DisasTour: Black Sabbath's Born Again tour
In 1983, Black Sabbath had just come off the departure of their second singer Ronnie James Dio and drummer Vinny Appice, but Tony Iommi was able to find a replacement singer under the new management of Don Arden, Sharon Osbourne's father. That singer being none other than Ian Gillan, formerly (at the time) of Deep Purple. Bill Ward even returned to the band, making for a lineup that was the closest thing fans ever got to a Black Sabbath/Deep Purple supergroup. In fact, it was originally intended to be a supergroup project, but executive meddling forced them to keep using the Black Sabbath name. The resulting album, Born Again, was released to a polarized reception, but the dream lineup of Black Sabbath with Ian Gillan was enough to make it a commercial success.
... yeah.
Upon the album's release, the Born Again tour officially kicked off with legs planned for Europe and North America, which would turn out to be the most chaotic concert tour in the band's history.
Bill Ward departs again
Right off the bat, Bill Ward decided not to accompany the band on tour, citing health issues. He had been struggling with alcohol abuse for some time and had left once before during the band's Heaven & Hell tour with Dio because of his drinking problem. Toward the end of the Born Again recording sessions, Ward had started drinking once again and knew he would not be fit to tour, stating:
Bev Bevan, formerly of ELO.
With Ward now out of the picture, Black Sabbath recruited ex-Electric Light Orchestra drummer Bev Bevan as his replacement. While he had become an official member of Black Sabbath and even appeared in music videos for two songs from Born Again "Trashed" and "Zero the Hero", Bevan did not resonate well with the group's music at first and got off to a rough start. Particularly during a headlining show at the 1983 Reading Festival, which was only Bevan's second show with the band. Iommi remarked:
Bev left the group after the tour had ended. While he briefly return to the band in 1987 to record percussion overdubs for The Eternal Idol, he never toured with Black Sabbath again.
Ian Gillan's struggles
Ian Gillan in 1983
Gillan was required to learn Black Sabbath's older material so they could be performed on tour, but he had difficulty singing certain songs and even greater difficulty remembering many song lyrics. In a 1992 interview, Gillan stated:
Gillan's solution to this problem was to write the lyrics to Sabbath's song on paper and put them in a plastic folder on the stage floor, turning the pages with his feet. Unfortunately for Gillan, he didn't anticipated the reported six buckets of dry ice that engulfed the stage in mist, making it impossible to read the lyrics as he had planned. This resulted in him awkwardly peering over his microphone to sing a few lines and then disappearing beneath the mist to read the next few lines during concerts.
Gillan's voice also didn't go over too well with certain Sabbath numbers. The tour set list included most of the songs from Born Again, two Dio-era tracks and a number of classic fan favorites. While Gillan was able to sing some songs originally sung by Ozzy Osbourne well enough, he had a difficulty with others that simply translated poorly. Iommi himself said Gillan's performance of "Rock 'n' Roll Doctor" in particular was horrible and noted how certain Sabbath songs just didn't suit his vocal style.
Apparently, Gillan wasn't very sure-footed while performing with Sabbath either, having fallen over on stage at one point. Iommi recalled:
Staging issues
Before the tour started, Don Arden suggested opening the shows with audio of a newborn baby screaming over the speakers while a dwarf made to look just like the demonic baby on Born Again's ghastly album cover miming to the screaming. The band hated this idea, calling it in poor taste, but Arden insisted on it, saying "the kids will love it!" The dwarf was featured during the early stages of the tour before being dropped, perhaps due to the band members having enough.
Born Again tour promotional poster.
But what this tour is most infamous for is the oversized Stonehenge replicas used as backdrops. The other band members said it was Geezer Butler's idea to use the Stonehenge props, that when he was asked how big he wanted it, Butler simply answered with "life-size", which was taken literally by the designers. Butler, however, tells a different story. He claims it was Arden's idea and the reason it was so big was due to a mistake that sounds like something out of a comedy:
Both Gillan and Iommi have maintained it was indeed Butler's idea. Whatever the story was on how the Stonehenge replicas came to be, when it was finished, the band were left in utter dismay by how huge it was. Iommi recalled:
Photograph of oversized Stonehenge pieces, showing that at least a few pieces were able to be used.
