BLACK SABBATH - Fade To Black? Page 2
by Martin Popoff

Does he take this in stride? Does it greatly bum him out?

"It totally depresses him. He's really, really down, I think it's so much to the point now, where it's psychological as well. He goes onstage every night thinking that his voice is going to break, and he's not a very happy person at the moment."

Geezer offers the following on the subject of warming up for the Sabbath shows. "I start playing bass for about 20 minutes, through some little practice amp, to get me hands flexible, and then I do about half an hour of yoga, stretching exercises, nothing strenuous. Because if I pull something (laughs), that's all. I think Tony just plays guitar for about an hour. And Bill does tons of exercises too, lots of stretching, and he lifts weights. Ozzy does skipping rope, his life cycle thing, and then he does half an hour of voice exercises. I think he'd better change his routine."

Does he have a voice coach or anything with him?

"No, but the voice coach that he does go to, gave him like a CD that he copies every night; he sings along to this CD."

As Butler has mentioned, Sabbath's set list has also taken a hit because of all this. "Unfortunately it's been filtered down again, to suit Ozzy's voice," sez Geez. "'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath', that's gone. We do at a few instrumental bits of songs, like 'Symptom Of The Universe' and 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath' and 'Sweet Leaf', things that Ozzy just can't sing. So we've just incorporated various riffs into some of the songs, so it's sort of like a medley of things. But I always enjoyed doing 'The Wizard'; that's gone. 'Into The Void' is gone; quite a few things are gone. I especially enjoyed 'The Wizard', with all the harmonica and stuff."

BLACK SABBATH - Fade To Black? Page 3