Ronnie James Dio in Black Sabbath

Of my top 5 Sabbath albums, H&H and Mob Rules are in there, with Dehumanizer right at #6. H&H/MR were my introduction to Sabbath....great records both...can't say it enough.

 

Unfortunately, the reception wasn't quite as warm and friendly when the tour came to San Francisco. The crowd treated The Outlaws pretty shabbily. At one point, a cretin in the crowd through a roll of toilet paper at either the guitarist or bassist (I've forgotten as it's been too many years), and it stuck to the neck of the guitar, and you could see he was visibly pissed. If memory serves, they cut their set short by a song or two. I wasn't there to see The Outlaws, but nevertheless thought their treatment was shameful by a segment of the crowd. A friend of mine was pissed, because he had more interest in seeing The Outlaws than Sabbath.

Black Sabbath were absolutely awesome that night, by the way.

 

Oh, there's no doubt about that.
He had material for Holy Diver ready to go, and Iommi put the brakes on it, Dio said well I'll just release it solo, and Tony told him to go ahead.
So you're right Dio wanted to strike while the iron was hot, Iommi was burned out....and the rest is history.

I will say this as well, this band battle ended up great for the fans.
The Sabs and Ozzy were both doing a lot of media interviews, filming shows, getting radio play, doing radio concerts, a soundtrack song, and doing a ton of touring, trying to top the other one.

I'd say Ozzy for sure had the momentum, and with Rhoads, the hot new guitar player,
(and Randy was being compared to EVH, not Tony. So Tony was the old sound, Randy the future, which drew the kids more to Ozzy versus the middle age Sabs. Also Oz took the young bands out with him, Def Leppard/Motley Crue, and that should be noted as well) he was going to bypass Sabbath eventually, but they were pretty even in 1982.
Sabs pulled off an 8 month sports arena tour, Ozzy was just getting into sports arenas with a package (UFO/Starfighters) but that was short lived due to the March 1982 plane crash that took Rhoads.
But when you review the whole thing, especially how Ozzy got his thing in motion, its just an unbelievable story.

Maybe I'll write a timeline out, its just nuts what happen there within the space of a little under 3 years.....

 

Looks like a band called Wrabit opened for them in Detroit when I saw them on that tour. Don't remember one thing about them. Sabbath was great.

 

I didn't realize Ozzy was doing theaters on that first tour but I just looked at the dates and sure enough it was a mix of theaters and arenas. I saw him an arena, specifically the New Haven Coliseum. And it turns out that was August 2, 1981...so exactly 36 years ago tonight. Wow.

 

Ozzy Osbourne Chicago January 24, 1982

The videotape is a bit rough, but you'll get what's happening, just listen to Randy play, just ridiculously good on Mr. Crowley, Crazy Train, and Steal Away. Ozzy sounds good.
Encouraging everyone to get high, reckless and loose. You get the "Tribute" album cover show at 6:00 mark, and a brief glimpse of Ronnie the Dwarf in action around the 7:30 mark.

 

According to interviews with Rhoads from the time, he and Ozzy worked out the songs together. Rhoads did the music, Ozzy the melodies.

Ozzy worked in a similar way in Sabbath. Working out the melodies to the music either through scat singing or to Geezer's words.

It seems to me that some people have become confused about this. Daisley was mainly responsible for lyrics. That's a part of songwriting, but not songwriting in and of itself. I see people talk about Daisley as the writer to the point where you'd think he sang these entire albums out for Ozzy. And even Daisley has never made such a claim.

What's odd to me about this is that I think it was Ozzy's singing and vocal melodies that put those records over the top. The guitar work was really great, but I doubt most people buying those albums were reading guitar magazines and debating Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen.

 

And here you have the Sabs January 2, 1982 at Hammersmith in London. For whatever reason, its on here twice. Again this is rough, but you get the idea. Country Girl (at 19:56)





While the Dio led Sabs had kicked it up a notch for sure, this was not a young group, and it was a sound from the 70's that had been polished by Martin Birch.
The question I had after watching a bit of this is how they could drop Country Girl from the set, and not even play one of MR's strongest cuts Falling Off The Edge of the World?
I think Iommi (and I'm a fanboy) in 1982, was at the start of what turned out to be a tough year for him, making a bunch of bad decisions, and personal setbacks.

 

You know....if I'd known you guys had already mentioned 1/2 of my points, I wouldn't have posted all that....sheesh.

Anyhow, first saw Ozzy w/ Randy at the Sunrise Music Theater in September '81, the next to last US theatre date they did.
Had no idea "Diary" was already in the can, I thought Randy was good, but when he started playing "Believer", I was just flat out floored.
A bit of harmonic touch on the whammy bar, a string pull while working the wah pedal, and this small evil spider of a melody line came out of that guy.
I can remember it like it was yesterday. He was something else.

