BLACK SABBATH: Then, Now, & Why

I was having tea with Ronnie James Dio (singer/lyricist) and Paul Clark (road manager/famous Australian disco dancer) at a very pleasant cafe in Indianapolis. Black Sabbath were near the end of the first third of an unusual U S.-to Britain-to U.S. tour. Mob Rules has been released three or four weeks earlier. Mercury was not quite visible in the morning sky.

Dio (and new drummer Vinnie Appice) are as American as you and I. whereas Sabbath mainstays Tony Iommi (six strings) and Geezer Butler (four) are limeys. I felt an instinctive friendliness towards Dio for two reasons: one, I’d noticed he always graciously invites people to precede him onto escalators; two, we’d both been watching the same football game on TV in completely different hotel rooms and both wanted the Giants to win. Feeling I could trust my short fellow citizen, I invited him to explain why he thought Americans were so enamoured with heavy metal.

☆ ☆ ☆

DIO: The British were the first to have the balls to have long hair. I mean, you remember when the Beatles first came out everybody said, ‘My God, look at all the hair.’ They didn’t have any hair at all, but in comparison to the crewcuts running around this country at that time it was a real shock...

I think the rebellious nature that Americans have always had admired the rebellious nature of the British people (which was) showed with long hair, with the type of music they presented, with the shows they presented. Britons go for it. They go for their shows, they go for spectacular things. They always had more amplifiers onstage than anyone else, bigger PA’s than anyone else, more wattage than anyone else, they always seemed to be—in interviews—more rebellious than anyone else.

" How anyone could possibly compare Ozzy to me, vocally, really has to be either completely stupid or deaf. —Ronnie James Dio

APRIL '82-Renowned merce-nary J. Kordosh has done a lot with his life, as he'll certainly attest, yet few can deny that his meeting with Black Sab-bath may well have been the high point of both their careers! Though J. has admit-ted to having a special place in his heart for his lifelong hero Roger Whittaker, we here at CREEM feel that Black Sab-bath may indeed rapidly overtake Mr. Whittaker and become Mr. Kordosh's newest reason not to kill himself because he's such a failed human being, etc.

(Some pause for thought, then, smilingly.) But I’ve always claimed that the British are not actually British. My wife is British— But is she actually your wife?

DIO: Yes, she is.

OK. But she’s not British.

DIO: (Confused) My wife is British but she’s not...?

You said —

DIO: I see, I see. Actually, that was very good. If you want to take me true to what I said.

What did you mean?

DIO: All I mean (lowering his voice) is that the British are not of this planet. They aren’t. They’re from Mars; definitely, they’re from Mars. Or some other place, but definitely not from here. The reason I know that is because my wife is British. She always manages, wherever we go— the British always manage to attract other Britons.

You mean without talking or playing soccer?

DIO: Yeah. For some reason, we stumble upon them in supermarkets and the next thing you know they’re invited into our home to live with us. There seems to be these great pockets of British communities wherever I’ve been, and they’ve always seemed to come out ahead. Wherever they go.

What can we, as Americans, do about this? DIO: We have to kill them all. Each and every one of them.

Great!

DIO: Actually, that’s a very stupid story, but there was a time that I was convinced they were actually from another planet.

Dio went on to explain that road manager Clark was not offended by the Final Solution, since he was Australia’s (not Britain’s) foremost dancing expert, a lie I agreed was good enough to present as fact before we continued along more prosaic lines.

It looks like the album (Mob Rules) hit fairly high in the charts. Where’d it come in, #30 or something?

DIO: 38 or 39. We didn’t know, we were on the road when it was released. We only know when we talk to you or someone who says, “Hey, the album’s doing real well.’’ (Pretending to talk to himself) “Oh, it is? Oh great. Thanks.” I mean, it’s only going to do as well as it’s going to do. It doesn’t make any difference, does it?

Not to me. But to you. I’d think the money —

CLARK: You can’t really go by the charts. No, but for the media it’s a good fake out. "Hey, Black Sabbath are really hot.”

DIO: Sure. It is.

CLARK: I just checked out some of the albums that have been sold, compared to others that have done 35,000 in two weeks—and ours has done 60,000 in ten days. Well, you look in the charts—it’s so ridiculous.

"

We

couldn't work with Ozzy. There was no way; It was impossible.

-Tony Iommi

"

Well, why don’t they release sales figures? DIO: So the public can hear it. Yeah. CLARK: Sure, they should do it. Why not? Why not?

DIO: It’s about time the kids knew who was hyping them and who wasn’t. Tell the truth. Why not? They have to tell the truth in big business, don’t they?

Well...

DIO: Well, they’re supposed to. But, I mean, this industry doesn’t some close.

It’s true, but that’s part of the charm of the industry, I guess.

DIO: I guess it is, yeah. If it has any charm. Left.

Enough of that. How’s Vinnie fitting in? DIO: Great. He’s a great guy. Obviously, we wouldn’t have taken him on unless he was a great drummer, but he’s a really, really good person, and that was of prime interest to us.

