Tony Iommi looked back at Black Sabbath replacing Ozzy Osbourne with Ronnie James Dio in 1979 and the reasons why the band had no choice but to make the switch.
The guitarist recalled the big transition during an interview with Planet Rock. He shared about the band parting ways with Ozzy, "I think the major problem started from drugs.
"We'd been about for a while at that point and done a lot of touring - a lot of touring. It came to a point where we [needed] to do another album. And off we go to Los Angeles to do another album. And we had a house in L.A. that we were there for 11 months to rehearse in the house.
"We'd never done anything, basically. We came up with a lot of riffs and stuff, but we'd never actually done much as far as putting songs together. Because the whole thing was falling apart. Everybody's going in their own individual rooms. And at the end of the day, it just was disastrous, we just weren't producing anything.
"It was very difficult, because I can say, 'Ozzy was the first one to have to go,' but it was hard. We had to do something. It was me that used to take the stuff to the record company, and they're going, 'How's the rehearsals? How's the writing going?' 'Oh, great.' Lie. "When can we hear some stuff?' 'Oh, fairly soon.'
"We hadn't got anything. We got some music ideas, but not much vocal ideas. And Ozzy was going through probably a really awkward stage... We just got pressurized so much into, 'We've gotta do something.' Money was going out the window. It was costing a fortune staying there.
"Everything was coming to a head, and we had to say, 'Well, what are we gonna do? We're either gonna call it a day or break up or we've gotta try and find another singer.' We'd already had this problem slightly before... Ozzy left for a short while and came back. But in L.A., it just came to a crunch and it all came to an end." Read more and watch the interview here.
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