Having seen them a few times in their heyday I desperately wanted to be at their final gig at the NEC. It cost a bit but I made it, it was worth it – definitely one of those “I was there” moments.
I’m sure that the irony of the national media coverage is not lost on the band. Back in the 70’s they were dispised by the mainstream media for their supposed satan leanings and were generally mocked by the Music press for being too riff based. It certainly wasn’t cool to like them back them. My fav bands at the time were Yes and Zep but the Sabbs were always in my top ten. I’d say only 25% of my Music loving mates shared this view at the time. Whether they invented meavy metal or not has been the subject of much debate over the years but what is clearly beyond question is the long list of rock acts who have come out and cited them as a major influence. This is a relatively recent (20 years?) phenomenum.
So to the gig itself. Warm up from Rival Sons was great, “Electric Man” is a stonking good rocker to open with.
Sabbath themselves played for two hours. Much has been made of the fact that only one song came from the period after 1972 but their first four albums were always the strongest and nostalgia simply has to be the order of the day for your final ever show.
Ozzy was shambling across the stage and his vocals were patchy at times. His higher range is still largely intact but the low notes troubled him. His timing was also off in the first half of the show – evidenced by the singalong crowd being slightly ahead of him. However this merely highlighted what great musicians Geezer and Tony still are as they seamlessly changed pace to follow Ozzy. Becuae of the sheer overpowering riffage it is easy to overlook their technical skills but both of them demonstrated what I always knew.
Shortly Before the planned drum solo of Rat Salad, Ozzy left the stage after his voice seemed to break. I suspect that his exit was a Little earlier than planned because Geezer and Ozzy jammed around a medly of song openings (I recognised Supernaut, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and possibly Under the Sun but there were more). After an exhausting drum solo (never loved ’em myself but this one fitted the night) the band returned with Ozzy and finished the show in style. Whoever decided that giant balloons and metal were a marriage forged in heaven is a genius. It was huge fun.
People had clearly travelled much further than my 200 mile round trip to by there. I spoke to Swedes, Finns, Poles and Lebanese fans and Heard many more tongues that I didn’t recognise. I was there and I’m so glad I was.
Footnote. I’ve previously attended two other “last ever shows”. The Undertones then reappeared after 16 years and the Gang of Four after 8. God help us all!
Black Sabbath – The last gig reviewed
by 19 Comments
Good one Corgi.
Ozzy put the kaibosh on most post ’73 material from 1978 sadly. He’s never really been able to hit the notes consistently and preferred the comfort zone of Iron Man, Faires, Paranoid etc.
Weirdly, Ronnie Dio stuck to that era’s material too – would have been great to hear Dio on the more challenging 1973-75 stuff.
I never knew that Ronnie James even attempted any early Sabs stuff, just assumed he stuck to the two albums he did. How did it sound?
It’s all over the Live Evil album. Not great imv. Quite a large selection too – Paranoid, Children of the Grave, NIB, Black Sabbath, War Pigs, Sweet Leaf, Iron Man.
They wisely stuck to their own material when they (forcibly) re-emerged as ‘Heaven and Hell’.
@bartleby
Forgot about Live Evil, never got round to listening to it and maybe never will after giving War Pigs a go. Not sure it works. Those two Dio Sabbath albums were great ( Well, the debut was uniformly ace while Mob Rules had three or four belters). Was the third album ( When they were named Heaven and Hell?) much cop?
Must really reinvestigate the early Ozzy Sabs stuff, especially if it’s fashionable now…
I don’t know about ‘fashionable’ – is it?!
The Live at Hammersmith live album, documenting the Dio line-up, is a country mile better than Live Evil. Nothing from the H&H album really hits the same spot sadly. They were really on to something in 1980-81.
If you do investigate early Sabbath, I’d maybe start with the Paranoid album and go from there if you like what you hear. There’s a non-heavy curveball on most of the albums – on Paranoid, it’s this beauty, showing off Iommis’ masterful jazz guitar ability:
I have to admit to being a line-up purist when it comes to Sabbath. I’m inconsistent with this as it most certainly doesn’t apply to all bands. But, for me, Sabbath without Ozzy just wasn’t Sabbath. I’ve nothing against Ronnie and he was certainly the best vocalist that Rainbow had but. I even struggled with Sabbath without Bill Ward! Eventually I had to park my sensitivities because I’d otherwise miss the grand finale.
Bill should have been there. Had he been, I’d have been there. Disgraceful treatment – after all he went through in the 80s with his demons and unhappiness not playing with Ozzy.
Sabbath 2 was just glorious. Different beast. Happened a year before I got to know them, so no preconceptions maybe. Die Young and so on just so fresh after those last 2 Ozzy albums.
