![\"Tony](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Tony-Iommi-Ozzy-Osbourne-Black-Sabbath-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Tony Iommi)<\/p>\n
Tue 21 April 2026 12:30, UK <\/p>\n
There would never have been a Black Sabbath without Ozzy Osbourne, no matter how much Tony Iommi<\/a> wanted to admit it. <\/p>\n He didn\u2019t think that the obnoxious kid he used to pick on in school would be the key to success when they were making their demonic riffs, but that bluesy register that \u2018The Prince of Darkness\u2019 had was half the reason why people latched onto their music. He genuinely sounded like he was putting himself through torture when talking about demons, but there were limits on where Sabbath could go with him at the helm.<\/p>\n Or at least, that\u2019s what they found out over time. When looking through their first run of albums with Osbourne, it seemed like nothing was going to slow them down. Master of Reality<\/a> was the first time they had started switching their usual way of writing, and even though Iommi was starting to tune things way down, it didn\u2019t take long before Osbourne matched that kind of intensity when singing tunes like \u2018Children of the Grave\u2019.<\/p>\n \u2018The Ozzman\u2019 wasn\u2019t the greatest songwriter in the world by any stretch, but he more than made up for that in how hard he could push his voice. He wasn\u2019t the same kind of singer that would work around key changes, and while Iommi kept tuning lower and lower, Osbourne ended up reaching even higher, to the point where he sounded like a 1970s version of Chris Cornell when he sang tunes like \u2018Hole in the Sky\u2019.<\/p>\n But by the time that Osbourne started not turning up for studio sessions and wasting their time, it wasn\u2019t like they were in love with his sound anymore. The honeymoon period for them had faded some time after Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, and while Osbourne was a great force when he was there, Ronnie James Dio gave them the kind of range they didn\u2019t even know was possible when working on Heaven and Hell.<\/p>\n They weren\u2019t the same band singing tunes like \u2018Iron Man\u2019 anymore, and while there wasn\u2019t the same kind of brooding tone that Osbourne had, that was only a good thing in the band\u2019s mind. They needed a total reinvention to show everyone they could survive Osbourne\u2019s leaving, and a song like \u2018Neon Knights\u2019 was practically the sound of them dismantling their old albums and moulding them into something completely new.<\/p>\n Osbourne was more than welcome to carry on with his solo career, but Iommi felt that it would have been hell trying to get the frontman to work on those kinds of songs at that stage in their career, saying<\/a>, \u201cWe were working on what turned out to be the Heaven and Hell album, and it just really wasn\u2019t happening. I don\u2019t think any of us were in a good state at the time, but he was probably the worst. It just wasn\u2019t working at the time with Ozzy, and we just had to make a decision.\u201d<\/p>\n But even if there was a lot of bad blood between both camps at the time, Osbourne\u2019s dismissal from the group was really a case of everybody winning out in the end. No one would have imagined that Osbourne had the kind of drive in him to make tunes like \u2018Crazy Train\u2019 or \u2018Mr Crowley\u2019, but if he hadn\u2019t been able to work with Randy Rhoads at the time, that would have been the real tragedy than trying to slave away in Sabbath all over again.<\/p>\n So while Osbourne couldn\u2019t do justice to a song like \u2018Heaven and Hell\u2019, he was never supposed to, either. He was a blues singer through and through, and while he did smack-talk Sabbath\u2019s records at the time for not being \u2018authentic\u2019, it\u2019s not like he was the be-all-end-all for the group. Because at the end of the day, the sound of Sabbath belonged to Iommi, and whatever singer they had was going to end up sounding sinister thanks to those riffs. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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