They promised us that Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne’s farewell Back To The Beginning show would be the ultimate celebration of heavy metal’s founding fathers, and it did not disappoint.
More than 40,000 people gathered in Villa Park, a stone’s throw from where Sabbath formed, to see such heavyweights as Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Slayer and Tool paying tribute to the godfathers, together with pair of blockbusting all-star supergroups featuring everyone from Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and the Rolling Stones’ Ronnie Wood to Rage Against The Machine guitarist/Back To The Beginning musical director Tom Morello and members of Ghost, Sleep Token, Anthrax, Megadeth and more
The covers of Ozzy and Sabbath songs came think and fast. Even with the marquee-name tracks – including Crazy Train, Mr Crowley, Iron Man and Paranoid – understandably reserved for the main attraction, there were still plenty to of songs choose from. The result: a run of for-the-ages covers, including Brann Dailor’s incredible version of Supernaut, Halestorm’s full-in blast through Perry Mason, and surprise guest Yungblud’s showstopping take on Changes.
But there were a few curveballs in among the classics – and they were delivered by two of the biggest names on the bill. Here’s everything you need to know about the three most obscure Black Sabbath cover versions at the Back To The Beginning show.
Guns N’ Roses – It’s Alright
Guns N’ Roses opened their set with Axl Rose seated at the piano, playing a couple of verses from It’s Alright, a deep cut from Sabbath’s sixth album, 1976’s Technical Ecstasy. It’s not the first time GN’R have covered it – they played it semi-regularly during their Use Your Illusion tour in the early 1990s, with a version even appearing on 1999’s Live Era ’87–’93. Ironically, Sabbath themselves never played the song live.
The original version stands out because it’s one of only two Sabbath songs sung by drummer Bill Ward (the other being Swinging The Chain, from 1978’s Never Say Die! album). Speaking to Classic Rock earlier this year, Ward revealed that the piano-led number was never intended for the band.
“That was my first try at writing a song for myself,” he said. “It wasn’t something I was going to do anything with – I was in Black Sabbath, that was where I wanted to be, but I was writing other things, as we all were. We were 24, 25, 26, we had things we wanted to say.
“I’d had It’s Alright for a couple of years,” he continued. “Everyone knew about it, but nobody did anything about it because there were always songs lying around. But we were short on material for the record [Technical Ecstasy]. Ozzy really liked the song, and he suggested it: ‘Let’s do It’s Alright.’ So that was the beginning of it for me, of being a songwriter.”
One of Sabbath’s most divisive albums, Technical Ecstasy was their lowest charting album to date in both the UK and the US, reaching Numbers 13 and 51 respectively. Ozzy even temporarily quit the band afterwards (“One day I just walked out of a rehearsal and never came back,” he wrote in his autobiography, I Am Ozzy). He’d be back a few months later, but the damage to Sabbath’s original line-up was done.
Guns N’ Roses – Junior’s Eyes
Hats off to GN’R for pulling out another late 70s Sabbath obscurity during their Back To The Beginning set. Having already covered It’s Alright and the title track to 1978’s Never Say Die!, they dived back into the latter album for one of the day’s deepest cuts – and another one that Ozzy and co have never played live themselves.
Junior’s Eyes is nearly unique among Sabbath songs - it’s one of only two numbers they publicly performed with singer Dave Walker, the former Fleetwood Mac frontman who replaced Ozzy during his temporary hiatus after Technical Ecstasy. The Walker-fronted Sabbath played it during an appearance on BBC TV programme Look! Hear! in January 1978, (the other song they played on the same show was War Pigs). That version is different to the one that appeared on Never Say Die!, thanks to Walker’s bluesy voice and the brief harmonica solo which appears in the song. More notably, it features a completely different set of lyrics - the phrase “Junior’s eyes” doesn’t even appear in the original song, suggesting it may not even have had that title at the time.
When Ozzy rejoined Sabbath shortly afterwards, he refused to sing on Swinging The Chain, another song his bandmates had written with Walker during his absence. Junior’s Eyes was a different matter, though the singer did change the lyrics. The song became a tribute to his father, John, who had recently passed away: “Junior's eyes, they couldn't disguise the pain/His father was leaving, and Junior's grieving again,” sang Ozzy.
Speaking to Record Mirror in 1978 around the time of Never Say Die!’s release, the singer explained the background to his lyrics: “There’s a song on the new album, Junior’s Eyes, that’s a farewell song to my father, about my grief. We were like brothers. He died on my daughter’s sixth birthday, in the same hospital she was born in. It was weird. It’s only now that i can talk about it to anyone.”
Metallica – Johnny Blade
Guns N’ Roses didn’t have the monopoly on unexpected Sabbath covers at the Back To The Beginning show, though few could have predicted Metallica would unleash Never Say Die! track Johnny Blade during their set.
Credit to James Hetfield and co for fishing this little-loved obscurity out of the dustbin of history. The smart money would have been on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath track Sabbra Cadabra, which they covered on 1998’s Garage Inc album, though they did open their Back To The Beginning set with Hole In The Sky, which they performed along with Iron Man when Black Sabbath were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2006. Instead, their bulked-up version showed what a good song Johnny Blade could have been, even it’s still far from prime Sabbath.
Never Say Die! was the classic Sabbath line-up’s final fling, at least during their original run. Ozzy may have rejoined, but the band were running on fumes. Indeed, the singer would leave for the second and seemingly final time in April 1979, less than six months after the release of Never Say Die!, though this time he was fired by his bandmates during sessions for the follow-up album, who had tired of his booze-and-drug-fuelled antics and his apparent disinterest in being in Black Sabbath.
The original Johnny Blade sums up the chaos in the Sabbath camp during this period. Ironically, Ozzy isn’t the problem – it’s just sounds like the work of a band running out of ideas. There are flashes of greatness during the middle eight, but the song is sunk by a directionless riff, half-hearted melody and those terrible period-piece keyboards.
And the Johnny Blade of the title? “Johnny Blade was about Bill’s [Ward, drummer] brother,” Geezer told the Classic Metal Show in 2005. “We were in Canada writing for the last album with the original lineup, Never Say Die. And Bill’s brother used to be in a gang, and he was like the knife man in the gang. And Bill suggested that we write a song about him, so we did.”
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