It really was a meeting
A pretty well put together documentary about Ian Gillan’s stint in Black Sabbath with all the Spinal Tap-ish stories you wanted to hear, and then some more.
Thanks to Uwe Hornung for the heads-up.
![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/mcbride6.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/mcbride6.jpg)
A pretty well put together documentary about Ian Gillan’s stint in Black Sabbath with all the Spinal Tap-ish stories you wanted to hear, and then some more.
Thanks to Uwe Hornung for the heads-up.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Hey, I missed the “Born Again aficionado” this time!
They say in the feature that “the dwarf” had played in Star Wars, that would make him the late Kenny Baker who was (inside) R2-D2.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/aug/13/kenny-baker-r2-d2-dies-star-wars
While it sounds fun today, letting the poor guy hit the floor without a mattress to cushion his fall was mean and dangerous even by on the road pranks standards.
And I don’t even think it was such a bad idea to start the gigs that way, you gotta give it to Don Arden, the ole Vaudevillain, he knew about the charms of Grand Guignol theater and its ability to put bums on seats.
July 13th, 2024 at 00:08I could swear Tony has done something with these recordings he now keeps releasing in quick succession, if not yet a remix then a glossy remaster?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYxTX1dGUeA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoERadO-0cI
And if you look at the YouTube comments – not a single negative one among them, confirming what huge reappreciation that album has undergone over the dcades.
If even more peopke begin to like it, I will have to disown it, being in a crowd feels unnatural to me. 😏
July 13th, 2024 at 01:52Yo,
That was a good snapshot collection of interviews etc of the era for sure. It seems these guys managed to keep-it-together really-well whilst the stars aligned for this incarnation of the band…
Spinal Tap indeed…
Peace !
July 13th, 2024 at 09:22Speaking of dwarfs: Did you hear about the clairvoyant midget who fled prison? The tabloids wrote: “SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE !!!”
A dad joke, I know. I nicked it off Martin Turner of Wishbone Ash who told it from stage as a “T-shirt merchandising joke”. Bassists can be funny.
July 13th, 2024 at 12:41It’s definitely not a new mix, hope they do a much better job if/when that happens.
July 14th, 2024 at 10:33Drums are still without any punch and mostly buried under the wall of guitars 🙂
Would like to hear a modern approach to a new mix, but it just might be that the recording itself is lacking what’s needed to make it sound “harder”
I always found that the hazy murkiness and distance/lack of directness in the original mix added to the overall nightmarish/unreal feel of the album. My greatest worry with a remix would be that it ends up like The Blair Witch Project
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBZ-POVsrlI
reshot with proper lighting, stable camera work and vivid colors!
Or Murnau’s Nosferatu in color. 😁
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6Tdkmdrtnw
That doesn’t mean that I’m against a remix, far from it, it would be interesting to have it just to compare it and I wouldn’t rule out a pleasant surprise hearing it differently either.
July 14th, 2024 at 23:17@ 5 – excellent points indeed re the drums & original recording, my sentiments precisely. Cheers.
July 15th, 2024 at 01:07I had a online listen to the 2024 remix of the Sabbath album Forbidden today. Cozy would still be spinning I fear. The drums actually sound better on the original cd & he loathed that. Some punters on the youtube site were also livid that Geoff Nichols keyboards have been wiped on a few tracks. I didn’t like the remix at all, however some might say that I would say that no matter what. Many commenting prefer the original release. As we often say, we better be careful what we wish for. Cheers.
July 15th, 2024 at 10:34I always took that brutal, dominating guitar sound as intentional. It sounded like ten Iommis playing together.
Bill Ward’s drumming struck me as very musical and atmospheric on that album, but I agree it didn’t have drum clinic quality crispness to it. It was in parts more percussion than drumming and certainly defied how most heavy drums were expected to sound in the 80ies.
Still, I know people love or hate the mix, even the musicians involved, but to me the overall production of Born Again is a conceptual piece of art.
July 15th, 2024 at 15:49MacGregor @8, I bought that boxed set and I was underwhelmed both by the remasters and the remix. Not great really. But I make the reservation of having to give it a few more spins really.
