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Very kindly have to decline
BraveWords has done an exclusive interview with Glenn Hughes, taken during his recent visit to Brazil. The interview will be published in parts over the coming days. In the first part, Glenn talks about his stint with Tony Iommi back in the 1980s:
BraveWords: After Sabbath parted ways with Dio, things became a blur when it came to singers. I did a Zoom with Tony Martin recently, and I jokingly asked, “Was there anybody in charge?” And he laughed at me and answered, “No, there was no one in charge.”
Hughes: “You know, Sharon and Don Arden when I was, you know, when Gillan was in the band, after Ray Gillen came in. And then Gillan went back to Purple, I guess. And then Tony calls me in the middle of the night, ‘Hey, um, I’m gonna do a solo album, and I’m inviting you and Ronnie and Rob Halford to do two or three songs each. Are you interested?’ I said, ‘Of course I’m interested. Your solo album. Of course I’ll sing on your solo album. So I went to the studio, Cherokee Studios in Hollywood, and the first song we wrote together was ‘No Stranger To Love’, you know? And then he said, ‘Can you come down tomorrow?’ I said, ‘Sure, I’ll come down.’ Then we wrote ‘Heart Like A Wheel’. And it went on for about four days and I’m going, ‘Well, am I singing the whole album?’ He said, ‘We would like you to sing on my solo album.’ So I did. And then the last song, Don Arden, Sharon’s father came in, ‘Well, we think we should call it Tony Iommi, Black Sabbath.’ Yeah. See, I wasn’t really singing about dark shit, you know. So I sang on Tony’s solo album, and it later became Sabbath.”
Read more in BraveWords.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
I love The7thStar.
May 29th, 2025 at 07:39For me in this album GH releases a superb singing. Another album that I love for GH’s voice is FaceTheTruth by J.Norum Ciaooo
It is my favourite Iommi recording with Hughes by a long shot. Miles ahead of the later collaborations that they did. Uwe most likely will chime in with ‘it is the worst record I have ever heard’, something like that, each to their own. Cheers.
May 29th, 2025 at 08:08@2
May 29th, 2025 at 08:52Oh sure!!
I don’t appreciate the later albums. Abandoned to the dust.. ciaoo
Great album, great singing from Glenn and great playing from Tony. The Spitz/Singer rhythm section sounds quit basic, though.
May 29th, 2025 at 08:58Talking of Iommi slash Black Sabbath, the mysterious lady on their debut album cover has come out of the darkness. As rare as sightings are from her at least. Cheers.
https://www.loudersound.com/culture/louisa-livingstone-cat-rescue-black-sabbath
May 29th, 2025 at 09:07Seventh Star is a great album, showcasing sides of Iommi’s playing which were not heard before. Glenn’s singing also is spectacular. I’d love to hear more music of that vibe from the two. I’ve read about some outtakes from the sessions (and bootlegs with Jeff Fenholt singing some Seventh Star songs with different lyrics), like there has to be tons of unrealeased Sabbath material with different singers somewhere in the archives.
May 29th, 2025 at 12:33Fused and The Dep Sessions I enjoy too, but they sound completely different than Seventh Star, production and songwriting-wise. Fused is a great album in my books, whereas I find the songs on the Dep Sessions a little underwhelming.
You can tell what state of mind Glenn was in back then……..and still is 🤔.
May 29th, 2025 at 12:40MacGregor the Wretched Myth Buster @5:
Darn, and I always thought it was Her Exquisite Hotness Gamora/Zoe Saldańa …
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8e/82/8f/8e828f16e2b1ba37ed8689b320be8f34.gif
I’d go veggie with her real quick! Always been the guy for personal sacrifices.
May 29th, 2025 at 17:04…And the soloing on Heart Like a Wheel by the way is one of the finest examples of Tony Iommi’s jazz influences, which otherwise can only be heard that clear in some of the later 70s tunes (Symptom of the Universe, Air Dance) and some live jams (Wicked World)
May 29th, 2025 at 19:15https://youtu.be/y2uguUP4YSM?si=1fxtgW2d03vAxmzZ
May 29th, 2025 at 19:30❤️😭
Who let Max’ altkluge kids in? 😂
But Tillythebrat is right, das muss man ihm lassen.
