The Two Iconic Bands Black Sabbath Tried To Emulate on an Album That Ozzy Osbourne Called “Disgusting”

Chronologically speaking, Never Say Die! was the last Black Sabbath album to feature vocalist and founding member Ozzy Osbourne before his initial departure. But from a fly-on-the-wall perspective of the album that precedes it, Technical Ecstasy, the fracturing of the band had already become irreparable by the fall of 1976.

The making of Technical Ecstasy highlighted the growing creative and professional differences among Black Sabbath band members. Guitarist and producer Tony Iommi was interested in moving in a more commercial direction—a natural follow-up choice to their 1976 album, We Sold Our Soul For Rock ‘N’ Roll. To figure out what might work best commercially speaking, Iommi looked to other stars for inspiration.

That really rubbed Ozzy Osbourne the wrong way. “Tony was always saying, ‘We’ve gotta sound like Foreigner,’ or ‘We’ve gotta sound like Queen.’ I thought it was strange that the bands we’d once influenced were now influencing us,” Osbourne said, per Classic Rock.

This Black Sabbath Record Marked the “Beginning of the End”

The members of Black Sabbath were drifting apart from each other in more ways than one. Some of it traced back to their musical differences, with Ozzy Osbourne later saying he felt like the heavy metal pioneers were trying to become a jazz band. “Is this really Black Sabbath? I’d just f*** off,” he later said.

External factors played into the group’s demise, too. Speaking to Guitar World in the early 2000s, bassist Geezer Butler laughed, “That was the ‘beginning of the end’ album, that one. We were managing ourselves because we couldn’t trust anybody. Everybody was trying to rip us off, including the lawyers that we’d hired to get us out of our legal mess. It was really just getting to us around then, and we didn’t know what we were doing. Obviously, the music was suffering. You could just feel the whole thing fall apart.”

Osbourne stayed in Black Sabbath for one more album, Never Say Die!, before he left the band, and Ronnie Dio stepped in. In hindsight, Osbourne had little positive to say about his final album with Black Sabbath for several years. “It was the worst piece of work that I’ve ever had anything to do with. I’m ashamed of that album. I think it’s disgusting.”

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