{"id":157693,"date":"2025-11-28T08:12:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T08:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/157693\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T08:12:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T08:12:14","slug":"watch-black-sabbath-with-singer-dave-walker-in-1978","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/157693\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch Black Sabbath with singer Dave Walker in 1978"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long-sought-after footage of Black Sabbath<\/a> performing live with extremely temporary singer Dave Walker in 1978 has made its way onto YouTube.<\/p>\n

Walker \u2013 former singer of Fleetwood Mac<\/a>, Savoy Brown and others, and current leader of the Dave Walker Band \u2013 joined Birmingham\u2019s heavy metal<\/a> pioneers in late 1977. He replaced Ozzy Osbourne<\/a> after the Prince Of Darkness stepped away during contentious writing sessions for what would become the Never Say Die! album.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Walker\u2019s tenure in the band was short, as Ozzy got cold feet about leaving and rejoined in early \u201978. As a result, there are few artefacts from the replacement singer\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Eyes. You can watch the long-lost footage below.<\/p>\n

Walker was born in Staffordshire, England and started his career in the early 60s with the rhythm-and-blues<\/a> band The Redcaps. He joined Savoy Brown in 1971 and sang on three albums \u2013 Street Corner Talking, Hellbound Train and Lion\u2019s Share \u2013 before leaving in 1972 to join Fleetwood Mac. He sang two tracks on just one Fleetwood album, Penguin, before his departure in \u201973.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> that his wife \u201cclashed\u201d with drummer Bill Ward\u2019s. He also said that his dismissal was abrupt.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne day I turned up where they were rehearsing near Evesham and they were having a meeting, after which Bill told me, \u2018We\u2019re in, you\u2019re out,\u2019\u201d he recalled. \u201cNo warning. I still don\u2019t even know if Ozzy had agreed to come back then.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign up below to get the latest from Metal Hammer, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n

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<\/a> that they had no choice but to let their frontman go.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t have an option,\u201d he explained. \u201cThe record company were saying: \u2018How\u2019s the new album coming on?\u2019 I said: \u2018Oh yeah, it\u2019s coming on okay.\u2019 But we hadn\u2019t done anything. We were putting riffs down, but Ozzy just wasn\u2019t in the right frame of mind. He wasn\u2019t into it any more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sabbath would continue with former Rainbow<\/a> frontman Ronnie James Dio, while Ozzy embarked on a solo career, which kicked off with 1980 album Blizzard Of Ozz<\/a>. 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<\/a>, in Birmingham.<\/p>\n

Black Sabbath – War Pigs intro\/Junior’s Eyes – FOUND FOOTAGE DAVE WALKER VOCALS – Look! Hear! 1978 – YouTube
\n\"Black<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long-sought-after footage of Black Sabbath performing live with extremely temporary singer Dave Walker in 1978 has made its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-157693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}