The story of how Ozzy Osbourne was fired from Black Sabbath
The original incarnation of Black Sabbath are practically like The Beatles of heavy metal in many respects.
Although they were never trying to scale the massive heights that the Fab Four reached, every member of the group was responsible for getting the band to where it was, whether that was Tony Iommi’s furious guitar riffs or Geezer Butler’s jet-black lyrics about the dark side of life. But even with a maniac like Ozzy Osbourne, there came a point where the band needed to call it a day with their frontman.
And that’s not a statement anyone took lightly in the group. Although Deep Purple had managed to change their lineup more than a few times during the course of their career, there was no telling at that point whether a band could survive after undergoing such a significant change. But it’s not like Osbourne was all that enthused about where Sabbath was going, either.
I mean, take a listen to the last two albums that he had worked on with Sabbath, Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die. Both of them have great tunes like ‘Dirty Women’ and ‘Never Say Die’, but they are a far cry from what they could do at their peak, either. Even ‘The Prince of Darkness’ claimed that Sabbath Bloody Sabbath was the last “great” Sabbath record in his mind, so there were definitely kinks in the armour.
But the main enemy in this scenario was Osbourne’s drug habits. He had been drinking and snorting anything that came his way, and while none of the other members were exactly choir boys, his ‘wild man’ persona became far less entertaining, to the point where their final tours with him had Osborne off to the side of the stage and Iommi taking the spotlight half the time.
There would be a handful of substitutes like Dave Walker to take the reins for a few shows, but in between Osbourne threatening to quit midway through the making of Never Say Die, Iommi realised that there was no point in them continuing if they had a frontman who kept getting loaded.
They either needed to cut ties or face a future of them slowly going further down the charts for the rest of their lives, and Iommi chose the former.
When talking about the decision to let Osbourne go, Iommi said that it was a necessary part of the band’s evolution, saying, “We just couldn’t continue with Ozzy. As much as everyone wanted us to, we just couldn’t do it. Nothing was happening and it would have meant the end of the band. We didn’t want to fire him but we had to if we wanted to continue.”
And despite Osbourne not being all that bothered about leaving, he did remember feeling resentful when Bill Ward finally did the dirty deed of announcing he was fired, saying, “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel betrayed by what happened. We weren’t some manufactured boy band whose members were expandable. We were like a family, like brothers. And firing me for being fucked up was hypocritical bullshit.”
Then again, sometimes firings do end up working out for the best when Osbourne went solo. Although the remaining members of Sabbath were going to do fine with Ronnie James Dio behind the microphone, Osbourne’s blossoming solo career with Randy Rhoads proved that on the rare occasion, calling it quits with a band can be one of the greatest silver linings in any musician’s career.