The infamy of the Stonehenge set would be parodied in the Rob Reiner mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap a year after the tour. However, this was purely coincidental as the Stonehenge scene in the film was first featured in an early demo of the film from 1982. Still, the band members expressed amusement at the scene nonetheless.
Show cancellations
The North American leg of the Born Again tour would see the band plagued with several difficulties that led to several show cancellations mainly due to the oversized Stonehenge props. The band were able to fit some pieces into most of their shows, but for some venues, the columns were simply too high and the concerts were unable to take place. The first two North American shows in Canada had to be canceled because of this, leading the band having to delay kicking off their second leg for a week. Other cancellations were a result of poor ticket sales. While at least a dozen shows did manage to sell out, Sabbath had difficulty finding a consistently large enough audience for their tour in North America. Out of the 96 confirmed shows, about 30% had to be canceled for some reason or another.
Aftermath
Upon conclusion of the tour, the Born Again lineup had dissolved. Ian Gillan left his short-lived tenure Black Sabbath in disappointment and ultimately decided that he didn't want to be committed to the band long-term. The following year, he would go on to reunite with Deep Purple, whom he is still with to this day. Geezer Butler too departed once more and would not rejoin Black Sabbath again until 1991 to reunite with the Mob Rules lineup on Dehumanizer. While Bill Ward would reunite with the band for short reunions over the years, Born Again would be his last studio album with the group. Tony Iommi attempted to put Black Sabbath after the tour to work on a solo record, what would ultimately become Seventh Star. But like Born Again, the label refused to release it as a solo album and insisted on it being billed as Black Sabbath.
Thanks for reading!
Upon the album's release, the Born Again tour officially kicked off with legs planned for Europe and North America, which would turn out to be the most chaotic concert tour in the band's history.
Bill Ward departs again
Right off the bat, Bill Ward decided not to accompany the band on tour, citing health issues. He had been struggling with alcohol abuse for some time and had left once before during the band's Heaven & Hell tour with Dio because of his drinking problem. Toward the end of the Born Again recording sessions, Ward had started drinking once again and knew he would not be fit to tour, stating:
"There had been conversations during the Born Again sessions about going on tour and I was barely making it through the sessions, let alone touring. The thought of touring put me in such a state of panic, anxiety and dread that I couldn't possibly face the idea... but I was too ashamed to tell everybody. And rather than tell everybody, I drank and I disappeared. I escaped. That's how I used to do things: when I couldn't handle a situation, I would just drink and just run away... I came back to the United States, got hospitalized a couple of times, ended up back on the streets and, in the early part of January 1984, I went into my final detox."
With Ward now out of the picture, Black Sabbath recruited ex-Electric Light Orchestra drummer Bev Bevan as his replacement. While he had become an official member of Black Sabbath and even appeared in music videos for two songs from Born Again "Trashed" and "Zero the Hero", Bevan did not resonate well with the group's music at first and got off to a rough start. Particularly during a headlining show at the 1983 Reading Festival, which was only Bevan's second show with the band. Iommi remarked:
"It was just all over the shop. Bev didn't know [the songs] at all. He did try. As we went on the tour, he did get a lot better... We went to America and he done good. That particular stage, doing the Reading Festival, was a definite wrong for us."
Bev left the group after the tour had ended. While he briefly return to the band in 1987 to record percussion overdubs for The Eternal Idol, he never toured with Black Sabbath again.
Ian Gillan's struggles
Gillan was required to learn Black Sabbath's older material so they could be performed on tour, but he had difficulty singing certain songs and even greater difficulty remembering many song lyrics. In a 1992 interview, Gillan stated:
"I couldn't get into my brain any of these lyrics...I cannot soak in these words. There's no storyline. I can't relate to what they mean."
Gillan's solution to this problem was to write the lyrics to Sabbath's song on paper and put them in a plastic folder on the stage floor, turning the pages with his feet. Unfortunately for Gillan, he didn't anticipated the reported six buckets of dry ice that engulfed the stage in mist, making it impossible to read the lyrics as he had planned. This resulted in him awkwardly peering over his microphone to sing a few lines and then disappearing beneath the mist to read the next few lines during concerts.