Meanwhile, Herr MacGregor follows his chosen path of oversimplification attributing blatant misstatements such as “worst record ever” to me. Mind you, if the good Lord gave you only drumsticks as a means of expression, all you can do is bang on things.
https://youtu.be/P7Tcggo45TQ
Seventh Star is not a “worst” record. It is a well-produced album by a talented English guitarist with a handicapped fretting hand sung by a very good singer going out of his way to deny his roots. It is so inoffensive and conventional that in hindsight something like Nirvana’s Nevermind album had to happen.
Born Again was pushing the envelope – both sonically and in the way IG projected his dark and raving Demon Driver side onto Sabbath’s molten lava music. It is BOTH a brilliant Sabbath and a brilliant Ian Gillan album. In contrast, Seventh Star is tame, avoiding any boldness and an obvious attempt of Tony Iommi to audition for Bad Company, anything to get on US radio after Born Again. 😂
Glenn’s comment says it all:
“So I sang on Tony’s solo album, and it later became Sabbath.”
Indeed – and it sounds like it too. No sinister and desolate doom & gloom. Glenn doesn’t have a dark bone in his body. He’s had dark patches in his life and his Addiction album reflected that plus Trapeze dabbled with early Sabbath era sounds
https://youtu.be/d0uVYOWdvz0
but the guy couldn’t even sing the occult nonsense on the first Phenomena album without having nightmares about the Beelzebub, the ole pansy! 😂
Nothing “worst” with Seventh Star then, it is just hugely conventional.
“Mediocrity is everywhere. I absolve you.”
https://youtu.be/LCQjrW0ofRE
And yes, I think that later collaborations of Tony and Glenn were musically more daring. Seventh Star sounds like a Dio era Sabbath album with Glenn told what to sing – which is likely why you all like it so much! 😈 Me, I hold that the Sabs did their best work with Ozzy and Ian (Ozzy names Born Again as his favorite Sabbath album without him).
Talking of Dave Spitz, he’s a colleague of mine in more ways than one …
https://www.secondactstories.org/heavy-metal-lawyer-black-sabbath-bassist-dave-the-beast-spitz-esq/
https://youtu.be/kI6qK-ehAZ8
May 29th, 2025 at 21:27Honorary mention: No Stranger To Love is a fine ballad.
https://youtu.be/3Lv0Vw-OkRU
May 29th, 2025 at 21:40Thanks Tilly 🙏 for some support on Fused – all these senior citizens here don’t get it, the remaster is well worth having. The prior DEP SESSIONS album sounds to me like a mix between early Sabbath and early Trapeze, a Birmingham brew so to say.
May 29th, 2025 at 21:57@ 11- Ozzy didn’t listen to shit all of all the other Sabbath albums, If you believe that rubbish, Satan help you. If you need Ozzy to bat for you, you need help. How long do certain people need to acknowledge the facts, well some don’t ever learn…………sticking their head constantly in the sand. It was NOT written or recorded with THE intention of being a BLACK SABBATH album. As Glenn said it was a Iommi solo album. If you think Uwe, that Iommi went about that record in an attempt to be dark and brutally heavy, well that is where you keep banging your head against a stone wall. Note the Mob Rules album cover to see what happens when you constantly do that. Seventh Star sounds nothing like a Dio era Sabbath album. You just want to use that excuse to put down Ronnie again, you have never enjoyed poor Ronnie in Sabbath have you? For the record, the ‘worst record ever’ comment was deliberate, click bait if you want to call it that. I know that you have never called any record that, well at least from my memory here with your array of comments over the years. It was the most deliberate and most direct comment I could think of at the time, jesting of course, but it worked didn’t it? However, why would you keep calling it a Black Sabbath record, simply because a manger and a record company said it was, when it isn’t. By the way, each to their own and all that, but Born Again a ‘brilliant’ record’, I would hate to know what Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Sabotage and Heaven and Hell are, but I do digress, there is NO comparison at all there. Cheers.
