Over Thanksgiving, something that has been talked about for ages finally cropped up.
Those who follow my site know that I care about the full history of the band, not just the Ozzy bits from the 70’s. Anyway, from that era, it’s known that Oz left Sabbath after the Technical Ecstasy tour to try and launch the Blizzard of Ozz then. It didn’t work out at that time, and he came back. But during the time Ozzy was away, Sabbath kept going with Savoy Brown singer Dave Walker.
A lot of people slag this off going “he sucks” (he doesn’t), this isn’t Black Sabbath (it is), or other kinds of derogatory stuff. I actually would have been curious to see what they would have done with Walker. It’s been up for debate how much time they spent in the studio or just demo-ing material or what, but there obviously was work done, because in January 1978, Black Sabbath (with Dave Walker) made a TV appearance on the show “Look! Hear!”. They did a version of the song Junior’s Eyes, but with completely different lyrics.
It has a very blues-y feel – I mean we break out the harmonica as well. It’s always been a curio in Sabbath fandom – there’s been an audio clip of this available as long as I’ve been a fan. Video on the other hand has been a super rarity. It always has existed. Some people have had it over the years (cough), but those who did treated it as a piece of gold – not from a “I have it an you don’t standpoint”, but the existence of the clip could be traced to one specific person, and nobody over the years wanted to stab that bloke in the back – so it stayed private.
Until now. Over the last few days the entire clip turned up on Youtube – very much a surprise to me. I’ve embedded the clip below – it’s Black Sabbath (with Dave Walker) doing Junior’s Eyes. They also play a fragment of War Pigs, but with no vocals. Walker is on stage with his tambourine then, b ut he doesn’t sing. There is no “other version” to find – that’s all they played – the song was done over a commercial break. This is it – one of the holy grail recordings surfaced.
There’s two videos here. One has just the music clips, and the other is the ENTIRE EPISODE of Look! Hear! that Sabbath appeared on. Thanks to those who finally made this widely available – no matter who you are (I don’t know!).
