In 1978, Huntsville, Alabama was no stranger to big concerts. That spring, Aerosmith packed the Von Braun Civic Center arena, where the Boston bad-boys played hard-rock hits like “Last Child” and “Sweet Emotion” for around 9,500 fans. Guitar god Eric Clapton, country star Dolly Parton and cosmic-groovers Funkadelic also hit the VBCC in ’78. The previous couple years, the likes of Eagles, Kiss and B.B. King rocked that same arena. The VBCC opened with a bang in 1975: Roots-music legend Johnny Cash was the venue’s first ever concert. Elvis Presley did shows there back-to-back years.
All those and more, despite the VBCC being in the tertiary market of Huntsville. Back then, marquee artists played more total concerts on each tour and hit more secondary and tertiary markets, in general, than they do now.
In years to come, the Von Braun Civic Center, its name eventually shortened to Von Braun Center, brought future legends like Prince, AC/DC, Rush, Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Shania Twain, Tom Petty and Tina Turner to Huntsville. In pre-Von-Braun-Center days, the Madison County Coliseum hosted heavyweights like James Brown, Deep Purple and ZZ Top. From the ‘90s to early 2010s, the festival Big Spring Jam brought acts like Taylor Swift and Foo Fighters to town early in their careers. Then last year the new Orion Amphitheater reignited the city’s concert offerings with bold-font names like Stevie Nicks and Jack White.
But the concert that could’ve become one of Huntsville’s most legendary -- if not the most legendary -- never happened.
During Black Sabbath’s 1978 North American tour with Van Halen as their opening act, one historic chapter of rock was closing as another was taking off. British band Black Sabbath’s doomy, epic British heavy-metal helped forge the sound of the ‘70s. SoCal quartet Van Halen’s flashy, fun hard-rock would play a huge role in shaping guitar music’s next decade.
Scheduled dates for the Sabbath/VH North American tour’s second leg included a Nov. 13 performance at Huntsville’s VBC Arena. Tickets for the tour were typically around $7.50.
While still wielding their dark magic on songs like “Paranoid,” “Iron Man” and “War Pigs,” Black Sabbath -- fronted by eerie-voiced singer Ozzy Osbourne and steered by guitarist Tony Iommi’s leviathan riffage -- was no longer at the height of their powers, after eight years of hard living and hard touring, since their pioneering 1970 self-titled debut album.
Still, even a fading Sabbath, with the powerhouse rhythm section of bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward, could rattle a coliseum, as footage from London’s Hammersmith Odeon, from a European leg of the Sabs/VH tour and later released on home video, attests.
Meanwhile, Van Halen was young, hungry and -- thanks to foxy frontman David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen, the most jaw-dropping guitarist since Jimi Hendrix – dripping with star-power. As a live act, the band’s talent was on vivid display during performances of songs like “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love,” set opener “On Fire” and Eddie’s instrumental showpiece “Eruption.” Gong-banging drummer Alex Van Halen (Eddie’s older brother) and fullback shaped bassist Michael Anthony cemented their sound.
In Iommi’s 2011 memoir “Iron Man,” the Sabs guitarist wrote, “To me Eddie Van Halen was so different from all the other guitar players who were around back then. They were a really energetic band, and they were going down great. They made us look a bit drab really, as they did all this acrobatic stuff, what with David Lee Roth doing somersaults onstage and Christ knows what else. Good showmanship, great players, you could see that they were really going to take off.”
David Lee Roth, singer with Van Halen, jumping in mid-air alongside guitarist Eddie Van Halen during a live concert in 1978. (Photo by Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images)Redferns
Van Halen’s supersonic new self-titled debut LP was picking up heat. As a result, Warner Brothers Records was putting oomph into promoting “Van Halen” while ghosting label-mates Sabbath’s “Never Say Die!” Besides the defiant title track, “Never Say Die!” paled in comparison to brilliant early Sabs platters like “Masters of Reality,” and it flopped in the U.S.
This was VH’s first year of national touring, so the Sabbath tour was the first opportunity for many fans to have their faces melted in-person by Eddie Van Halen’s guitar. The ‘78 “Never Say Die!” tour also turned out to be Sabbath’s last performances for nearly 20 years with Osbourne, who was sacked the next year due to substance issues. In Osbourne’s defense, he was dealing with the early 1978 death of his father from cancer. Sabbath’s busy schedule left little time for Ozzy to grieve.
