In the autumn of 1987, Tony Martin received a phone call from his manager, inviting him to take a drive around the pair’s native Birmingham. At the time, Martin was the frontman with a local band called The Alliance. They had recorded a session for BBC Radio’s The Friday Rock Show and, thanks to a development deal with Warner Brothers Records, recorded an impressive demo tape that was generating a little below-theradar attention.
Martin’s manager, Albert Chapman, was the owner of The Elbow Room, a rough-and-tumble nightspot on the city’s Aston High Street. Chapman had been a schoolmate of some of the members of Black Sabbath, and took on the role as their tour manager during the band’s rise to international success during the mid-70s. Consequently, Chapman knew almost everybody on the rock scene, especially in the Midlands. On the afternoon concerned, when Martin enquired about their destination, