Long-sought-after footage of Black Sabbath performing live with extremely temporary singer Dave Walker in 1978 has made its way onto YouTube.
Walker – former singer of Fleetwood Mac, Savoy Brown and others, and current leader of the Dave Walker Band – joined Birmingham’s heavy metal pioneers in late 1977. He replaced Ozzy Osbourne after the Prince Of Darkness stepped away during contentious writing sessions for what would become the Never Say Die! album.
Walker’s tenure in the band was short, as Ozzy got cold feet about leaving and rejoined in early ’78. As a result, there are few artefacts from the replacement singer’s time in the band: audio of a performance on UK television programme Look! Hear! was the only known relic for many years, widely circulated on YouTube and social media.
However, earlier this month, YouTube user Brian Schaefer uploaded the first known video of the Look! Hear! performance, which depicts Sabbath playing the introduction of War Pigs and an early version of Never Say Die! track Junior’s Eyes. You can watch the long-lost footage below.
Walker was born in Staffordshire, England and started his career in the early 60s with the rhythm-and-blues band The Redcaps. He joined Savoy Brown in 1971 and sang on three albums – Street Corner Talking, Hellbound Train and Lion’s Share – before leaving in 1972 to join Fleetwood Mac. He sang two tracks on just one Fleetwood album, Penguin, before his departure in ’73.
Sabbath formed in 1968 and their members became friends with Walker during their early days. The singer sensed shortly after joining that he had tension with his new bandmates, revealing to Classic Rock in 2014 that his wife “clashed” with drummer Bill Ward’s. He also said that his dismissal was abrupt.
“One day I turned up where they were rehearsing near Evesham and they were having a meeting, after which Bill told me, ‘We’re in, you’re out,’” he recalled. “No warning. I still don’t even know if Ozzy had agreed to come back then.”
Although Ozzy rejoined Sabbath in 1978, his second stint with the band was also brief and volatile. He was fired in April 1979, with guitarist Tony Iommi saying during a Classic Rock interview earlier this year that they had no choice but to let their frontman go.
“We didn’t have an option,” he explained. “The record company were saying: ‘How’s the new album coming on?’ I said: ‘Oh yeah, it’s coming on okay.’ But we hadn’t done anything. We were putting riffs down, but Ozzy just wasn’t in the right frame of mind. He wasn’t into it any more.”
Sabbath would continue with former Rainbow frontman Ronnie James Dio, while Ozzy embarked on a solo career, which kicked off with 1980 album Blizzard Of Ozz. The singer and his former bandmates reunited from 1999 to 2005, then again in 2011 and 2025. Ozzy died following a heart attack on July 22, 17 days after Sabbath played their swansong show, Back To The Beginning, in Birmingham.
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