Ghost’s Tobias Forge has revealed that he planned to sing a completely different song at Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne’s Back To The Beginning farewell gig.
On the day, Tobias sang the title track of Ozzy’s classic 1983 album Bark At The Moon in Papa V Perpetua mask and white jacket – but that song wasn’t his first choice.
Speaking to Planet Rock, Tobias revealed that he thought hard about which song to cover.
“There are a lot of Black Sabbath songs that have vocals, and then there’s two minutes of not-vocals, and then there’s a vocal bit,” he said. “I’m not trying to make fun of anyone but I can’t just stand there like that for two minutes [miming clapping along to the music]. So that had to play a part in my choice of songs, when we were figuring out what I was gonna do.
Tobias explained that several of his original choices were knocked back.
“I was figuring out what I was gonna do,” he said. “I was, like, ‘Can I do this?’ ‘No.’ ‘Can I do this?’ ‘Already taken.’”
Among his original suggestions was a from 1975’s Sabotage album that Sabbath themselves only played twice.
“[One] of the songs that I wanted to do was Am I Insane, stuff like that,” said Tobias. “Because that, for me, that’s my childhood, songs like that.”
Speaking to Metal Hammer for the official Back To The Beginning gig programme, Tobias revealed that he was introduced to Black Sabbath’s music at a young age by his older brother.
“I’m a lifelong fan of Ozzy and Black Sabbath, thanks to my brother who was 13 years older,” he said. “I can’t even remember when I heard them first – the music was part of the soundtrack of being at home. Even when I was seven or eight years old, they were already part of my musical tastes.
He continued: “I was born in 1981, so when I was growing up, Ozzy was such a huge character - not just in the hard rock and metal world, but in the wider culture. He had songs on the radio and MTV. He was almost a pop star.”
Tobias’ original choice, Am I Going Insane (Radio), was released as a single in 1975, though it failed to chart. The ‘Radio’ in brackets is Cockney rhyming slang for ‘mental’ (‘radio rental’). Ozzy, who wrote the song on a Moog synthesiser, reportedly disliked it, though drummer Bill Ward called it “a precursor to his solo career… his personality was blooming on this song.”
