Hair Rock WI: Black Sabbath Releases Headless Cross in August 1982

Let's say Dio leaves the band a little sooner, and Iommi in a stroke of creative genius pumps out the album and brings in Tony Martin to replace Dio.


Does the release allow Black Sabbath to continue charting Gold? IOTL, they released a bunch of stinkers after DIO left until Headless Cross, which at this point was too little too late, as Black Sabbath was reduced to touring in Soviet-bloc states their popularity had waned so profoundly.

True hair rock fans may appreciate that Headless Cross was a thoroughly phenomenal album, whose short length and dated production would be non-factors in 82. It is certainly a better Album than any of Dio's and his first three were all pretty good.
 
It would take something. By 82 Black Sabbath was off everyones radar I & my peers werent even listening to BS anymore.
They went gold in 81, and Dio rode that success to two platinum and a gold album. So, Sabbath still had a following, but lost it because they released a bunch of crap. Headless Cross is probably their best album since Paranoid and has a very 1982 sound.
 
I was like a lot of people & was not following heavy metal any more. Even then the FM rock stations were becoming to formulaic & playing a few over familiar hits into the ground. How many times can you hear Stairway to Heaven before you cringe. This did not affect the hard core head bangers but the damage to rock radio by the corporate suits was already in place. Rock radio in large regions had shifted to far from cutting edge to playing a safe formula. It may have been post 1986 before I got a good listen to HC.
 
Does the release allow Black Sabbath to continue charting Gold? IOTL, they released a bunch of stinkers after DIO left until Headless Cross, which at this point was too little too late, as Black Sabbath was reduced to touring in Soviet-bloc states their popularity had waned so profoundly.

True hair rock fans may appreciate that Headless Cross was a thoroughly phenomenal album, whose short length and dated production would be non-factors in 82. It is certainly a better Album than any of Dio's and his first three were all pretty good.

Don't forget the first Tony Martin album Eternal Idol which was good too.

I find it odd that Headless Cross wasn't more successful, at least to the degree Dio's solo work ever found success. Strong vocals, strong songwriting, very disappointing to me the album is so underrated. And if they followed it up with an album on the quality of Tyr, it could breath at least some new life into them commercially. In 1982, it would definitely be received even better.
 
The song the SHining was good, but the album not so much. Headless Cross was solid through and through. Even the B Side Cloak and Dagger was real good too.

 
Would "Headless Cross" with a different singer have made a difference in Black Sabbath's fortunes in the 80s? Not long tem IMO.

Admittedly, the band was probably starting to feel hamstrung stylistically by Dio's "Dungeons and Dragons" schtick (I remember reading a comment by Vivian Campbell [who played guitar for Dio] in a Guitar Player Magazine interview back in the 80s [yes, I've been playing guitar for decades :)], where he stated that if Ronnie James would lose his wizard image, he would probably do better artistically and commercially), but getting a singer like Tony Martin IMO, only helps in the short term due to Tony Martin being a generic hard rock/mainstream metal singer (again in IMO - sorry I really preferred thrash metal, punk, and alt rock [with the notable exception of Iron Maiden, who were cool, since they seemed to do their own thing] during most of the 80s ) . Unfortunately, most singers in the early 80s, fit that mold.

So, a singer like Tony Martin moves Black Sabbath towards the mainstream hard rock/metal sound, and probably gives them some modest success, but the chances are that it won't last, due to Sabbath being seen as a "jump on the bandwagon/me too" kind of band since the sound they would have, would not be something new. Throw in the fact that by 1983 or 84, hair metal will become THE popular form of mainstream metal (no way Black Sabbath could pull it off, without looking ridiculous - songs about getting drunk or high, wanting to have sex with some hot babe, and partying are so not them), and that thrash metal will become the metal genre that is considered hip and cool during that same time period, and the band ends up back at Square 1 fortune-wise, and still making music like "Zero The Hero" that makes you say ecch!, due to searching for a sound to make them relevant again.

As IOTL, Grunge will probably be what helps to start reviving Black Sabbath's fortunes, due to the grunge crowd being turned on to the band, by many of the noted grunge acts mentioning that they like 70s era Black Sabbath music (yes, many grunge bands [Sound Garden for instance] liked Sabbath). Even then, it'll still take Ozzy reuniting with 'Sabbath, to really get things going for the band, since so many people don't consider Black Sabbath, Black Sabbath without Ozzy Osborne.
 
The thing is, I really can't see a lot of people more fit to take Dio's place in Black Sabbath than Tony Martin. They'd have to go in a whole different direction, and since Headless Cross is so comparable to solo Dio, why not have Martin? You'd have to change the whole type of album of what Headless Cross is, really.
 
Admittedly, the band was probably starting to feel hamstrung stylistically by Dio's "Dungeons and Dragons" schtick...

That's Headless Cross though. It's all about preventing demonic temptation and possession...every single song.

So, a singer like Tony Martin moves Black Sabbath towards the mainstream hard rock/metal sound, and probably gives them some modest success, but the chances are that it won't last, due to Sabbath being seen as a "jump on the bandwagon/me too" kind of band since the sound they would have, would not be something new.

That didn't stop the following has beens from doing exactly that and going gold in the 80s

Y&T
Deep Purple
Bad Company
Aerosmith
Alice Cooper
Kiss

Need I go on? In fact, what Sabbath did wrong is that they did not sell out harder. Though the OP does not postulate a more succesful Sabbath, as the lyrics on Headless Cross definitely brings the band more in a Dio direction. However, in 82 it might have sounded good enough that it would have captured the sort of audience that Dio's first three albums did.

(yes, many grunge bands [Sound Garden for instance] liked Sabbath).

Their early stuff actually sounded like Sabbath.
 
Hair Rock? But actually, i would have liked to see Sabbath hire Geoff Tate after Dio. You butterfly away Queensryche, but i can see Tate doing well with them, he can definitely pull off the classics, and we might even get some of the more socio-political lyrics that Queensryche did IOTL (Can you imagine Operation Mindcrime as a Sabbath album?).
 
Top