Black Sabbath drummer Vinny Apice discussed the late Ronnie James Dio’s dislike of singing Ozzy Osbourne material in a new Another FN Podcast With Izzy Presley interview.
The interviewer asked if replacing Bill Ward caught him hatred from fans, and Apice said, “Not really, because you’re the drummer — you’re sitting in the back… Ronnie [James Dio] had to put up with people in the front, like ‘Where’s Ozzy [Osbourne]?’ signs and all this ‘Where’s Ozzy?’ stuff, and he had to do that. And he hated singing those songs — he hated singing ‘Iron Man’ and ‘Sweet Leaf’ and the Ozzy songs. That’s why eventually [Sabbath reunited as] Heaven & Hell years later, so we didn’t play the old [Ozzy-era] stuff anymore.”
Vinny claimed that Dio “sounded great” singing out the Osbourne songs, despite disliking them. “It was totally different. It was just a powerful voice singing the melody and the whole thing. So it was incredible.”
Ronnie James Dio told Absolute Radio in 2009, “”We didn’t have to worry about that or feel bad about not playing those songs — about playing ‘Iron Man’ or ‘Paranoid’ or ‘Black Sabbath’ or ‘Fairies Wear Boots’ — we didn’t have to do that, because we tried to differentiate ourselves by a timeline and by a name that, of course, that spoke so much of… You think of Heaven & Hell, you usually think of that song, so now you think of this band. And I think it was wonderful that it worked so well.”