CLARK: (As Appice coincidentally joins us.) Vinnie, this is Kordosh from CREEM; John, Vinnie Appice.

APPICE: Is this an interview?

Well, it’s more like blackmail than an interview (To Dio) Tell me, Ronnie, how do you defend your last statement that Vinnie is a no-talent drummer who can’t last in this business?.

DIO: Well, only because I think his brother is so much better than he is. That’s why I had to say that.

APPICE: He is. He is.

How is Carmine doing?

APPICE: Oh, he’s just doing his own thing—he has an album coming out after Christmas, a solo thing.

Good timing. The post-Christmas album rush.

APPICE: For that belated gift.

DIO: In fact, that’s a really good idea. Someone should put an album out that says, “Sorry I forgot Christmas, here’s your gift.” We should go into business together, you have some really good ideas.

That’s why I’m so rich. How so you guys feel about being part of the Sabbath legend?

APPICE: I hate it (laughs).

Do you care? Are you annoyed by the question? Should we just forget the whole thing?

DIO: I sometimes get annoyed. I think it’s because—as an individual—you feel different than the person who asks the question. I mean, I don’t feel—it’s been three years for me now, two for Vinnie— that it should make any difference. I’ve done two albums with the band, Vinnie’s only done one. I don’t consider Vinnie and myself to be in the same category, really, especially since—being one of the major writers in the band, it makes a difference as well—but that has nothing to do with the difference between Vinnie and I. I’m sure he feels the same. “Oh, you’re one of the new guys.”

I’m just thinking of a former vocalist who hasn’t been exactly charitable towards Sabbath. Are there hard feelings, or what? DIO: Well, there seem to be a lot of hard feelings on his (Ozzy Osbourne’s) part.

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 45

But I don 't know if that's just press or what. It was just a story I read.

DIO: 1 don’t know. 1 don’t know what his true feelings really are. I don’t even care what his true feeling really are. I’m not concerned with Ozzy at all; I don’t care what he does and I don’t really care what he says. I think Ozzy has made enough of an asshole of himself by what he said that we don’t really have to make any comments about it. It was pretty vitriolic.

DIO: I think so. I think it was.

/ think he said you had a good voice, though. He did say that.

DIO: Well, he’d have to be deaf not to know that, wouldn’t he? (laughs) He may be deaf, as a matter of fact. The thing that annoys me the most, I think, are comparisons between Ozzy and myself as singers. Ozzy’s not a singer, I am —that’s the difference. How anyone could possibly compare Ozzy to me, vocally, really has to be either completely stupid or totally deaf.

I think a lot of people think of Masters Of Reality and shit like that when they think of Sabbath.

DIO: Sure, I can understand that. But we never claimed—and I never claimed—that this band. Black Sabbath, is the Black Sabbath that was. I never claimed that at all. This is a new—you’d have to call it a “New Black Sabbath." But we could’ve called it Tommy Miami and the Mello-tones, we could’ve done “Paranoid” and “Iron Man” because of Terry and Tony. Now, Terry wrote all the lyrics to those songs that Ozzy claims he wrote, and Tony wrote all the music to those songs that Ozzy claims he wrote. Now, who has the right to do those songs?

Paul McCartney, if he wants to.

DIO: Yes, he does. Anybody does. And that seems to be Ozzy’s bone of contention. “You’re not Black Sabbath, so you shouldn’t—”; well, nor is he, so he shouldn’t either. For him to say there is no more Black Sabbath is one of the biggest ego trips I’ve ever heard of. We don’t feel that his success has anything to do with our success, or his success has anything to do with our failure—should we fail—or vice versa. None of us have failed.

It seems that you’re both doing well.

DIO: It’s just that there’s no need for this kind of mudslinging. We don’t mudsling; I refuse to mudsling.

It’s already on tape and you can’t stop it. DIO: There’s no mudslinging in what I said. There’s only truth in what I said and there’s only lies in what Ozzy’s said. And that’s the difference.

☆ ☆ ☆

Dio is right; there is a difference. Black Sabbath will discuss Ozzy, but only if they’re asked—I’m not sure the converse is true.

The tea bill was settled, and Dio, Clark, and myself went off to a radio station where Dio was to be interviewed; the other Sabs headed for the arena for a sound check.

(2) 11 YOU WRITE FOR CREEM, HUH? I HATE THAT MAG - YOU KNOCK MY FAVORITE BAND.” “WHO’S YOUR FAVORITE BAND?” “KISS.” “WHO’S YOUR SECOND FAVORITE BAND?”

As we drove to the radio station, Clark was noticeably agitated, as befits a road manager, about time and sound checks and where people are or aren’t. Dio and I talked about sports, and he filled me in on why he generally dislikes radio interviews.

“Wait, you’ll see. The phone-ins are the worst, though.”

“How come?”

