Lawyers, Guns & Money (well, no guns that we know of)

I like to follow the discussions on the forums at www.black-sabbath.com and www.bravewords.com. A popular recent topic of discussion has been the lawsuit that Ozzy Osbourne has brought against his former Black Sabbath bandmate, guitarist Tony Iommi. Iommi owns the legal rights to the name “Black Sabbath,” and Ozzy is asking for 50% of it, in order to force some sort of settlement in which the rights to the name would end up evenly split between the original members of the band: Iommi, vocalist Osbourne, bassist Geezer Butler, and drummer Bill Ward.

The original lineup last put out an album of new material in 1978. It was their eighth release, and had the ironic title of Never Say Die. Ozzy left the next year, through a combination of jumping ship and being pushed off. He sold his rights to the name Black Sabbath to Iommi in 1980, and Ward sold his rights in 1985. Butler also sold his rights to Iommi, though he worked with him in Black Sabbath occasionally as late as 1994.

This has become an issue because the original lineup reunited in 1997, and continued to play together during Ozzfest tours until 2005. They had an arrangement with promotional company Live Nation to sell Black Sabbath related merchandise. Iommi filed a lawsuit against Live Nation late in 2007, claiming that the arrangement ended in 2006, but that Live Nation had continued to sell Black Sabbath merchandise, without authorization. Iommi asked for $80 million in damages. The paperwork revealed clearly that Iommi held sole rights to the name Black Sabbath, since it contained copies of the agreements by which the other three original members signed away their rights.

This would suggest that Osbourne has no grounds for his suit. So why is he pursuing it? Well, as Damien, a moderator at Black-Sabbath.com has pointed out, Ozzy’s voice, and even his overall health, are in poor shape. He’s not up to extended touring anymore, and this shows badly in comparison with Ronnie James Dio, his first replacement as Black Sabbath singer. Dio will turn 67 this summer, and still has a very decent voice, and can still tour extensively. In fact, Iommi and Butler recently recorded a well-received album of new material with Dio (and with Ward’s first replacement, Vinny Appice, on drums). They are currently touring in support of this album, and previously had toured together in 2007 and 2008. Meanwhile, Ozzy’s attempt at a new TV show was cancelled, and his wife and manager Sharon’s talk show failed. The attempt of Ozzy to record an album of new material with the original Black Sabbath lineup, back around 2001, ended in failure, with only the new song Scary Dreams being played live. So this lawsuit by the Osbournes would seem like a way to both try and grab a share of the $80 million suit against Live Nation, and also to give the figurative finger to Iommi and Butler for having renewed success with Dio.

This current project with Dio is recording and touring under the name “Heaven & Hell,” which was the title of the first Black Sabbath album they made together, back in 1980. Ward had left after that, to be replaced by Appice on 1981’s Mob Rules and 1992’s Dehumanizer. Using a new name for the band served several purposes. It kept the Dio-fronted lineup distinct from the Osbourne fronted version, which had been inducted into several halls of fame. Audiences would know not to expect any Ozzy-era material to be played. And it allowed band members to continue to make good on past promises, such as Dio’s claim that he would never rejoin Black Sabbath and Butler’s insistence that he would only ever work again with Dio in a project separate from Black Sabbath. Yet now, this Osbourne lawsuit suggests a further motive in using the name Heaven & Hell. If the band isn’t called Black Sabbath, then Ozy can’t attempt to grab any piece of the pie.

There’s been no official word from the Iommi and Butler camps about the publicly announced Osbourne suit against Iommi. I imagine that lawyers are having a field day behind the scenes, sending messages back and forth. I’m very curious to see how this eventually plays out. While awaiting further developments, I’ve had a thought on the abortive album the original lineup tried to create in 2001.

Butler has indicated that six or seven songs were written, but that the material wasn’t very good, and thus was scrapped. This led me to realize something I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere. I believe that Iommi’s head, metaphorically, wasn’t in the right place to write music for an Ozzy-fronted album. Ozzy stated publicly that he didn’t want to release any new music that would tarnish the reputation of the original albums by being sub-par.

Of the eight albums the original lineup recorded, only the first five or six are regarded as classics (opinions vary on the sixth, Sabotage). The final two are mostly panned, and those who praise them do so from a very defensive point of view. Already by Sabotage, Iommi (the principal writer of Black Sabbath music), was trying numerous experiments to the band’s sound. He was seeking to stretch and do different things with his music, but only really found artistic and commercial success for his expanded range once Dio joined him for the ninth Black Sabbath album, Heaven & Hell, and the tenth, Mob Rules.

Iommi worked with a large array of players in the years up to the 1997 reunion. A host of knowns and unknowns were in Black Sababth, but none of them were Ozzy clones. After working with Dio’s powerful, operatic voice, Iommi continued to recruit singers with strong vocal abilities. The list includes Ian Gillan, Glenn Hughes, Ray Gillen, and Tony Martin (who sang on five different Black Sabbath albums). Dio came back for Dehumaizer, and Iommi made non-Black Sabbath albums with Glenn Hughes in 1996 and 2005.

At the same time, on the drum front, no effort was made to duplicate Ward’s “jazzy” style. Instead, heavy hitters who played with a lot of power were the order of the day. This list includes Eric Singer, Cozy Powell, a returned Appice, and Bobby Rondinelli. This all suggests to me that Iommi wanted to make the sort of music that came out under the Black Sabbath name post-Ozzy (and that he made with Hughes). He wasn’t forced into it, he could have tried to recreate the past, but he chose not to do so. When he did reconvene the Mob Rules and Dehumanizer lineup, as Heaven & Hell, there was no writer’s block or difficulty. Their 2009 album, The Devil You Know, came together quite easily, by all accounts (the title is a sly reference that, in a sense, they are still a form of Black Sabbath)

So my best guess is that Iommi had great difficulty in writing the simpler, more basic sort of music he had created for the first five or six albums with the original lineup. Many fans have chosen to blame Osbourne for the failed attempt at a 2001 album, and perhaps he was obstinate in various ways. But the real truth may be simply that the writing chemistry was no longer there the way it was thirty years earlier.