Never Say Die!
| Never Say Die! | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by Black Sabbath | ||||
| Released | 28 September 1978 | |||
| Recorded | January–May 1978 | |||
| Studio | Sound Interchange, Toronto, Ontario | |||
| Genre | Heavy metal, hard rock | |||
| Length | 45:41 | |||
| Label |
Vertigo Warner Bros. (US/Canada) |
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| Producer | Black Sabbath | |||
| Black Sabbath chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |    |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | |
Never Say Die! is the eighth studio album by English rock band Black Sabbath, released in September 1978. It was the last studio album with the band's original lineup and also the last studio album to feature original vocalist Ozzy Osbourne until 2013's 13. It was certified Gold in the U.S on 7 November 1997 and as of November 2011 sold 133,000 copies in the United States since the SoundScan era. Critics called it unbalanced, scattering its energy in too many directions.
At the time of the recording of Never Say Die! the members of Black Sabbath were all heavily involved in drug and alcohol abuse. Prior to recording, vocalist Osbourne briefly quit the band and was temporarily replaced by former Savoy Brown and Fleetwood Mac vocalist Dave Walker. In 1992, guitarist Tony Iommi explained to Guitar World, "We never wanted him to leave, and I think he wanted to come back – but no one would tell the other how they felt. So we had to bring in another singer and write all new material." The band wrote a handful of songs with Walker, with that short-lived line-up even performing an early version of what would later become "Junior's Eyes" on the BBC programme Look Hear. Osbourne eventually rejoined the band, refusing to sing any of the songs written with Walker. Iommi elaborated in the 1992 Guitar World piece,
... Bill Ward had to sing on one track ("Swinging The Chain") because Ozzy refused to sing it. We ended up having to write in the day so we could record in the evening, and we never had time to review the tracks and make changes. As a result, the album sounds very confused.
The songs with Walker were redone, including "Junior's Eyes", which was rewritten to be about the then-recent death of Osbourne's father. "We had a few internal problems", Osbourne admitted to Sounds magazine at the time. "My father was dying, so that put us out for over three months with the funeral and everything. I left the band for three months before we got back together to record it." However, the writing was on the wall, with Osbourne stating in his memoir I Am Ozzy, "No one really talked about what had happened. I just turned up in the studio one day – I think Bill had been trying to act as peacemaker on the phone – and that was the end of it. But it was obvious things had changed, especially between me and Tony. I don't think anyone's heart was in it anymore."
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Wikipedia