After six classic albums in five years, Black Sabbath’s relentless workload and on-the-edge lifestyles meant they were rapidly running out of energy, ideas and patience with each other. Wrapped up in drink, drugs and business issues, they decamped to Miami’s Criteria studio in mid-1976 to record their seventh album, Technical Ecstasy, unaware that it would mark the beginning of the end for the classic line-up.
Tony Iommi: Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. We all stayed in a place right on the beach, and I’d go down to the studio and nobody would be there. The Bee Gees were recording there too, and I spent a lot of time hanging out and doing coke with Barry Gibb. And The Eagles were there, too, in the room next to us. They had to pack up because we were too loud.
Geezer Butler: Before we could start we had to scrape all the cocaine out of the mixing board.
Article continues belowJezz Woodroffe [Sabbath’s live keyboard player]: Ozzy had very little to do with the writing of the songs. Tony did the riffs, Geezer wrote most of the lyrics . The last thing done would be Ozzy putting some vocals over the top.
Ozzy Osbourne: Tony was always saying, “We’ve gotta sound like Foreigner”, or “We’ve gotta sound like Queen”. I thought it was strange that the bands we’d once influenced were now influencing us.
Geezer Butler: We didn’t know what we were doing. You could feel the whole thing falling apart.
Tony Iommi: That album was different from the others, but I did like it.
After completing Technical Ecstasy, Ozzy flew back to Britain and checked himself into an asylum.
Ozzy Osbourne: I checked myself into a loony bin called St George’s. It was a big old Victorian place. The first thing the doctor said to me was, “Do you masturbate, Mr Osbourne?” I told him, “I’m in here for my head, not my dick.” I didn’t last long.
Jezz Woodroffe: That summer, Bill invited me to his house several times. He wouldn’t get up. He’d spend the day in bed talking business to people in LA on the phone. All he wanted me to do was sit downstairs and play the piano in his front room.
The drummer’s problems came to a head when Sabbath set off for a US tour in October 1976, with Boston as the support act.
We were getting really drugged out. We’d have to pack up sessions because we were too stoned.
Tony Iommi
Jezz Woodroffe: When we picked Bill up for the airport, he was wearing red tights, a T-shirt and a leather jacket. When the crew asked where his luggage was, he said, “This is it.” A plastic bag full of tights and three T-shirts. When we got to America, it was minus 10 outside but Bill was still wearing tights and a T-shirt. The hotel porter asked, “Is he with the band?” We said, “No.” They wouldn’t let him through the door.
Frank Zappa: I was going to jam with them at Madison Square Garden. They were supposed to tell me what time their soundcheck was, but I guess they didn’t have one. So, I went to the show and they said, “What are you going to play?” They’d set up a mini-wall of Marshalls for me. And I said, “I’m not going out there without knowing what it’s going to sound like.” I said I’d just watch the show. Tony Iommi had some trouble with his guitar and decided to change his strings at the last minute. The audience had already been waiting for an hour and they wanted me to go out ther3 and make an announcement and calm them down. So I did.
In the competition between Ozzy and Ward to see who could go crazy first, the singer was winning by a nose. When they reconvened in November 1977 to rehearse for a new album, Ozzy snapped.
Jezz Woodroffe: Ozzy had got to the point where he really didn’t want to do it any more. On the last tour I did with them, I remember seeing him being pushed on to the stage by a roadie.
Ozzy Osbourne: We had a few internal problems. My father was dying, so that put us out for three months with the funeral and everything.
Tony Iommi: Ozzy went through a bad patch and he was unhappy. It wasn’t working for him, so he just left.
David Tangye: Ozzy hadn’t gone back down to rehearsals at Rockfield. Tony continued working on riffs, but he was getting more and more frustrated with not having a singer around, so Dave Walker, an old friend of Bill and Tony’s, was brought in, but he wasn’t Sabbath material. For one thing, his wife liked him to be in bed early.
Tony Iommi: It didn’t feel right with Dave Walker. We were such a unit before, and when somebody new comes in it was really uncomfortable
At the start of 1978, Sabbath decided to ditch Dave Walker, and Ozzy returned to the fold. But the fresh start they were hoping for didn’t materialise. With Ozzy refusing to sing any songs his bandmates had written with Walker, Sabbath flew to Toronto to record their eighth album, Never Say Die!.
