“IT WAS LIKE HE CAME FROM ANOTHER PLANET”
The godfathers of heavy metal were starting to feel their age. 1978 was supposed to be a year of celebration for Black Sabbath – their 10th anniversary – but in reality, the group was falling apart. “The fun of being in a rock band was dwindling for me,” Ozzy Osbourne later admitted. “I don’t think anyone’s heart was in it anymore.” Ozzy had actually taken a leave of absence from Sabbath in autumn ’77, officially to spend time with his father Jack, who was dying of cancer. When NME interviewed the singer in November ’77, he seemed in no mood to return to the unit – “I just want a simple life for a while,” he insisted – and when Sabbath performed War Pigs and Junior’s Eyes on BBC TV’s Look! Hear! programme in January 1978, former Fleetwood Mac frontman Dave Walker was tasked with lip-syncing Ozzy’s vocals. So it was something of a surprise when the singer returned to the fold ahead of the Birmingham band’s departure to Toronto to record their eighth studio album, Never Say Die! Though old tensions occasionally surfaced during fraught studio sessions – “we were all fucked-up with drugs and alcohol,” Ozzy recalled – all four musicians were excited about the prospect of returning to the UK for their 10th anniversary tour in May. Sabbath had taken AC/DC out as support on their last run of European gigs, and had struggled to match the livewire Aussies for energy, so Ozzy instructed Sabbath’s booking agency to find “a bar band from LA” to open the show each night on their homecoming dates. As luck would have it, their US label, Warners, had just such an act on their books.
The name Van Halen meant nothing to the members of Sabbath, so, out of curiosity, ahead of their scheduled stage time on the tour’s opening night at Sheffield City Hall on May 16, Ozzy and his bandmates Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward, shuffled out of their dressing room to catch the end of the Californian band’s set. They arrived side-stage just as the group’s guitarist, 23-year-old Eddie Van Halen, launched into the second track of his band’s recently released self-titled album.
wasn’t originally on the list of songs Van Halen had pencilled in to appear on their debut album. Producer Ted Templeman had popped out of the control booth at Sunset Sound Recorders to grab a coffee when he first heard Eddie Van Halen playing the 102-second instrumental between takes. “What’s that?” Ted asked. “Ah,
