After releasing their final album, titled “13,” Black Sabbath embarked on their final tour which ended in 2017. Although you couldn’t really hear these new songs on tour, the album had some great moments. Sure, it’s not a classic, at least it doesn’t have that status so far, but it’s worth checking out.
To Ozzy Osbourne, however, it wasn’t exactly the best thing ever. In fact, according to what he said in an interview with Stereogum, he didn’t really enjoy recording this album. Aside from Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler, he was also in the studio with producer Rick Rubin and Rage Against the Machine drummer Brad Wilk. Discussing the process, he was asked whether he enjoyed the sessions, to which he responded:
“Not really, because to be perfectly honest, I didn’t really get a charge from the album. Although Rick Rubin is a good friend of mine, I wasn’t really… I was just singing.
“It was like stepping back in time, but it wasn’t a glorious period. Though Geezer [Butler] did a lot of lyric writing for me, which he’s very, very good at. It wasn’t an earth-shattering experience for me.”
Of course, the obvious elephant in the room was the absence of drummer Bill Ward who would round up the band’s original lineup. There’s a lot of stuff surrounding that whole drama and Ozzy seems to regret that they didn’t manage to make it work with Bill. When asked about whether Black Sabbath is really over, Ozzy said:
“I would like to say it’s completely done. I think it’s time. The only thing I really regret, to be honest, is that Bill Ward didn’t play on the album. It wasn’t really a Black Sabbath album. I’m not saying that one day we might not all go in a room and come up with the perfect Black Sabbath album.“
Going back to the album, he said:
“But I’ll say, [13] wasn’t recorded the way Black Sabbath recorded records. We’d gone right back past the point where we took charge, back to when someone else had full control of our recording. Which we never did from ‘Vol. 4’ onwards.”
Photo: Egghead06 (Ozzy Farewell 2017)
