I do websites for a living (3D Realms), and as a fan (Texas Rangers Baseball Club), plus this site, and I maintain the Bill Ward & Cozy Powell sites, too (amongst other things I’ve done). Anyway, of all the websites I’ve ever done and all the pages I’ve ever created, there is one page on this site that I’ve done that I’m EXTREMELY proud of. That is my Black Sabbath Band Personnel Timeline Page. This page is something I’ve been working on in one form or another since I first created it way back in 1987 (in fact, I have a link on the timeline page to a version I created back in 1987)- ages before I knew about the World Wide Web, and about 8 years before I started this web site.
The page details all the band comings and goings over the 30+ years the band has been around. While it was fairly stable during the 70’s, it was anything but in the 80’s, and fairly turbulent in the 90’s as well, at least until the latter part of the decade. Do you realize that there have been roughly 30 different people who have been in the band at one point or another over it’s history? Most people don’t realize that. Of course, a lot of people have this mistaken impression that Black Sabbath ceased to exist when Ozzy wasn’t their singer anymore after 1978. That’s wrong. :)
Anyway, my timeline page has had a major revision to it over the last couple of days. I’ve gone through the entire history, re-read my own work, and reworded a few things that seemed oddly phrased. In my opinion, the text is a bit clearer, and a few things that were written in the current tense now looked silly, since they are in the past tense. All that has been cleaned up. I added a few more band photos, too.
However, the most important addition to the file is the time after the Seventh Star Tour. One of the things that has always confused folks has been the comings and goings during the recording of the Eternal Idol album. This past week, I was fortunate enough to speak on the telephone with Eric Singer & Bob Daisley, and talked to them about their time working on the Eternal Idol album. Both were very kind with their time, and from what they told me, plus what I already knew on my own, I believe I have FINALLY gotten a handle on the band’s history during this period, which is very turbulent. Awhile back, I thought I knew what was going on, then saw a picture from Sun City, and it messed me all up again, as I didn’t know that combo existed. Anyway, all this has been cleaned up, and I now present it in it’s new form for you to check out. I don’t claim to be the be-all end-all source of 100% accurate knowledge here, as there’s still a few pieces I can’t find for the moment like the number of and the dates of the Sun City gigs. However, I’m fairly confident now that what I have presented for the 1985-1987 timeline is pretty close to being on the mark. I also don’t believe the Eternal Idol timeline has ever been covered online in this kind of depth. Take a look, and take a read of the timeline page. I’m really proud of it, and would love to hear what others think. If you care to drop me a line, you can do so here.
If you’ve read it before, take another look. One word of warning though. The page is rather large. If you’re on a 56k modem, it will take roughly 5 minutes to download all of it (there’s a lot of pictures). However, if you have broadband, it won’t be that big of a deal. One brief website note about the page. I used to call the page "Band Personnel By Lineups", but decided that calling it a timeline was more streamlined of a name :)
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