The one Black Sabbath song Ozzy Osbourne refused to sing: “He wouldn’t even bother”
The truth is, bands rarely stay together for too long. The artists you now see on their 80th tour, circumnavigating the world, are doing so because of their success, not their willingness to share a bus or plane with their bandmates. Sometimes, this is a simple fracturing of timelines as different members amicably explore different avenues. Sometimes, though, it is very different. Ozzy Osbourne’s brief departure from Black Sabbath in 1977 was far from amicable. In fact, the band’s relationships had turned so sour that Osbourne likens them to a “marriage ending”.
At the time, Black Sabbath found themselves immersed in a tumultuous world of drug-fueled escapades. As they convened in Toronto to record their eighth studio album, Never Say Die!, their intoxication levels were so high that they instead went back to their hotel rooms.
But that’s not where the trouble first started. The true catalyst for the band’s turmoil remains shrouded in ambiguity, primarily due to a lack of open and honest communication among its members. “We never wanted [Osbourne] to leave,” said Tony Iommi. “And I think he wanted to come back – but no one would tell the other how they felt.”
For Osbourne, the time away from the band was filled with many life-changing events. At the start of 1978, his father passed away after a battle with cancer. “My father was dying, so that put us out for over three months with the funeral and everything,” Osbourne told Sounds. With him taking a break, Ionni reached out to Dave Walker (Fleetwood Mac) to be his replacement.
During his brief tenure, Walker got to work on Never Say Die!, taking over some of the responsibilities from Black Sabbath’s primary lyricist Geezer Butler. One song in particular that he wrote was ‘Junior’s Eyes’. Within its lyrics, Walker delves into the depths of societal shadows, shedding light on the unjust treatment of the underprivileged.
Despite writing most, if not all, of Never Say Die!, Walker never actually made it into the studio with the band. Osbourne’s return to the band should have been a cause for celebration – with hindsight, it would mark the last album created by the assembly’s original lineup. But things weren’t that straightforward. For starters, he refused to sing anything that Walker had written.
As a result, he enlisted Butler to take on the beastly task of rewriting Walker’s parts, often telling him that his work wasn’t good enough and that it needed to be changed. ‘Junior’s Eyes’, for instance, was rewritten to instead be an homage to Osbourne’s late father. The original lyrics compared with the ones reworked by Butler is a stark change: where Walker wrote, “(Folks) hear footsteps runnin’ / someone met his maker tonight ‘ (Looks calm) / clothes are stunnin’ nobody is safe out of sight”, Butler changed this to “As his hands reached out to the sky / Junior cried / the day that his best friend died”.
Then, when Black Sabbath returned to England, Osbourne and Butler refused to talk to each other. In fact, he was so detached from everything Never Say Die! that he refused to sing the lead vocals for ‘Swinging The Chain’. “He was just so out of it that he wouldn’t even bother reading them,” Butler said in a Songfacts interview. The band’s drummer, Bill Ward, stepped in to sing on the track instead: these are the vocals that you hear on the track.
It’s not all that shocking to see why Osbourne may have refused to take on the vocals for the song. Wihtin the imagery of the track, based on the atrocities of World War Two, Butler seemingly makes comparisons between Osbourne and the leader of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler, which feels a little tough, no matter how strained their relationship was.
Ultimately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Never Say Die! was a commercial disappointment. The band had struggled to complete its previous album, Technical Ecstacy, because of substance abuse – so fans eagerly anticipated the release of Never Say Die! instead. When it was finally released, many deemed this the end of Black Sabbath’s career.
However, when Osbourne was effectively fired from the band for good in 1979, he went on to achieve global success in a newfound solo career, starting with his debut album Blizzard of Ozz in 1980. He also later re-joined the band for many live performances and speaks highly of his time as part of Black Sabbath alongside the friendships that he made there.
The original Black Sabbath lineup may have struggled towards the end, but in their prime, they were nothing short of innovators spearheading a new movement. “There was this force,” said Ward, “It came from what we thought was bullshit at the time: politics and war, and upbringing and people’s ways of life.”
The reunion of Black Sabbath in later years served as a testament to this prevailing hype, and the band is less remembered now for its apparent failures than its significant contribution to rock music. With a last ever reunion show in the offing, all thoughts are now turned toward celebrating their legacy one last time with the entire band on stage.
