Live Evil was released in January 1983, but was overshadowed by Ozzy Osbourne’s Platinum-selling album Speak of the Devil .
The band headlined the 1983 Reading Festival in England, adding Deep Purple’s ” Smoke on the Water ” to their encore.
Unable to tour because of the pressures of the road, Ward quit the band. “I fell apart with the idea of touring,” he later explained. “I got so much fear behind touring, I didn’t talk about the fear, I drank behind the fear instead and that was a big mistake.”…
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The band settled on then-former Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gillan to replace Dio in December 1982.
Ronnie James Dio left Black Sabbath in November 1982 to start his own band and took drummer Vinny Appice with him.
Later on, a new more focused and improved group moved into a band house in Rockville, Maryland and renamed the Obsessed, where some of their most creative and hardest music was written. Before this move, however, original guitar player John Reese and Davey WIlliams on drums departed from the band.…
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Unhappy with the quality of 1980’s Live at Last , the band recorded another live album – titled Live Evil – during the Mob Rules world tour, across the United States in Dallas , San Antonio and Seattle , in 1982.
Black Sabbath’s second studio album that was produced by Martin Birch and featured Ronnie James Dio as vocalist, Mob Rules , was released in October 1981 and was well received by fans, but less so by critics.
The band completed the Heaven and Hell world tour in February 1981 and returned to the studio to begin work on their next album.
later released theatrically in 1981 as Black and Blue