Never Say Die! Tracklist
Never Say Die! is the eighth studio album by Black Sabbath, released in September 1978. It was the last studio album with the band’s original line-up and also the last studio album to feature original vocalist Ozzy Osbourne until 2013’s 13. It was certified Gold in the U.S on 7 November 1997 and as of November 2011 sold 133,000 copies in the United States since the SoundScan era.
The album marked the end of an era, the band members were all addicted to heavy drugs, with Ozzy even in a worse situation – being kicked off of the group after the release. The record is considered by many the worst from ‘The Ozzy Era,’ but it also has some great stuff, like “Never Say Die,” “Johnny Blade,” “Hard Road,” and “Swinging the Chain,” with Bill Ward on vocals.
“Never Say Die!” Q&A
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What have the artists said about the album?
We’d make plans to get together and he’d pull these disappearing acts. We were so far gone it would take us a while to notice he was missing. Someone would say, ‘Well, where’s Ozzy?’ And then we’d go, ‘Oh, well I guess he’s fucked off again. He’ll be back soon.’ And that just meant me and Bill [Ward] would return to what we were doing, which wasn’t good for anybody, especially us – lots of drugs and drinking, mostly. The situation was a mess. We were already behind. So the record label was bothering us and we didn’t have anything to show them. Ozzy wants us to start all over. We’re writing in the day and trying to record at night. I think there was some good stuff there, but it’s hard to keep your footing when you feel like things are falling apart. Let’s just say, well, it definitely wasn’t our finest hour, I can tell you that.
Right before we were supposed to record Never Say Die, Ozzy quit the band. We never wanted him to leave, and I think he wanted to come back—but no one would tell the other how they felt. So we had to bring in another singer and write all new material. Then, two days before we were finally ready to record again, Ozzy decided to come back. But he wouldn’t sing any of the stuff we had written without him! Bill had to sing on one track because Ozzy refused to sing it. We ended up having to write in the day so we could record in the evening, and we never had time to review the tracks and make changes. As a result, the album sounds very confused.
The problems with Ozzy continued, and eventually, we knew we had to bring in somebody else. Geezer and Bill would say to me, ‘Either Ozzy goes or we go.’ At that point, Bill was becoming the businessman of the band, with his briefcase and his haircut, and he fucking goes and tells Ozzy, ‘Tony wants to get rid of you.’ [laughs] To this day, Ozzy thinks I fired him on my own, when it was really the other two who wanted him out. But I wasn’t pleased with him either. Mixing the album even caused my marriage to break up. As with Technical Ecstasy, everyone went on a holiday when it came time to mix. My wife kept asking, ‘How come you’re the only one working while everyone is in bloody Barbados?’ [laughs]
