At the end of 1977 Ozzy Osbourne left Black Sabbath.
Rehearsing for the album that would eventually be "Never Say Die" Osbourne up and quit the band. Being as hard headed as Ozzy, Tony Iommi wasted no time in replacing him, by calling former Humble Pie & Fleetwood Mac singer Dave Walker to join. Walker flew to California to write and rehearse with the band and on January 2nd he would be announced as the new lead singer. On January 8th, Sabbath would perform live on BBC, playing the song "Junior's Eyes".
While at a pub in England, Walker bumped into Ozzy in a pub, where he found that Osbourne really didn't want to leave Black Sabbath.
"I was doing it for the sake of what we could get out of the record company, just to get fat on beer and put a record out." Osbourne said and he would later rejoin Black Sabbath.
"Three days before we were due to go into the studio, Ozzy wanted to come back to the band", Iommi explained. "He wouldn't sing any of the stuff we'd written with the other guy, so it made it very difficult. We went into the studio with basically no songs. We'd write in the morning so we could rehearse and record at night. It was so difficult, like a conveyor belt, because you couldn't get time to reflect on stuff. 'Is this right? Is this working properly?' It was very difficult for me to come up with the ideas and putting them together that quick".
The result would be the album "Never Say Die," and Sabbath would hit the road with a new band fresh out of Los Angeles named Van Halen.