May 29th, 2025 at 22:59I forgot to mention that with Uwe’s comments in regards to The Seventh Star album, we may as well sell the other two Hughes/Iommi albums as Black Sabbath too. Cheers.
May 29th, 2025 at 23:23Conventional in places but there’s also lot of gold on Seventh Star. Plus, Glenn was peaking singing wise 🙂 The best and most atmospheric of their collaborations.
May 30th, 2025 at 05:39Sorry, can’t find the thread…
But this one:
https://youtu.be/-L3zpXrVtnE?si=HgOOxpFleXIXcy_K
Pure pop!
May 30th, 2025 at 05:51mamma mia judge Uwe: how much ego you let shine through every time. Every time Egyptian papyrus of truth and know-it-alls kilometers and kilometers long. ufffff I’m losing diplomacy..
May 30th, 2025 at 07:12Well AndreA … 😀 … b u t those papyrus do carry some information and are therefore of interest and sometimes even highly amusing to some of the old archaeologists around here. Me myself and I get rather bored when it comes to only exchanging opinions and superlatives like “best album EVER!” or “Blackmore rules!” as is often the case on sites dedicated to artists.
Short does not always mean better.
May 30th, 2025 at 08:41Guys, I’m happy for every Purple affiliated album to have its fans, that is simply family loyalty. By all means, like your Seventh Star. I just consider it a highly unadventurous record. I remember having high expectations in the 80s when it came out – whether it was called Tony Iommi’s Black Sabbath or not was irrelevant, I saw it as an Iommi solo album (any Sabbath album without Geezer is a Tony Iommi solo album to me). Why anyone would have Glenn sing, but not play bass on an album (he’s best if he does both at the same time) was also beyond me.
It’s not so much what Tony plays or doesn’t play, I found Glenn’s singing on Seventh Star … lumbering, functional and safe. I also didn’t think that Glenn’s singing on Phenomena or Run For Cover (unlike Seventh Star a truly horrible album because it sounds so artificial, Seventh Star is at least organic, something Tony is good at) showed his usual brilliance. I like the way Glenn sang with Trapeze, on Play Me Out, Hughes Thrall or Feel. I want him funky, ecstatic and soulish …
https://youtu.be/Z-N7H7wFHw
(but I accept that this perhaps too “unrock” for people convening on a Deep Purple site)
and that is probably where our differences of opinion lie, you guys prefer him in a more conventional rock vein, sort of Glenn Hughes does Paul Rodgers.
Same with Dio, I just like early Dio better than what he became with Sabbath and his own band. And I did miss Ozzy’s quirkiness and Beatlesque children’s melodies in Sabbath once he left. To me, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (the album) is art and Heaven & Hell (the album) solid, but nothing more. That might be against conventional wisdom, but I can’t help it. I even preferred Never Say Die to Heaven & Hell though Dio is the much stronger singer. But Ozzy has the gifts of a slightly demented child and there is something endearing and charming to how he sings.
Touching on what Herr MacGregor said: I spent so much of my life listening to and analyzing music as well as reading other people’s reviews of music, I am pretty good at explaining why something triggers me or leaves me cold. That doesn’t mean that your varying personal reaction to the same music is not equally valid.
I explain my case, that’s all. In the spirit of good dispute, I welcome it if you do so too.
May 30th, 2025 at 14:17@19
“sometimes even highly amusing to some of the old archaeologists around here”
– 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Talking as another old archaeologist I do have to say that Blackmore did rule 😂 and so did Steve and now does Simon 🤣😆
But nevertheless I do have a point of view: Uwe is actually rather clever! And the qudrafantazillions links he spits out in here are almost always very interesting!
And then I would like very much to hear your opinion re BS and the reunion!
– Is it for real?
– Can OO still sing?
– Is there an audience for the band?
– Will it ‘only’ be a repertoire of the ‘oldies but goodies’?
And finally:
– Oasis is said to have made a new record! Why hasn’t the world heard anything yet??