July 15th, 2024 at 19:55There is nothing wrong with Bill Ward’s playing, it is the recording & definitely the levels. The guitar & vocal are way too high on Born Again as they are on Sabotage. The dominating heavy riffing buries the drum sound & what about Iommi’s over the top guitar solo’s. Far too high in the mix. So it firstly needs a levelling as such in all the instruments. The fear I have after listening to these recent remixes is the heavy lower end is going to get heavier. There seems to be a’sub woofer’ mentality now in how drums should sound. The kick drum & toms are too heavy & muffled etc. And don’t talk about the poor old snare drum. Where has it disappeared to. Processed to the hilt unfortunately. It will be a fine line indeed with a Born Again remix. It has to be attempted though, better than not trying at all. It depends on the technology & who does it. However as we worry & hope, are all the producers & engineers puppets to the system these days. I do think they are in many ways. Cheers.
July 15th, 2024 at 23:15I’ve listened to the old and the new Forbidden mix now side by side repeatedly, Herr MacGregor, on my Panasonic six speaker active party box:
– The 2024 mix is no doubt crisper and also bass-wise more powerful,Tony Martin stands out more too as does Iommi’s guitar. There is overall more to hear than on the 1995 mix. Cozy’s drums are certainly not mixed up to the level Cozy would have liked to have them 😂, but they too are more “there”. If truth be told, Cozy preferred a squeaky-clean drum sound on record which didn’t fit equally well with all music and production styles, he preferred very much a drum clinic demonstration record sound (that seems dated today) as is evident on his solo albums, the type of sound you would caption “Sponsored by Paiste & Yamaha!”. I guess Iommi’s new mixer guy already brought out the drums as much as he could and that the source material just couldn’t provide more, miking a drum set well is an art.
– That said, the original 1995 mix isn’t awful, but rather than go for individual audibility of the instruments and voice it opted for a not so defined grungy backdrop of music. That was in line with prevailing tastes at the time, after all the record company wanted Sabbath to sound “contemporary” on that album. And while Sabbath are often called the godfathers of Grunge, their 70ies output really didn’t meet Grunge production criteria. Sabbath didn’t mind their albums sounding well and state-of-the-art. Just listen to Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Sabotage. (It doesn’t surprise me that the Sabbath musicians weren’t all too happy about the initial mix, they were from a different generation than Kurt Cobain.)
– The album itself is not so bad. It’s not up there with Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Sabotage, Heaven & Hell or Born Again, but I certainly prefer it to the bland Seventh Star, Glenn or no Glenn. The amount of derision a little rapping over ‘The Illusion Of Power” caused (and apparently causes), amuses me, I think it’s a good, musically interesting track and Ice T’s rap slots right in without sounding cheesy. Eternal Idol, Headless Cross, Tyr and Cross Purposes were all a little safe/pedestrian to me, Forbidden is more inventive and stretched the format at least a little.
– Looking back, the one time I saw Sabbath with Tony Martin must have been on the Forbidden tour. I always located it more around the time of Tyr, but it must have been the mid 90s. By then they were playing large clubs/small halls in Germany, the smallest venues (and those weren’t sold out) they ever played here since the earliest 70ies. Cozy/Neil were a formidable unit as always, but I didn’t get the impression that they felt they really belonged with Sabbath. Tony Martin sang well, but he was no Ozzy, Ronnie or Ian in charisma.
July 16th, 2024 at 04:52Stop press: I checked the tour dates on a Sabbath site, I was wrong, it was more likely the Headless Cross Tour in the fall of 1989 and they already played a comparatively small hall in Frankfurt not usually employed for rock, much less heavy metal concerts.
July 16th, 2024 at 05:03@ 12 – I was going to listen the original Forbidden cd today but I wasn’t in the mood for all that heavy music. I will shortly though & I am only listening to the new remix online, not on disc. Forbidden is an album that didn’t grab me, only a couple of songs I liked. Martin’s vocal sound & approach at times was & is a little grating, forced even & a little hoarse on a few tracks. It has been a few decades since I have played that album. A more grunge approach? In a way possibly & competing against the tide at that time. The same with Dehumanizer to my ears, a very ‘industrial’ approach there, but it has better songs for me. I do remember you said you went to a Headless Cross concert back then. From my memory of reading about the Forbidden tour Bob Rondinelli ended up replacing Cozy for the tour as Cozy spat the dummy over that recording. Anyway apparently Bill Ward played on a few concerts on that Forbidden tour, if my memory serves me well. Regarding Sabbath’s history in the 70’s I have never thought of them as grunge at all. Stoner is the saying the media use for those first 4 albums. For me it is just good old hard heavy rock most of the time, with SBS & Sabotage being a little more diverse & obviously as you also say, their best efforts overall. Cheers.
July 16th, 2024 at 12:06I loved the album and tour and look forward to Iommi’s remix from the original tapes.
July 18th, 2024 at 06:23