Never Say Die! was the worst piece of work that I’ve ever had anything to do with. I’m ashamed of that album.
Ozzy Osbourne
Ozzy Osbourne: No one really talked about what 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 what we were doing any more.
Tony Iommi: I don’t know how we got that album done. I booked the studio out in Toronto, never having seen it in my life, because the Stones had used it. It was too plush. I had all the carpet ripped up because it just sounded dead in there. We had to rehearse in the morning at this cinema, and it was fucking freezing cold. And then at night we’d go into the studio to record. You wanted to live with the songs for a little bit. So it was very hard to put that album together, very frustrating for us all.
Geezer Butler: It was horrendous. We were in Toronto, broke, miserable and freezing to death. It was minus 18 or something, and I got this cold in my ear and went totally deaf, so everything that I was playing sounded like it was underwater.
Tony Iommi: We were getting really drugged out. We’d go down to the sessions and have to pack up because we were too stoned. We were all over the place. Everybody was playing a different thing.
Geezer Butler: He’d gone nuts, Bill. He was dressing up as Hitler in the studio. One day he passed out in the studio, so Tony put all of this black gaffer tape on his head, as if it were a Hitler haircut. When Bill came round from, he realised that his head was stuck down with tape.
Ozzy Osbourne: I’d go down to the studio and I’d hear what sounded like a jazz band playing. Is this really Black Sabbath? I’d just fuck off.
Bill Ward: In the circumstances, I thought we did the best we could. We were taking care of business ourselves, we didn’t have millions from the record company, and we tried to experiment with the way we had in the early days. Songs like Johnny Blade and Air Dance I still like.
Geezer Butler: I like Air Dance. It was a great track, and totally different to what we’d normally do. But even if they were the best songs we’d ever done, I’d still get a bad feeling from listening to that album.
Ozzy Osbourne: It was 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.
Even through the haze, Sabbath knew that their time was almost up. On May 16, 1978 , they kicked off the eight-month Never Say Die! tour in Newcastle. Their support was a fast-rising band from LA named Van Halen, whose debut album had given rock a shot in the arm. A changing of the guard was afoot.
Ozzy was incapable of working. He was 100 per cent out of his brains all the time.
Geezer Butler
Tony Iommi: Van Halen were really hot to trot, whereas we were burning out. They were great musicians, energetic on stage. Eddie was a great player. But that tour was difficult. We hit a wall.
Geezer Butler: Ozzy thought that David Lee Roth was ripping him off every night, which he was. Our record company, Warner Brothers, had put everything into Van Halen. They were getting limos everywhere, and we hardly had any money back then. We’d just got rid of our management, paying horrendous legal bills and everything. The record company didn’t believe in us anymore. And by the end of that tour, Ozzy was in pieces.
After a rollercoaster decade, Sabbath were riddled with debt, locked in a cycle of drugs and alcohol, and utterly spent. At the end of April 1979, having come to the conclusion that Ozzy’s behaviour had made him impossible to work with, they sacked their singer. Bill Ward was sent to pull the trigger.
Ozzy Osbourne: We were doing some rehearsals in LA, and I was loaded, but then I was loaded all the time. It was obvious that Bill had been sent by the others, because he wasn’t the firing type. I can’t remember exactly what he said to me, but the gist was that Tony thought I was a pissed, coked-up loser and a waste of time for everyone concerned.
Tony Iommi: Ozzy seems to think it was me who pushed it, but I was only speaking on behalf of the band and trying to get the thing going.
Geezer Butler: Ozzy was incapable of working. He was 100 per cent out of his brains all the time.
Tony Iommi: I got in touch with Ronnie James Dio – through Sharon [Arden, later Ozzy’s wife], I might add. As soon as we heard Ronnie sing with us, we knew he was the right man.
Ozzy Osbourne: I couldn’t imagine someone singing for that band that wasn’t me. It takes a long time to get that into your head.
Originally published in Classic Rock Presents The Story Of Ozzy Osbourne & Black Sabbath
