BLACK SABBATH - Fade To Black?
by Martin Popoff

In light of Ozzy's recent vocal problems and the cancellation of selected Ozzfest dates, it looks like Geezer Butler and Tony Iommi might get that dual solo tour on the blocks in earnest - although not necessarily sooner, given, at press time, what Geezer calls essentially a spreading out of Ozzfest dates.

Butler is itching to get out in front of his third solo record Ohmwork, and fortunately, he's found a way to keep the concept firmly in mind. "Well, Pedro (Howse - guitars) is on the road with me, and I saw Chad (Smith - drums) the other week in Chicago, and I saw Clark (brown - vocals) in Boston, and me and Pedro have been doing signings every day, at every Ozzfest, of the GZR album. Yeah, so we've been in touch. But no, it's hard to do both things. I mean, we do the GZR signings at Ozzfest, and that's about it. You can't really concentrate on doing two things at once, especially with all the problems going on. We've had to change the Sabbath set around to suit Ozzy's voice even more. So it's just been one problem after another. So we haven't really had time to think about GZR."

Switching gears to current, higher stakes concerns, Geezer addresses the problems with Oz. "Well, he's never been a fan of doing back-to-back gigs. I mean, that's where the problem lies. I don't know if it's psychological with him or what. It's like, from the first back-to-back gig we did, the second night, he blew his voice completely, and he hasn't really recovered since. So now we've had to drop all the back-to-back gigs, and we're rescheduling one of them. But no, that's where the problem lies. I mean, soon as everybody saw that there were going to be back-to-back gigs, we said to the promoter, 'There's no way he's going to do those gigs.' He never has done. He's never done back-to-back gigs, and now he's proven, unfortunately, he can't do back-to-back gigs."

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