May 30th, 2025 at 14:19☺️😉
Disoriented Karin @17: Do you do that at home too, if you can’t find where the knives are, put them with the forks or jettison René’s socks in his underwear drawer? 😂
But you’re right, that AC/DC number is Pop indeed. I didn’t even know it. Yet remember, one swallow doesn’t make a wife for life (or however the proverb goes).
May 30th, 2025 at 14:27Oooooops, I attributed Tillydad’s supportive comment at 19 to the Tassie, tut mir sorry!
“Short does not always mean better.”
When amongst themselves, most wimmin tend to say that, yes. 🙁
May 30th, 2025 at 15:21I love “Seventh Star”, its for me the finest of the three collaborations.
In interviews it was said, that “Heart Like A Whell” is an edited version of a 15 minute jam. So I still hope that the whole blues jam will be releaes some day.
Interesting is the single version of “No Stranger To Love” with female backing vocals:
https://youtu.be/6f7ykoPly-4
The DEP-Sessions are fine, but these are REMIXES from the original sessions which can be found on some bootlegs like “Eighth star”. The remixes have better sound but the bootleg have much better and more livly versions with Trapeze’s and Priest’s Dave Holland on drums and fine keyboards by Purple’s Don Airey. So I prefer the boot.
“Fused” is a very fine album, but my leeast favourite of the three. Still hoping for another collaboration in near future (please!).
May 30th, 2025 at 15:21Ozzy can likely still “sing” (in the way he does), but not for long, I doubt though whether he can still perform. But it doesn’t really matter because people just want to see him again to say good-bye. And if that means him doing three or four songs from a wheelchair, then most people will still be fine with it. This will be a commemorative event, not a concert in a strict sense. Ozzy has contributed to rock and heavy metal history.
That final tour he wanted to do with Judas Priest in Germany as his opener was rescheduled so many times that I’m not really surprised about the events now. I’ve seen him live with Randy Rhoads, Zakk Wylde (plus Geezer Butler) and with Tony Iommi, it’s all good, honorable discharge.
May 30th, 2025 at 22:14@ 20 – “Why anyone would have Glenn sing, but not play bass on an album (he’s best if he does both at the same time) was also beyond me.” It was most probably that Iommi wasn’t going to tour with the album, he was just looking at getting away from the mothership after the Born Again fiasco. Geezer had officially left and Bill Ward was totally out of the picture (again). Iommi was living in good old LA too, let’s party everyone! And let’s not forget he was ‘heartbroken’ just having broken up with poor ole Lita, who was a young Lita then, look at that image of Iommi on the cover of Seventh Star, a sob story. Perhaps there should have been a soap opera filmed right there and then. Still, look at the album that is the official Iommi solo album (2000). I was disappointed that Iommi never went away from hard rock when doing an offical solo record. He talked about doing something totally different for once, Phil Collins and Robert Plant were two vocalists that he mentioned that he would love to work with. Instrumentals were mention too, also different instruments. Anyway if we talk about an artist that painted himself into a corner, it is poor ole Tony. Maybe I listened to too much of his music, riffs etc up till the mid 90’s. Not to worry, he was good up till then but we could hear the riffs becoming too much like what we had been hearing before. Since then it all sounds too cliched and predictable, if you know what I mean. Cheers.
May 30th, 2025 at 22:48@ 24- that is interesting to hear about the extended version of Heart Like A Wheel. It does sound like they faded that rather quickly on the original album mix and no doubt Iommi kept on blazing away there. I remember playing that to a friend on his own hifi back in the day, he was outside in the garden when I played it really loud. He came back in totally blown away, ‘who is that’ he asked. He was an old 70’s Sabbath fan but totally unaware of anything after Sabotage era. It was that blues power rock feel of HLAW that left him speechless, so I did a copy onto cassette for him. With Iommi being constantly asked about anything ‘left in the vaults’, he always says there isn’t anything worthwhile, nothing that resembles songs etc, so I don’t hold much hope for any unreleased songs, demos etc. Never say never though, it would or could be interesting to hear a few outtakes. Cheers.
