Ozzy Osbourne not too long ago praised his Black Sabbath alternative, Ronnie James Dio, for doing “a good job” together with his previous band — though he by no means listened to the albums they made collectively.
The Prince of Darkness mirrored on his successor in a new episode of “Ozzy Speaks” on SiriusXM. “Ronnie did a good job,” Osbourne admitted of the singer, who first joined Sabbath from 1979-82 and sang on 1980’s Heaven and Hell and 1981’s Mob Rules. (He returned a decade later for 1992’s Dehumanizer, and he later shaped Heaven & Hell with Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler, releasing The Devil You Know in 2009.)
Still, being changed within the band he co-founded was a troublesome capsule for Osbourne to swallow. “At the time I was fucking sad because … they were the only thing that ever really happened to me,” he mentioned.
Osbourne counseled his Sabbath bandmates for “[getting] somebody completely different” slightly than hiring one of many countless “Ozzy sound-alikes” who have been clamoring for the place. But though he revered Dio, he by no means listened to Black Sabbath’s Dio-era albums. “It’s like my ex-wife … [when] you leave a band like that, it’s just like getting divorced,” he mentioned. “You don’t go, ‘How’s your new bloke? Is he better than me?'” Although Dio’s preliminary tenure with Black Sabbath was quick, it revitalized the band creatively and commercially, and plenty of followers rank Heaven and Hell among the many band’s finest works.
Iommi additionally praised his former bandmate in a current Kerrang! interview, calling their collaboration “a really exciting period for us.”
“Ozzy was great, but Ronnie was a different singer altogether,” the guitarist added. “We wanted somebody who was different; we didn’t want to bring somebody in who was gonna sound similar to Ozz. So it was good to have somebody totally different, and Ronnie’s voice and the way he approached the songs allowed us to be able to try different things in a different way than what we’d done before. It opened up a lot more variety for us, really.”
Osbourne finally reunited with Sabbath from 1997-2006 and once more from 2011 till their retirement in 2017. His last tenure with the band additionally produced the chart-topping studio album 13. With the good thing about hindsight, the singer acknowledged that the Dio interval was fruitful for his cohorts. “Looking back, it was the best thing that ever happened,” he mentioned. “Because they had a good start again.”
Black Sabbath Albums Ranked
From Ozzy to Dio and past, we take a look at all the band’s studio LPs.
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