just now: Black Sabbath Vocalist Tony Martin receive another heartbreaking massage about his wife

“I was left standing alone in the dark, trying to match up to these iconic singers that had gone before”: The chaotic tale of Black Sabbath’s Tony Martin era

Dio was out, Gillan was gone, Geezer had given up, and Ozzy had declared war. Light came in the shape of Tony Martin, and the next chapter in Black Sabbath’s story

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

In the autumn of 1987, Tony Martin received a phone call from his manager, inviting him to take a drive around the pair’s native Birmingham. At the time, Martin was the frontman with a local band called The Alliance. They had recorded a session for BBC Radio’s The Friday Rock Show and, thanks to a development deal with Warner Brothers Records, recorded an impressive demo tape that was generating a little below-theradar attention.

Martin’s manager, Albert Chapman, was the owner of The Elbow Room, a rough-and-tumble nightspot on the city’s Aston High Street. Chapman had been a schoolmate of some of the members of Black Sabbath, and took on the role as their tour manager during the band’s rise to international success during the mid-70s. Consequently, Chapman knew almost everybody on the rock scene, especially in the Midlands.

On the afternoon concerned, when Martin enquired about their destination, Chapman remained evasive. “So, we pull up at this house, Albert knocks on the front door,” Martin says now, “and when it opens, fuck me, there stands Tony Iommi.”

Backtracking just a little, Chapman had put forward the name of his young charge a couple of years earlier, at a time when Sabbath were having issues with their latest frontman, former Trapeze and Deep Purple bassist/vocalist Glenn Hughes.

“I don’t know what those issues were,” Martin insists. “All I remember is that when Albert said: ‘I’ve put you up for that job. Are you interested?’ I replied: ‘Whaaat?!’ I couldn’t sing like Glenn Hughes – nobody can. But they [Sabbath] put me on standby. And it scared me to death. In the end the issues with Glenn were sorted out and they released the album Seventh Star.

“I thought nothing more about it, but later on Albert called back and asked: ‘Do you want to have a go with the guys?’ I thought: ‘Fucking hell, this is a bit mad’. But he was serious.”

On the day in question, despite the previous conversations, Martin had zero knowledge of who he was about to meet. “It had all been a bit cloak-and-dagger,” he says, smiling. Chapman and Martin were invited in for a chat, and before too long the singer attended an audition in London.

“I was asked to sing The Shining, which became the opening song on The Eternal Idol,” he recalls, “and right away I was told: ‘You’ve got the job.’ But before it soaked in they added: ‘The album has got to be finished in seven days.’” My response was: ‘Okay, I’ll give it a go.’ And that was my introduction to being in Black Sabbath.”

Having signed on the dotted line, Tony Martin became enshrined as a member of one of the most important hard rock and heavy metal bands of them all. Unfortunately, however, in spite of all his efforts Martin was not destined to receive all that he signed up for.

Over the next decade the singer would experience all that life in a once iconic but now ailing band could throw at him, including five albums, two sackings and multiple world tours. Martin went on to become Black Sabbath’s second-longest-serving lead singer, after Ozzy Osbourne, but his tenure brought its share of uncertainty, frustration, and heartbreak.

Within minutes of talking to the gregarious, straight-talking and likable Martin it becomes apparent that he really doesn’t give a shit about negativity. Not any more, anyway. His time fronting Sabbath was about seizing an unexpected opportunity. A chance to be creative, in defiance of what seemed like pretty insurmountable odds.

Which is exactly what happened. Incredibly, the new-look band went on to create some of the best albums in Sabbath’s sizeable catalogue (which have now been retooled as the four-disc set Anno Domini 1989-1995).

By the late 80s, Black Sabbath had descended into a shit-show. Ronnie James Dio quitting to form his own band began the slippery slope. Former Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan sang on the love-or-loathe Born Again album, and fronted the band on a tour that inspired Spinal Tap, with its outsized Stonehenge stage prop, and had ELO’s Bev Bevan on drums. Factor in Gillan’s reluctance to learn the lyrics, and a disastrous sleeve design of a baby with claws and horns, not to mention the imminent reunion of Purple’s Mk II line-up, and Sabbath now resembled the proverbial house of cards awaiting a stray gust of wind.

Martin had entered the frame because American singer Ray Gillen, a replacement for Hughes during a US tour for Seventh Star that was abandoned due to poor ticket sales, had walked out during the recording of Sabbath’s next album, The Eternal Idol, to join guitarist John Sykes in Blue Murder.

Depending on whether or not you include former male model David Donato (whose appointment was announced and then rapidly cancelled after he had told the press: “I always had a [mental] picture of what the right singer in Sabbath should be – and it was me”), Jeff Fenolt of Christian rockers Joshua (rumoured to have been hired and fired just as speedily) and co-founder Ozzy Osbourne (who returned for a disastrous, drunk showing at Live Aid in Philadelphia), Martin was either the third, fourth or fifth lead singer in Black Sabbath since Ian Gillan waved goodbye in March 1984.

When asked to sum up the aforementioned half-decade in the history of Black Sabbath, Tony Iommi, the last man standing from the classic era, is momentarily lost for words.

“It was chaos,” he eventually replies, laughing. “Just chaos. When somebody left, fine, you bring somebody else in. And when they go, you do the same thing. After a while it gets pretty tedious, but what’s the alternative?”

Sabbath concluded their more than five decade-long career with a sold-out world tour, ending in Birmingham in February 2017, and the band were inducted to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2006. It’s strange to think of them as an underdog, but by the mid-80s that’s what the group had become. And yet, amid the chaos around him, Iommi managed to lead the band towards the creation of some albums that fans still rank among their finest.

“I really love the stuff we did back then with Tony Martin and Cozy [Powell], but it was a frustrating time,” Iommi states. “People had to really try to accept what we were doing. And although it was a great band and we had some really good music, those albums didn’t really catch on. As the man running [the band], I found that difficult.”

In his autobiography Iron Man, Iommi reveals how a previous manager had left the band with huge tax problems. A decaying relationship with Sabbath’s long-time label Vertigo was another cause for near-perpetual sense of firefighting.

“Ever since I’ve been in this business it’s been like that,” Iommi says. “There were problems pretty much since day one. You just have to believe in yourself and try to see beyond those situations. Had I not done so, then I’d have packed up long ago.”

Did he come close to packing it in?

“No. As I say, there were always awful things to contend with, life is like that,” he shrugs. “It’s the thought of keeping things going and getting to the next level that drives you on. You give in or fight through it, and I wouldn’t give in. That’s part of my character, one way or another I always want to carry on.”

As much as joining Sabbath represented a great opportunity for Tony Martin, looking in from the outside it was obvious that the band were in a constant state of chaos, and yet the singer insists that there was no trepidation. “None at all – I didn’t have time to think!” he says, grinning. “I knew they didn’t have any money, Albert had warned me, so I went in and did what needed to be done.”

Martin provided Iommi with the stability he needed. With Ray Gillen’s voice wiped from the tapes, the newcomer soon proved his worth.

“Albert Chapman was my best friend, we’d been at school together, and he was managing The Alliance,” Iommi recalls of the introduction to his new lead vocalist. “We had reached a point with Ray Gillen where there was a problem, and Albert reminded me about Tony. He was great. The guy could really sing, and once he was on board things grew from there.”