May 30th, 2025 at 23:37Yes, Kalle, that polished mix of No Stranger To Love was what went with the video, that is where I noticed it first.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ximWeur_cs8
Speaking of Glenn and ballads, I always wonder whether he shouldn’t have chosen a Michael Bolton type career in the beginning of the 90s, he had the voice and looks for it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WTRhzwHpKE
Here is something for you Seventh Star nuts, it’s a good version of one of the stronger songs on the album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMq0ZeUfSyQ
May 31st, 2025 at 00:40@ 21 – “But nevertheless I do have a point of view: Uwe is actually rather clever! And the qudrafantazillions links he spits out in here are almost always very interesting!’ I am surprised Karin that you didn’t highlight the ‘almost’ word in extremely large font and bold and underlined. Other than that minor quibble, all is fine and dandy here in ‘dinosaur’ rock land. To think that many of these artists were being labelled that in the late 1970’s was rather absurd and comical. Too old to rock ‘n roll and too young to die. Below is Jethro Tull hamming it up (Monty Pythonesque) for their song Too Old To Rock ‘n Roll, Too Young To Die from 1976 . Warning for Uwe, a little naughty in one or two moments, so don’t get too excited. Cheers.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2qpw0b
May 31st, 2025 at 01:10@25
Yeah, guess you’re right Uwe.
May 31st, 2025 at 13:20Nostalgia lives on when the heroes grow older..
@29
“I am surprised Karin that you didn’t highlight the ‘almost’ word in extremely large font and bold and underlined. “
Well – I have to be fair MacGregor 😅😅
May 31st, 2025 at 13:22QUOTE
‘And the qudrafantazillions links he spits out in here are almost always very interesting!’ I am surprised Karin that you didn’t highlight the ‘almost’ word in extremely large font and bold and underlined.
UNQUOTE
Re such impertinent Danish-Tasmanian joint mockery: Hey, I just like to provide factual evidence for my pleadings here, that’s all! 😂
May 31st, 2025 at 14:06That’s a hilarious JT vid, never seen it before. Leery old men!
“Too Old To Rock’n’Roll”, both the album and the single, were weird Tull releases, kind of spoofy, the music like a minuet going on about an aging rock musician, I remember that it alienated a lot of JT fans who thought it too poppy, even glammy (the production), after the well-received Minstrel In The Gallery. No matter, it was a detour only, Songs From The Wood and Heavy Horses saw them happy again. But I recall the Tull nuts becoming insecure at the time, wondering whether their adored Ian Anderson had lost the plot. It didn’t sell well in Germany either, people thought Anderson was taking the piss, but not in a Thick As A Brick intellectual fashion, but rather more whimsical.
Not a Tull album I could really latch onto either though I liked War Child a lot. I found it lightweight in production and songs. Even the sleeve art was kinda dumb for JT standards.
May 31st, 2025 at 20:49@32
“Hey, I just like to provide factual evidence for my pleadings here, that’s all! 😂l
– and we enjoy it very much Herr Seniorprofessor!
Don’t we MacGregor? 😄
June 1st, 2025 at 09:58I like some of that Tull album Uwe, there are some gems on it and it is a concept story line that is sort of semi humorously autobiographical. The character in the comic strip ‘Ray Lomas’ looks rather like Ian Anderson at that time. He did fall foul of the press around that mid 1970’s time, as the ‘too old’ comments were directed at those musicians and bands from the 1960’s. So it is a bit of silly fun, and as Frank Zappa once quipped, ‘does humour belong in music’. I suppose in certain instances it can. Cheers.
https://jethrotull.com/too-old/
June 1st, 2025 at 10:31#28
Glenn really could have launched a career as the second Michael Bolton. His album “Feel” already went in that direction in some ways.
And he didn’t do badly as Sting either. I actually like his version of Roxanne better than the original.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppdqN9zOow8
June 2nd, 2025 at 13:34That Roxanne version is brilliant, unfortunately, the album it was slated for never came out.
June 2nd, 2025 at 22:22