I’ve only recently started discovering Dio Sabbath after years of suffering from the same hang ups. Sign Of The Southern Cross is what did it for me.
Toni Iommi must have had the patience of Job for putting up with Ozzy’s b.s. all those years before finally kicking him out right after Never Say Die, -which happens to be one of my favorites! (I like my Sabbath proggy)
I think if they hadn’t retained the name Black Sabbath, the Dio team could have had more success. Who knows.
It’s certainly interesting that Iommi replaced his singer with someone with such a completely different style. A polarizing yet admirable decision in my book.
I think Tony had a wholesale rethink after the Van Halen gigs. His guitar styling and rig was brought bang up to date and the solos on H&H widdle all over anything on NSD from a great height. IMHV. Ozzy also benefited from the break and those first 2 solo albums are glorious.
To be fair to Oz, he wasn’t given much support or encouragement in those late 70s days. It’s kind of weird watching them live – Ozzy’s stuck out on the side of the stage as (rod of iron ruler) Iommi gets the central spotlight. As the albums took longer and got more intricate, Ozzy had little to do other than hang around with ne’er-do-wells and shoot his wife’s chickens.
I went to the last night with Ms Moseleymoles jnr who has been getting very metal recently. We’ve taken the kids to many festivals over the years – albeit mostly Moseley ones, but this was her first proper gig.
“Will it be inside?” She asked.
Although I had a heavy metal phase around ’82, (my first gig being Rainbow) Sabbath have never been top of my fav bands lists, but now being Brummies with the last night at the NEC as was, it seemed worth a go. The thing is that if you’ve got a charismatic lead ‘singer’ with a band of cracking musicians (Tony & Geezer were excellent) who are doing it because they love playing songs together then it’s going to be a great gig. And it was a very good gig indeed.
Mrs MM
BTW My last farewell gig were the Ramones….
These days there is usually an audience video on YouTube. Were the band recording the show for a possible video release?
https://youtu.be/BIlPLCc0WnA
Always difficult to know whether they are recording for commercial purposes these days but I assumed they were. As usual they were using cameras to show close ups on the large screen behind the band. I’m not sure whether Geezer and Tony had a pre-agreed understanding with the director but their faces rarely appeared on the screen – mostly close ups of fretboards.
It is a shame that the balloons had mostly gone by the time Paranoid started. For the previous song you simply could not see the band for balloons. Personally I found it hilarious – heavy metal obscured by balloons. Pink Sabbath meets Black Floyd.
For the football fans amongst you Geezer played a custom bass for Paranoid. It was decorated with Villa imagery.
Black Sabbath presented me with a brief moral dilemma yesterday*, as I was a-strolling in the Lincolnshire town of Louth and espied a Greatest Hits compo of theirs peeking out of a bag of stuff left outside a charity shop.** I actually considered picking it out of the bag, depriving said charity of a fiver or so. It looked very knackered but someone would buy it of course. Anyway I trotted on, convinced more than ever that the Sabs are exactly as evil as mums and dads said they were in 1971.
(*I’m told this is not uncommon)
(**how come I never see decent records inside charity shops? Ever time I look at the Afterword someone is casually remarking that they’ve just picked up a mint A&M God save The Queen in the 25p bin at their local Sue Ryder again, yawwwwn! All of the charity I shops I go to, no matter where they are, stock absolutely exclusively the kind of records only Beany would tolerate. Do the rest of the people on the AW quite literally live in the past?)
Doubt it would’ve been priced anywhere near a fiver, but good lad. You’re now one naughty token in credit. Spend it wisely.
Already spent.
hurrrr
Remind me Bill Ward – what happened there
The band seem to meekly defer to ‘management’ – Ozzy’s management in particular, allegedly. Bill was apparently presented with a different contract to the rest. It is supposed to have had stuff in that he felt was insulting – linked to his health, % of the take, cancellations possibly. He appealed to the others to help him out.
These days, everyone just wants a quiet life and the rest of the band have a history of giving in – the Dio reunion tour had to be renamed in the face of legal threats that, having been on the Reunion tour, Ozzy had now somehow reclaimed ownership of the BS name. Ultimately, nobody would stick up for Bill and that was that. Very sad. And wrong.
I think the Dio reunion having to call themselves Heaven & Hell was a blessing in disguise. It separated that band from the Sabbath name and prevented any “yeah, but not as good as the original” criticism. It enabled fans to take a fresh look at the period and appreciate it for what it was.
The Heaven & Hell live and studio albums were pretty good. They were let down a bit by the drummer – Vinnie Appice – who was sluggish and leaden and drags things down a bit.
Was it Alice Cooper who invented the balloons thing?