I guess everybody’s heard the news by now – the Black Sabbath reunion tour is off. Covering for the gigs, is “Ozzy & Friends“. I can’t imagine that anyone could possibly be surprised to hear that. I was talking to some friends just the other day, and I said just that – I can’t see it happening. Touring is tough, it’s certainly not for a man in his 60’s who’s battling a serious disease. He might recover but to think he would be able to go on the road so soon, would have been naive. 

The “friends” are, apparently, Geezer Butler, Slash and Zakk Wylde. I would have hoped that after all this bullshit that’s been going on with Bill Ward’s “to be or not to be”, he would be on that “friends-list” as well. Especially since Sharon Osbourne said just the other day that she is not managing Black Sabbath, she is managing her husband. Well – in that case she should have something to say about who tours with her husband and his friends…. Let’s hope and pray for miracles.

Most of us think it’s ridiculous that the original heavy metal band can’t get along at this point in time, with Ronnie being gone and this probably being the last chance for them to do one last thing together. But it’s all about money and politics. It always was, even in the early days of Black Sabbath. Nobody’s going to do anything for free – screw all that romantic nostalgia, your idols don’t care about that stuff. And I can understand that after a lifetime-achievment, they feel that they deserve to be paid what they are worth. Either everybody gets paid or nobody does. Or, there’ll be all that drama that we are witnessing now.

“1,000,000 Black Sabbath fans say yes to Bill Ward” on Facebook is now up to 40,889 members, and 39,185 of them are talking about this. I hope that it can make SOME sort of change.

I spent all morning digging through old cassette tapes, trying to find a Black Sabbath press-conference from 1989. I was absolutely sure I had already posted it here, but I just can’t find it. Searched my computer for the mp3-file and nothing… I guess I must have THOUGHT about it but just never converted it. It was from the KB-hall in Copenhagen, Denmark, 1989. 

The lineup was Tony Martin, Tony Iommi, Cozy Powell, Neil Murray and I think Geoff NIcholls, but I’m not 100% sure if he joined later… It was an interesting press conference, I’ll see if I can find it and post it.
As I was friends with Tony Martin at the time, I met Tony Iommi and the others several times when they toured in Europe. Just very pleasent and nice people, it feels personal on some small level to be reading about all the stuff that’s going on.

I hope Tony Iommi recovers and maybe someday there will be a real Sabbath reunion. As for Ozzy and friends – I’m not sure I’m that into the “All star band”-idea. I would have prefered to see him do his own thing – with the band he had on tour last year. They killed it on stage. But maybe people out there prefer the “special guests”-thing, I don’t know… Either way, I’m glad he’s doing this, because either way, it would have sucked if the scheduled dates would have been cancelled. 

Let’s just try to see the positive in all this and with Tony a speedy recovery!