How Black Was Sabbath? Ask DAVE TANGYE... Page 2
by Martin Popoff

David and Graham were right in the thick of it, touring with the band during the golden years, David as Ozzy's personal assistant through the Sabotage tour and the Technical Ecstasy album and tour, Graham on board in a number of capacities for much longer. The stories are mostly previously unheard, almost always humourous and very candid. The rare photos match the positive and truly insider nature of the text.

David is particularly pleased with the meticulous history of the band leading up to the fateful self-titled debut album in 1970.

"We wanted to put the record straight on a lot of things, the confluence of it, the really early Sabbath stuff, how they started, like for example the band Mythology. It had been totally distorted in other publications. And it wasn't fair on guys like Neil Marshall, who started Mythology. He really worked hard to get that band going. And Tony actually came to that band. It was a credited band before he got there, you know what I mean? A lot of people have said, 'Well, Tony did this and Tony did that,' but he basically came up to Cumberland to work and that's how it was. I'm very pleased with the early part. A lot of things like Keith Jefferson and his photographs. And Geoff Lucas was absolutely brilliant, because Geoff was with them from day one basically. So we got everyone in the book we wanted to get into the book. There were a couple people missed out that were a bit miffed about it, but it was our book and we got in what we wanted to get in (laughs), and that was it."

The first edition hard cover is still available through David and Graham at the above-stated website (www.blacksabbath.co.uk) and it comes highly recommended, especially so given the lack of good Sabbath books on the market.