The Black Sabbath song Ozzy Osbourne refused to sing: “Bill Ward had to sing”
It’s hard to think of anything that was off the table when it came to Black Sabbath’s lyrics.
Let’s face it: there’s a good chance that Ozzy Osbourne could have been singing about what he had for breakfast the morning he recorded his vocals, and it would have still sounded terrifying back in the early 1970s.
As Sabbath was nearing the end of their run with ‘The Prince of Darkness’, one song taken from Never Say Die was not something that Osbourne felt comfortable singing. Considering it is the same man who bit the head clean off a live bat, it is quite surprising that there were some words he just didn’t want coming out of his mouth.
One of the most unique singers in the game, Osbourne had a penchant for languishing in the sublime sourness of the band’s lyrics. Then again, Osbourne kind of already had a certain vocal style from the moment that he started.
Since metal hadn’t been invented yet by the time that Sabbath got the ball rolling, Osbourne always maintained that he was a great blues singer in the early days, showing his songs about needing help from God (or Satan, if he was feeling feisty) from the harsh realities of the world.
While it had briefly worked back in the early 1970s, things started coming off the rails directly after the recording of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Being deep in debt to their managers and spending the lion’s share of their days in court, Osbourne was already starting to wonder whether he should leave at some point when working on the album Technical Ecstasy.
If that album was Osbourne halfway out the door, by the time of Never Say Die, he was out the door at a bar across the street. Having already quit Sabbath a handful of times before making the record, half of the album consisted of songs that were either table scraps or the odd original idea that resulted in something interesting, like the title track.
There are even a handful of cuts that feel like they’re tailor-made for the eventual Osbourne solo career, like ‘Johnny Blade’, where he sounds closer to the signature vocal tone that he always uses these days. As the sessions wound down, though, Osbourne was not willing to show up for work by the time they had started on ‘Swinging the Chain’.
Since the group were already used to using weird sounds on their records, Osbourne thought his time would be better spent anywhere but with his bandmates. Tony Iommi recalled, “Bill Ward had to sing on ‘Swinging The Chain’ because Ozzy refused to sing it. We ended up having to write in the day so we could record in the evening, and we never had time to review the tracks and make changes. As a result, the album sounds very confused.”
That wasn’t the only time Osbourne called out for work during the session. Not willing to put any vocals on ‘Breakout’, the song would remain instrumental, letting most of the horn parts do the talking instead of Osbourne. By the time that all their commitments had been met, Osbourne would be sent packing, ultimately being replaced with Ronnie James Dio.
Despite Osbourne’s fine recovery in his solo career, Ward does do a serviceable job in the lead singer role, belting it out in a far weaker register but with the same kind of conviction you would expect out of other mild-mannered rock singers from the time. Fans may have been excited once the record hit shelves, but by that point, any chance of getting the original Sabbath together again was never going to happen.