Gillan's voice also didn't go over too well with certain Sabbath numbers. The tour set list included most of the songs from Born Again, two Dio-era tracks and a number of classic fan favorites. While Gillan was able to sing some songs originally sung by Ozzy Osbourne well enough, he had a difficulty with others that simply translated poorly. Iommi himself said Gillan's performance of "Rock 'n' Roll Doctor" in particular was horrible and noted how certain Sabbath songs just didn't suit his vocal style.
Apparently, Gillan wasn't very sure-footed while performing with Sabbath either, having fallen over on stage at one point. Iommi recalled:
"He once fell over my pedal board. He was waving at the people, stepped back and bang! He went arse over head big time."
Staging issues
Before the tour started, Don Arden suggested opening the shows with audio of a newborn baby screaming over the speakers while a dwarf made to look just like the demonic baby on Born Again's ghastly album cover miming to the screaming. The band hated this idea, calling it in poor taste, but Arden insisted on it, saying "the kids will love it!" The dwarf was featured during the early stages of the tour before being dropped, perhaps due to the band members having enough.
But what this tour is most infamous for is the oversized Stonehenge replicas used as backdrops. The other band members said it was Geezer Butler's idea to use the Stonehenge props, that when he was asked how big he wanted it, Butler simply answered with "life-size", which was taken literally by the designers. Butler, however, tells a different story. He claims it was Arden's idea and the reason it was so big was due to a mistake that sounds like something out of a comedy:
It had nothing to do with me. In fact, I was the one who thought it was really corny. [Arden] came up with the idea of having the stage set be Stonehenge. He wrote the dimensions down and gave it to our tour manager. He wrote it down in meters but he meant to write it down in feet. The people who made it saw fifteen meters instead of fifteen feet. It was 45 feet high and it wouldn't fit on any stage anywhere so we just had to leave it in the storage area. It cost a fortune to make but there was not a building on Earth that you could fit it into.
Both Gillan and Iommi have maintained it was indeed Butler's idea. Whatever the story was on how the Stonehenge replicas came to be, when it was finished, the band were left in utter dismay by how huge it was. Iommi recalled:
"We were in shock. This stuff was coming in and in and in. It had all these huge columns in the back that were as wide as your average bedroom, the columns in front were about 13 feet high, and we had all the monitors and the side fills as well as all this rock. It was made of fiberglass and wood, and bloody heavy. [...] We couldn't believe the size of it when we saw it. We seen it when we rehearsed [in Birmingham] for a whole and we'd only seen it on the floor; parts of it – they hadn't finished it... It gets to [the 1983] Reading [festival] and we've got these huge ones at the back that are just, like, gigantic."
The infamy of the Stonehenge set would be parodied in the Rob Reiner mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap a year after the tour. However, this was purely coincidental as the Stonehenge scene in the film was first featured in an early demo of the film from 1982. Still, the band members expressed amusement at the scene nonetheless.
Show cancellations
The North American leg of the Born Again tour would see the band plagued with several difficulties that led to several show cancellations mainly due to the oversized Stonehenge props. The band were able to fit some pieces into most of their shows, but for some venues, the columns were simply too high and the concerts were unable to take place. The first two North American shows in Canada had to be canceled because of this, leading the band having to delay kicking off their second leg for a week. Other cancellations were a result of poor ticket sales. While at least a dozen shows did manage to sell out, Sabbath had difficulty finding a consistently large enough audience for their tour in North America. Out of the 96 confirmed shows, about 30% had to be canceled for some reason or another.
Aftermath
Upon conclusion of the tour, the Born Again lineup had dissolved. Ian Gillan left his short-lived tenure Black Sabbath in disappointment and ultimately decided that he didn't want to be committed to the band long-term. The following year, he would go on to reunite with Deep Purple, whom he is still with to this day. Geezer Butler too departed once more and would not rejoin Black Sabbath again until 1991 to reunite with the Mob Rules lineup on Dehumanizer. While Bill Ward would reunite with the band for short reunions over the years, Born Again would be his last studio album with the group. Tony Iommi attempted to put Black Sabbath after the tour to work on a solo record, what would ultimately become Seventh Star. But like Born Again, the label refused to release it as a solo album and insisted on it being billed as Black Sabbath.
Thanks for reading!