“I did one and at the end the guy said, ‘And that was...uh...what’s your name again?’

“Sounds like fun. You should’ve made up a name or told him Ozzy Osbourne.”

After what seemed like an interminable ride to Paul Clark (15 minutes or so), we arrived at the station. The DJ (I wrote his name down on a piece of paper I’d been planning to lose) and Preston “Ace” Cosby (the station’s exuberant graveyard shift jock) greeted us and showed us into the studio. Ace managed to intrigue me right off the bat.

“You write for CREEM, huh? I hate that mag—you knock my favorite band.”

“Who’s your favorite band?”

“Kiss,” Ace proclaimed, which sort of surprised me. He looked to be well into his late teens or early twenties.

“Who’s your second favorite band?” This looked like productive soil, if you know what I mean.

“Van Halen. They really know how to party down.”

“Jeez, that's funny. I was talking to Van Halen and they told me thay can’t stand you. But only you, Ace—they like everybody else.”

Meanwhile, Dio got a few surprises of his own during the interview. The questions weren’t even stupid, shedding a lot of light on Dio’s career in Elf and with Blackmore in Rainbow. He even addressed himself to the Heavy Metal LP, an enormously bad disc that has an earlier version of “The Mob Rules” on it.

“Well, in a nutshell, we were offered to do a song for the film through the affiliation of the producer with Warner Brothers, who were to release the album. They gave us a script and they gave us a very brief video of it; it wasn’t done in animation, it was done in stills—artist’s drawings.

“We were able to choose whatever segment we wanted to write the material for and we chose the mob scene—and therefore, The Mob Rules.’

“As for the film, I thought the animation was excellent. But I thought that, as far as calling the film Heavy Metal and using as little of the material that we wrote—and the other people wrote—was an absolute rip-off. A complete and total rip-off.

“The music in the album is good, but I don’t think that Stevie Nicks is much of a heavy metal artist. I don’t think Don Felder is much of a heavy metal artist. There are others on there—Steely Dan, brilliant artists, one of my all-time favorites—but in the context of an album called Heavy Metal, I just don’t see the connection at all. The album was done well, but it wasn’t representative of what the film was called.”

Dio handled other questions, including the inevitable Ozzy question he’d warned me to listen for, with equal aplomb. On the way to the sound check, I asked him what happened. He just laughed and said that this one was better than most.

(3) “AFTER THE TECHNICAL

ECSTASY ALBUM, HE WAS JUST GETTING DRUNK AND TALKING DUMB ALL THE TIME.”

After the concert, I talked for awhile with Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler, the remaining original Sabs. I asked them how things had soured with Osbourne. They told me, albeit reluctantly.

“He left the band just as we’d started writing the stuff for Never Say Die,” Iommi said.

“Well, first it started on the Technical Ecstasy tour, back in about ’76.” Butler interrupted. “And he just wouldn’t sing any of the new songs—he just refused to do anything off the new album.”

“And he was getting drunk and talking dumb all the time,” Iommi added. “Messing himself up right when we were going onstage. So we got through that tour and then he left the band just when we started writing Never Say Die. He left and we got this other singer—we started rehearsing with this other singer and it just wasn’t working out. Then we got together with Ozzy again.”

“I think he’s a bit annoyed that we were successful after he (finally) departed,” Iommi said.

“I think that is it, yeah,” Butler agreed quickly. “Cause he was expecting us to fall flat on our faces when he left.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I think he believed in what he was saying to himself and to the press. Believing his own lies. What was annoying.. .he was doing a radio interview and he said that he wrote ‘Paranoid.’ He had nothing to do with it; Geezer wrote all the words to ‘Paranoid.’ He must be trying to prove something, saying he wrote this and he wrote that,” Iommi answered.

“Are you working together better, now?”

“Oh yeah. Much better,” they said.

“Y’see, we couldn’t work with Ozzy. There was no way; it was impossible. We’d start fucking rehearsing, he’d go outside for a walk or something and he’d come back without a fucking clue as to what was going on,” Iommi said. “Not the faintest idea.

“Going back to what Ozzy’s said about all the time we spent in the studios—it was because of him. He’s saying one thing, covering up for his fucking mistakes. That’s the annoying thing—because everybody’s done so much to help him, in the past, and he’s so hateful against us...I don’t know why. Because everybody in the band like, gave everything to that guy. And he’s just turned around and shit on everybody, as far as I’m concerned,” he concluded.

“Well, it’ll all come out in the wash, I guess,” I said, knowing full well who’d be doing the laundry. As things stand, everyone in Sabbath seems perfectly happy with the status quo. Nobody’s looking back—I noticed during the show that “The Mob Rules” sounded just fine, even though it was played after “Iron Man,” which sounded overwhelming.

Back at the hotel, I had a drink with Paul Clark and went up to my room. I checked Black Sabbath off my list of potentially unlikeable bands and looked out the window, but it was too early to see if Mercury would be visible in the morning sky.