The Black Sabbath album Ozzy Osbourne wants to delete from history: “Just very depressing for me”
Black Sabbath‘s status as rock pioneers is impossible to diminish. If The Beatles are taken out of the equation, it’s a fair observation to label Sabbath as the most important musical act Britain has ever produced. That said, even they had complications along the way, and not everything was plain sailing for the innovative rockers.
Led by the charismatic Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath were at the forefront of ushering in a brand-new sound, heavier than anything that came before. On the surface, they were four ordinary gentlemen from Birmingham, but on their self-titled debut album in 1970, Sabbath tore up the rulebook and made everybody take notice.
For the next few years, the band continued their meteoric rise and became more experienced in the studio, allowing them to enhance their sound. They took their unique brand of heavy metal around the world and enjoyed the debauched journey that came with the success. Sadly, nothing good lasts forever, and by the late 1970s, the Sabbath’s sparkle had started to diminish. Unfortunately, one album from that era is an immense source of shame for Osbourne and reminds him of a difficult chapter in his life.
In late 1977, tensions between Black Sabbath members had become insurmountable. Eventually, the situation boiled over while Sabbath rehearsed ahead of making their next record. It all got too much for Osbourne, who dramatically walked out on the band shortly before they were set to enter the studio to work on their eighth album.
Although the situation was already disastrous before Osbourne quit, the group was left in an unwanted crisis as they sought a new singer. Guitarist Tony Iommi promptly called vocalist Dave Walker, a longtime friend of the band, and told him about Osbourne’s abrupt departure. Walker, at the time, was the lead singer in a group called Mistress, but an opportunity to star in Black Sabbath was irresistible. As soon as he spoke with Iommi, he booked himself on the next flight from California to Birmingham and began to rehearse with Black Sabbath.
However, the new vocalist’s tenure in the group proved to be short, to say the least. Walker only made one live appearance with the group on January 8th, 1978, when Black Sabbath played an early version of ‘Junior’s Eyes’ on the BBC Television programme Look! Hear. Walker would later recall that while on a boozy pub session in Birmingham, he bumped into his predecessor, Osbourne. The conversation made him believe that perhaps the former frontman of Black Sabbath wasn’t quite as finished with the group as Walker initially thought when he made the journey from California.
During Walker’s time as Black Sabbath frontman, Walker tried to write many lyrics, but none of his material was ever used. The other members of the heavy rock pioneers routinely knocked back his attempts, almost as if they were waiting for Ozzy to return with his tail between his legs, which eventually occurred.
“The last Sabbath albums were just very depressing for me,” Osbourne later said, recalling how his passion for making music with the group had vanished during this period of creative nullness. “I was doing it for the sake of what we could get out of the record company, just to get fat on beer and put a record out.”
When leaving the rock icons, Osbourne initially set out to form a solo project featuring former Dirty Tricks members John Frazer-Binnie, Terry Horbury and Andy Bierne. They had a series of rehearsals in January 1978, but shortly after seeing his old bandmates on TV without him, Osbourne suffered a change of heart and wanted to return to Black Sabbath.
“Three days before we were due to go into the studio, Ozzy wanted to come back to the band,” Iommi later explained. “He wouldn’t sing any of the stuff we’d written with the other guy (Walker), so it made it very difficult. We went into the studio with basically no songs. We’d write in the morning so we could rehearse and record at night. It was so difficult, like a conveyor belt, because you couldn’t get time to reflect on stuff. ‘Is this right? Is this working properly?’ It was very difficult for me to come up with the ideas and putting them together that quick.”
With Ozzy back in the band, they set sail to Toronto and spent five months at Sounds Interchange Studios, creating 1978’s Never Say Die. The album does not sound like a band working as a cohesive unit, and the fact that it took such a significant amount of time to complete provides some indication of the struggle they were going through.
“It took quite a long time,” Iommi said before adding. “We were getting really drugged out, doing a lot of dope. We’d go down to the sessions and have to pack up because we were too stoned, we’d have to stop. Nobody could get anything right, we were all over the place, everybody’s playing a different thing. We’d go back and sleep it off, and try again the next day.”
Osbourne detested the record; if it were up to him, it would never have seen the light of day. However, it wasn’t Osbourne’s decision to make. After spending five months blowing money like it was going out of business at a state-of-the-art recording studio and expensive drug habits, Black Sabbath had no choice but to release what they could scrape together from the sessions. On one occasion, Ozzy even called the LP “the worst piece of work that I’ve ever had anything to do with. I’m ashamed of that album. I think it’s disgusting.”
Additionally, in his memoir I Am Ozzy, Osbourne remarked of Never Say Die: “No one really talked about what had happened. I just turned up in the studio one day – I think Bill had been trying to act as peacemaker on the phone – and that was the end of it. But it was obvious things had changed, especially between me and Tony. I don’t think anyone’s heart was in it anymore.”
Furthermore, during a conversation with Kory Grow, Osbourne said of the band’s collective mental state, “We were just a fucking bunch of guys drowning in the fucking ocean. We weren’t getting along with each other and we were all fucked-up with drugs and alcohol.”
The singer was fired from the group the following year, a decision that was necessary for every individual concerned. For the sake of preserving Black Sabbath’s future, they needed a clean slate with a new vocalist at the helm. Thankfully, he’d eventually return to the fold decades later and make up for lost time, although Never Say Die remains a painful reminder of the breakdown of a once formidable relationship.