Just a couple years earlier, Van Halen were playing their fair share of covers, including Sabbath’s “Tomorrow’s Dream,” during Sunset Strip bar gigs. Now, Van Halen was sharing the stage with Black Sabbath every night, giving them a run for their money onstage and offstage. The tour was, like many in those days, fueled by copious amounts of cocaine.
Iommi was one of Eddie Van Halen’s personal guitar heroes. As Eddie told Guitar World magazine in a joint 2010 interview with Iommi, “To me, Tony is the master of riffs. Listen to ‘Into the Void’ [a track from ‘71 LP ‘Masters of Reality’]. That riff was beyond anything else I had ever heard. It was so [expletive] heavy. I put it right up there with [sings the four-note intro to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony].”
In that same Guitar World interview, Iommi recalled bonding with Eddie on their ’78 tour. “Often after the shows we would get together in my room and chat about guitars,” Iommi said. “We’d ramble on for about 10 hours before we’d go to bed.”
After Van Halen’s debut album went platinum, in fall 1978 their management gave each of the four band members VH logo necklaces made of platinum, according to “Van Halen Rising,” Greg Renoff’s essential early history of the band.
In his book Renoff wrote, “Meanwhile, Van Halen built on their success by winning over audiences, night after night.” The band’s opening slots on the Sabbath tour could stretch to nearly an hour, allowing them to perform most their debut LP and even two songs that would appear on 1979 follow-up, “Van Halen II”: “Bottoms Up!” and “D.O.A.” As “Van Halen Rising” notes, for Alex Van Halen’s drum solo, his drumsticks were dipped in tiki-torch fluid for a fiery effect.
When it came for his own solo, Eddie blew audience minds “during his frenzied and mind-boggling renditions of ‘Eruption,’” Renoff wrote. Remember, in 1978 Eddie Van Halen’s guitar style was totally new, making it even more exciting than it remains 45 years later.
Eddie Van Halen performing live onstage (Photo by Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty)Redferns
There were three Alabama shows scheduled for the Sabbath/Van Halen tour. Things began to really go sideways, though. After a Nov. 8 show at Birmingham’s Boutwell Auditorium, “Roth and Ozzy stayed up all night in a fifteenth-floor room, snorting enough cocaine to stop the hearts of a half-dozen men,” as chronicled in “Van Halen Rising.” This was part of a three-day coke binge for Osbourne, according to the singer’s memoir, “I Am Ozzy.”
The tour made its way to Memphis and then Nashville. Before the scheduled Nov. 9 concert at Nashville’s Municipal Coliseum, Osbourne was finally able to get some sleep.
However, in his frazzled state the Sabbath singer got confused and went to the wrong room to crash. He mistakenly used the hotel key from his Memphis room to find his Nashville room, as both locations were with the same hotel-chain.
“So while my bags had been sent to the right room by the tour manager,” Osbourne wrote in his book, “I’d gone to the wrong room. Which wouldn’t normally have been a problem. They key I had in my pocket wouldn’t have worked and I would have gone down to reception and realized the mistake. But when I got to the room, the maid was still in there. So the door was open, and I walked straight in. I just showed her the key, which had the right number and logo on it, and she smiled and told me to enjoy my stay. Then she closed the door behind her while I got into the wrong bed in the wrong room and fell asleep. For twenty-four hours.”
As showtime neared, the Sabbath camp was unable to find Osbourne. In that simpler, pre-smartphone time, he’d disappeared without a trace. Poof. It was feared Ozzy had been kidnapped. Or worse.
Meanwhile, the Nashville concert was sold-out and 9,800 headbangers were waiting. When showtime arrived, Van Halen went ahead and did their opening set.
According to Roth’s memoir “Crazy From The Heat,” backstage at the show Sabbath reps asked Roth if Roth could fill in and sing for Sabbath as well as Van Halen. Roth declined though, saying, “Fellas, I don’t know the lyrics, I’m sorry.” Sabbath’s headlining set was canceled (and later rescheduled for a few days later).
As “Van Halen Rising” recounts, “This didn’t go over well.” In that book, a fan in attendance noted, “The place went fairly well ape-shit.” Fans threw booze bottles and fire extinguishers at the equipment onstage. The venue’s windows were shattered too.
