I wrote this back around 1998 or 1999 on a rock discussion mailing list… found it again and decided to post it here for posterity… Obviously, some things have changed, but it was true to the spirit of the times. And I like it, so there.

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Tony owns the name for Black Sabbath, right? Well, what would happen if he needed some cash and sold it off to the highest bidder, who then tried to put together a band made up of guys that had played with Sabbath before, even if he couldn’t get the original members.

So he can’t get any originals, but he finds Dio, Bobby Rondinelli, and Don Airey have somehow become available. Bob Daisley crops up as well. For a guitarist, he has some tough shoes to fill. It would have to be a top-notch guy (or at least someone with a reputation for being top-notch), who can play really loud… someone like… RITCHIE BLACKMORE!

YES! Ritchie Blackmore is the new guitarist for Black Sabbath. He’s got a very appropriate name for it, after all. The good news is that he’s used to being the boss of everyone else in this lineup, as they’ve all been in Rainbow with him. The new album title is, of course, “Ritchie Blackmore’s Black Sabbath Featuring the Rainbow All-Stars.” Dio quits after the release of the album and Joe Lynn Turner steps in to do vocals for the tour.

The tour set list includes:

– Death Alley Driver
– Smoke on the Water
– Mistreated
– Eyes of Fire
– Man on the Silver Mountain
– Blackmore Throws Down His Guitar and Storms Off the Stage as He Shreds His Japanese Tour Visa
– Really Awkward Silence…

Seeing as how #6 wasn’t planned, our enterprising owner of the Black Sabbath name has to get a guitarist to fill in for Blackmore. Satriani says he’d love to, but contractual arrangements prevent him from joining up. Joe Turner recommends Yngvie “Dare to Spell That First Name” Malmsteen, who steps in to critical praise, although the fans say it just isn’t the same.

Daisley and Rondinelli quit after the tour. For a bassist, Neil Murray gets recruited, who then recommends David “Duck” Doyle as a drummer. Don Airey leaves in confusion and Joe Lynn Turner decides to see if Blackmore needs a replacement singer in his new band. To make things worse, Malmsteen can’t get out of Sweden because nobody knows how to spell his name on his passport renewal form, so he’s out. Murray and Doyle hook up with Bernie Marsden and Mick Moody to cover guitar duties and approach David Coverdale about doing vocal duties. He accepts and Black Sabbath Featuring Whitesnake is born. (Geoff Nichols plays keyboards, but is not credited as a full band member.)

The tour set list includes:

– Come On
– Might Just Take Your Life
– Mistreated (including “Rock Me Babe”)
– Fool For Your Loving
– Rusty Angels
– Closer to You
– Rock’n’Roll Doctor
– Hard Road
– Space Trucking
– Encore: Take Me With You

The tour and album are moderately successful, but Coverdale leaves for a chance to work with Jimmy Page again. That doesn’t quite work out, so Jimmy Page comes to work with Black Sabbath. The band is recorded playing on a club stage in a movie, revealing some killer triple lead guitar work, but Marsden and Moody soon leave the band, citing irreconciliable musical differences. Coverdale loses interest and Murray and Doyle wander off. Page is left with the name of the band and before you can say, “deja vu,” has recruited some band mates for the upcoming tour of Denmark. The group is called “The New Black Sabbath” and includes longtime session man John Paul Jones on Bass, singer Robert Plant and Jason Bonham on Drums. They don’t have any set list, but just sorta wander around on the stage doing their own thing.

When Page discovers that Geoff Nichols is somehow still with the band (he hid in the tour baggage and played keyboards via a remote control device hidden inside his steamer trunk), he becomes disoriented and gets Puff Daddy to rearrange all the old Sabbath tunes and sell the re-arranged lyrics to Michael Jackson. Page then buys them back for half of what he sold them for and carries on with the band.

Jason Bonham, however, decides he’s had enough of this and so Robert Plant gets Phil Collins to play drums. When Plant subsequently leaves as the vocalist, Collins moves in as front man and Ian Paice from Deep Purple guests on drums. Collins and the rest of the band (except Geoff Nichols, who has taken to wearing an odd mask and hanging out in Paris sewers), decide they don’t really want to be in a band called “The New Black Sabbath Featuring Bits and Pieces of Bands That Never Were with Sabbath in the First Place”, leaving Paice in a very awkward position.

Legally required to tour under the Black Sabbath name, Paice gets the rest of Deep Purple to play in the band, and the clever lads decide to make a festival arrangement of the whole thing: Black Sabbath and Deep Purple in a co-headlining tour. The set list draws heavily from the “Born Again” album, with the bass and guitars mixed unusually low. Ian Gillan, when questioned about this, merely grins and mumbles something about “revenge” and “bass players mixing albums.” The tour is hugely successful in Europe, and plays to mid-size crowds in America. Things fall apart before the Japanese leg, though.

The breakup starts quite unexpectedly when Jon Lord decides to check why his keyboards keep making extra sounds during the concert. He nearly has a coronary when he realizes Geoff Nichols has hollowed out Lord’s Hammond Organ and has been living in it for the last 7 months, performing uncredited keyboard duties all the while. Unable to tour, Lord checks into a Florida beach for much needed rest and relaxation. When the other band members of Deep Black Purple Sabbath see Nichols’ wretched conditions, they, too, freak out and head for Daytona to join Jon Lord. Only Ian Gillan remains, being quite used to the sight of a tour-disheveled Geoff Nichols.

Still required to finish off the tour, Gillan gets former Sabbath bandmates Terry “Geezer” Butler and Bill Ward to fill in on bass and drums, respectively, and even convinces Tony Iommi to come out of semi-retirement and help finish off the tour. After the Japanese tour, Gillan leaves the band graciously, expressing a desire to join his bandmates in Daytona. Ozzy Osbourne fills in on vocals.

Before the next tour can begin, however, ownership issues raise their ugly head. Michael Jackson, it seems, still owns the performance rights to much of the Ozzy-era material and is unwilling to relinquish the rights for a resonable price. Having to tour to fulfill contractual requirements of their own, the newly re-united Black Sabbath Mark Id (Nichols is still with the band, in spite of being forced to ride on the outside of the airplane and tour bus), tour with the following set list:

– Neon Knights
– Lost Forever
– Mistreated (by now a Sabbath standard, thanks to Dio, Blackmore, and Coverdale)
– Bark at the Moon
– Waiting For Darkness
– Die Young
– Heaven and Hell
– Demon Alcohol
– Blow on the Jug (Bill Ward singing)
– Close My Eyes Forever (Ward and Ozzy duet)
– Smoke on the Water
– Encores: Flying High Again
– Crazy Train
– Dirty Women (Michael let this one go, claiming he didn’t like Technical Ecstasy all that much)

And they all live happily ever after until Ozzy decides to go solo again…