This album is unplayable on American radio’, because of the bass end,” he shared. As it turned out, Born Again was, more or less, poison to mainstream radio in America.
“And so it was. Unplayable,” he declared.
Despite this, Gillan claimed that when he left the final studio sessions, the album sounded “fantastic” and far better than the final product ended up being. “I was disappointed in the final production mix,” he admitted. “I don’t know what happened between the studio and the factory. But something happened, so that was a disappointment.” Nevertheless, he cited the album’s opener, ‘Trashed’ as “one of my favourite rock ‘n’ roll songs of all time.”
Regardless of Gillan’s appreciation for that single, though, it did little to endear itself towards the musical mainstream of America. It might have got to 39 in the US album charts, but it did so largely off the back of Sabbath’s pre-existing hardcore audience.
As far as mainstream consumption was concerned, Born Again died a sorry death.
