Setlist: War Pigs, Neon Knights, N.I.B., Lonely Is The Word, Sweet Leaf, Drum Solo, Children Of The Sea, Black Sabbath, Heaven And Hell, Iron Man, Guitar Solo, Die Young, Paranoid (plus Heaven And Hell reprise)
Encore: Children Of The Grave
The new album, Heaven And Hell, had been out a month and had gone down extremely well. It was a new sound for a new decade, something which lots of my favourite bands took notice of as the 80s dawned and arrived – a wish to remain current. Sabbath had inadvertently reconfigured their sound by making a personnel switch. Ozzy Osbourne was out and replacing him was former Rainbow vocalist Ronnie James Dio. His contributions to the album were a breath of fresh air for a Sabbath who had sounded bloated and tired on their last Ozzy album Never Say Die. The band were rejuvenated and hungry again, although the album stylistically bore less of the tropes of the old Black Sabbath sound.
But now Sabbath had to establish the band as a live proposition. To be specific – how would the fans take to Dio onstage, given that they had to perform some of the Ozzy era songs? It was the second (and last) night at the Odeon and I hadn’t heard anything at all about the first night so what we were going to get was still to be discovered.
Before we found out what Sabbath had in store, we had Shakin’ Street as the support act. They had been signed by Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult’s then manager Sandy Pearlman. Of interest to me was that the guitarist was former Dictators axe-hero Ross ‘The Boss’ Friedman – a band I liked a lot. But it was the singer Fabienne Shine who commanded your attention. She had real presence and a great rock voice. At the time they had a single out called Solid As A Rock, which I still love to this day.
Before they had come on, and during the interval, there was a roadie who was looking after Geezer Butler’s equipment. He was a big guy compared to the other roadies and he had a real presence to him. I didn’t know then who he was but I remembered him later when I found out that he was Joey DeMaio and he shortly was to form the band Manowar with Ross The Boss.
I was right at the front and leaning on the stage when the lights went down to a tremendous roar. Over the PA we got the familiar tones of Supertzar from Sabotage. There they were now as the lights came up – Tony Iommi nodding at the crowd, Geezer smiling and Bill shielded by his drums for the most part. Dio meanwhile stood looking completely un-phased in the centre of the stage. Surely he was nervous – this was Sabbath on home territory – but if he was you couldn’t tell. They opened with War Pigs which meant the contrast between Dio and Ozzy was there to see and hear immediately. The alternative would have been to open with Neon Knights off the new album, and I think that might have been a better option. Still, War Pigs had the resonance and familiarity and Dio was on imperious form. There were shouts for Ozzy on occasion in the first few songs of the show but Dio looked unflappable. He was better on the new material because they were his songs and the older Sabbath material was trickier than given credit. Ozzy would often sing Tony’s riff and that was not Dio’s style at all. So he tended to fall back on dramatic effect for the older songs and this veered close to pantomime – as on Black Sabbath itself, for instance, which lost some of its menace as a consequence.
Although it was now the 80s, solos were still ‘in’. Geezer’s was merely the intro to the rapturously received N.I.B. and Bill Ward got a mercifully shortish solo, but Tony Iommi got a long one. He took in elements from Embryo but he went on and on and it became a toilet break for some. We could have had two more songs instead!
By the time they hit Sweet Leaf Dio had won the crowd over. He told us how special it was to be playing in Birmingham and he knew what Sabbath meant for us. His respectful tone went down well. He announced Sweet Leaf and paused for Iommi to hit the intro riff, but in that pause – without rehearsal or pre-arrangement – what seemed like the whole front stalls ‘did’ the cough that introduces the song on record. Dio was amazed, visibly and audibly telling us ‘you guys are just amazing.’ It was an amazing version too with Bill Ward nailing the propulsive drums.
The highlight really, I think, was Heaven And Hell which was longer and more stretched out than on record but worked a treat as a live piece. Dio enjoyed it too, getting to be a real master of ceremonies with the audience participation and then the song itself which has a killer riff and shifts from the slower tempo verses and choruses before the rave-up outro.
After Paranoid and the reprise of Heaven And Hell the band went off. Cue chants of ‘Sabbath’ and hand-claps and then a big sing-a-long of You’ll Never Walk Alone. Maybe the guys just wanted to listen for a bit but it seemed an age before they came back for a rampaging, and celebratory, Children Of The Grave.
The lights went up and it was clearly, from the ecstatic audience reaction, ‘job done’ – Sabbath were back in business and all looked good. We had no idea that it would only last for one more album.