OFF: Sabbath vocalists

[John A Swartz]

All right, if Sabbath is gonna dominate the BOC-L discussions today,
then so be it.

Some of what I say here has already been said before, but hey, re-hashing
is one of our forte's! ;-)

Ozzy was the original, so one can always argue that he was the best.
Definitely not the best vocally, but he fit in well with the band's
style - and besides, who sez rock and roll always has to sound "pretty"?
And, in his own wacky way, he is a great performer live (endangering
the lives of bats notwithstanding).

Dio definitely brought a whole new direction to the band, which as
someone else pointed out, made the band sound like, well Dio.  Definitely
some great work (especially the *Heaven and Hell* album, which has a
sound alot like Dio's first few solo albums after leaving Sabbath --
I thought at the time that *Holy Diver* was incredible, with *The
Last in Line* being even stronger).  As for singing the Ozzy tunes,
some of it worked (Dio did a pretty good rendition of "Iron Man" and
"Children of the Grave"), but some of it sounded kinda silly (like
"Paranoid" and "NIB").

Ian Gillan, IMHO, was a fantastic vocalist for Sabbath.  Some of the
tracks on *Born Again* (like "Disturbing the Priest", and "Hotline")
are fantastic.  Live, Gillan was great with some of the older Sabbath
stuff as well, coming closer to Ozzy in some songs (like "Paranoid"
and "War Pigs") than Dio ever did, and some of his hellish screams
on songs like "Black Sabbath" blew both Ozzy's and Dio's renditions
away.

Alas, I can comment no further as I didn't pay attention to post-Gillen
Sabbath.

John