 

Agree and disagree. I definitely agree that those are Ozzy records first and foremost, and it's odd that he's the thing that seems to get overlooked. But flash guitar was very much the thing of the day and all the kids I knew were super into Randy. And as mentioned a few posts up, it was really Randy that made Ozzy seem current.

It's funny looking back now because I'm much older than he was then, but I remember being at that show in 1981 and thinking how amazing it was that he was still doing it. Meanwhile he was only in his early thirties! But I was 14 and to me he was old. I mean he'd been making records since the 60s. He must be old!

But yeah, Randy was a big deal with young rock fans and a big part of Ozzy's success.


side note: I loved Ozzy so much at that time that I used to wear a jean jacket with a big OZZY on the back that I'd done myself with magic markers.

 

I can tell you that you're absolutely mistaken about the last part that I put in bold. I can tell you as a young guy playing in cover bands at the time that Rhoads and Eddie were absolutely being debated at the time and I'd bet the majority of people buying those albums were guitar nuts like myself. It's impossible to prove, but I went to see Randy Rhoads not Ozzy. I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

 

I'm not sure if you're responding to my "Eddie Van Halen Factor" point here or not.
But I should be clear that you're right that the general audience wasn't debating Rhoads vs EVH in a guitar mag technical sense.
But I can tell you as someone who was there at that time that EVH had transformed the metal/hard rock audience and their musical sensibilities greatly by the time Ozzy & The Sabs made those albums and it was a factor....among several other factors.
You can't hardly overestimate Rhoads contribution to those albums.

 

Looks like were all responding at the same time!

 

My initial interest in Ozzy solo albums was, of course, Ozzy, because I was a major Black Sabbath fan, but make no mistake, Randy sealed the deal. I was impressed by Eddie Van Halen but really didn't like Van Halen - they were too "jock rock" for me. Randy Rhoads brought the revolution into the dark where I could get a look at it. There are no words to describe what it was like to hear Ozzy Osbourne being propelled by THAT GUITAR SOUND. When I first heard "I Don't Know" (which was the first track I heard), I was just dumbstruck. If Sabbath hadn't have scored Dio, Ozzy would have wiped them off the map that year. It was a total shocker. Fortunately Sabbath's album that year had been a shocker too.

 

Yeah, I'm not meaning to debate whether Ozzy benefited GREATLY from having a hotshot guitar player who could compete with Eddie Van Halen and that current sound of the time. But unless Guitar Player Magazine had a million subscribers all listening to Heavy Metal/Hard Rock and all buying Ozzy albums in 1981/1982, I don't know... I just don't think this adds up to the numbers Ozzy put up in the US at that time. I think his voice reached across to the female audience as well. A lot of people don't know this (and Ozzy downplays it or maybe doesn't even remember it) but it was not uncommon for there to be screaming girls at Sabbath concerts in the 70's. Not like The Beatles or anything, don't get me wrong, but not like the Dio-era Sabbath, which I don't think crossed over much in the early 80's.

Keep in mind there was also a crowd who thought Randy Rhoads was a poor man's Eddie Van Halen (nonsense, IMO) so not all of that publicity was positive. But even that probably played to Ozzy's advantage. Personally, I always thought Rhoads sounded more like Michael Schenker, but anyway.......

 

I don't know, Jason.

I remember that time well and it seemed like many guitarists were into that, for sure! But I don't think Ozzy Osbourne's album sales were primarily to guitar players. Would that account for that big of a market? If so, I think Al Dimeola would have been having Platinum records by then.

 

He should be so lucky to sound like Schenker!

 

That's a poor analogy Tim1954.

 

You don't have to be a guitar player to appreciate ****-hot guitar playing. And music fans have always liked to pick side and argue this player and that player. I had lots of discussions about guitar players with people who were terribly passionate about it but had never touched a guitar.

 

Rhoads was a better player than Schenker IMO and I love Michael Schenker.

 

By Tims logic Jimi Hendrix became famous for his singing.

 

To each his own.
I'll take Schenker.

 

I personally prefer Dio Sabbath.....I know, blasphemy

 

Good point and I absolutely agree.

All I'm saying is that artists who put out Gold and Platinum records... I think it's far more about the songs overall to the average buyer and probably the voice first and foremost. To sell that many records you simply have to reach a fairly wide audience.

The average music fan in the early 80's might have bought Ozzy's albums and really liked the guitar sound, but if you were to take those records with the exact same music and have Tony Martin sing on them, I think they end up in the cut-out bin.

 

True, but on the other hand, Ozzy could easily have paired with a less cutting edge guitarist and put out a crap record, and ended up in the cut out bins. Part of what made Ozzy's first two solo albums so incredible was how unexpected it was to anybody who knew anything about Ozzy. I literally expected any Ozzy Osborne solo album to be slightly better than 39 minutes of "Blow On A Jug."

As with all success, there's a synchronicity - a whole greater than the sum of parts.