The next day around 6 a.m., a refreshed Osbourne awoke thinking it was still Nov. 9. After the Sabbath singer got an epic chewing-out by his camp, the tour was relieved he was OK. As Van Halen crew member Pete Angelus (later The Black Crowes’ manager), told Renoff, “I remember everyone saying, ‘They found Ozzy! He’s alive! He’s alive!”
Adding to the darkness, Sabbath drummer Bill Ward’s father had recently died. According to a 1978 Atlanta-Journal Constitution report, Ward flew back to England to handle funeral arrangements.
The tour now required rejiggering. A St. Petersburg, Florida show was pushed back a few days. An Amarillo, Texas date was moved up a couple. A scheduled Columbus show was canceled. A show that had been scheduled for late October at Atlanta basketball arena Omni Coliseum was moved to Nov. 13.
The Nov. 13 Von Braun Center show in Huntsville was canceled, presumably to make room for the Atlanta show because The Omni’s capacity was around 50 percent more than the VBC Arena. According to a newspaper report from that time, “In rescheduling the tour, dates that Black Sabbath could come to Huntsville do not coincide with the dates that Civic Center facilities are presently available.”
Refunds for the Huntsville show were offered at the VBC Box Office, other locations of purchase or via mail by returning tickets via self-addressed-stamped envelope. Among fans who purchased tickets for the Sabbath/Van Halen concert in Huntsville: A young Donnie Sharp, who’d later become the singer of notable Alabama punk band The Knockabouts.
Interestingly, the Atlanta concert featured a third band, at the bottom of the bill, New York quartet the Ramones, who weren’t on the Huntsville bill. Although the Ramones would become punk legends due to songs like “Blitzkrieg Bop” and, like Sabbath and Van Halen, highly influential, at The Omni they were received “with underwhelming indifference” by the audience, according to a concert review. The review also described the Ramones as “untalented.” In summary, reviewer Bill King opined while Sabbath “was well-received by the Atlanta crowd, the show was stolen by a lively California hard rock group named Van Halen.”
The next day, Sabbath and Van Halen returned to Alabama for a Nov. 14 Mobile Municipal Auditorium concert. Tickets for the Mobile show were a whopping eight bucks.
By the time the Sabbath and Van Halen trek finished in the latter’s Southern California stomping grounds, the axis of heavy guitar music had shifted. Van Halen were the new kings, soon to inspire the next wave of successful hard rock bands. Black Sabbath’s original lineup, on the other hand, was about to splinter.
In 1979, Sabbath relocated Los Angeles, which they’d done before to make 1972 album “Vol. 4,” which included uncharacteristic ballad “Changes” and characteristic coke-paean “Snowblind.” This time though, the band hit a creative impasse with Ozzy, who wasn’t putting in much effort by then, according to Iommi’s book. The band sent gentle-souled Bill Ward to fire Osbourne, who sunk deeper into abyss, before being salvaged professionally (and later personally) by Sharon Arden, the daughter of latter-day Sabbath manager Don Arden.
Now managed by Sharon, his future wife, Ozzy connected with young Los Angeles guitar wizard Randy Rhoads (formerly of local band and soon to be stars Quiet Riot). With Rhoads, Ozzy made two of metal’s greatest albums, Osbourne’s 1980 solo debut “Blizzard of Ozz” and 1981 follow-up “Diary of a Madman,” before Rhoads’ tragic 1982 death from an airplane crash.
Sabbath would also experience a creative rebirth, teaming with former Rainbow singer Ronnie James Dio for a pair of exciting early ’80s albums, “Heaven and Hell” and “Mob Rules.” Former Rick Derringer drummer Vinny Appice was brought in to replace Ward between those two LPs.
In the years to come, Van Halen would return to Huntsville as headliners. They rocked the VBC in 1980, 1981 and 1982. After Roth and Van Halen parted ways around 1985, Roth’s first solo tour and Van Halen’s first with new frontman Sammy Hagar both hit the Von Braun Center in 1986. Roth actually outdrew his former band, just barely though: 6,544 to 6,524. Van Hagar returned in 1992.
Osbourne’s 1983 Von Braun Center solo show remains his only Huntsville concert. With Ozzy’s touring career likely over due to frail health at age 74, the metal legend won’t perform here again. In 2020, the great Eddie Van Halen died from cancer at age 65. Black Sabbath has still never performed in Huntsville.
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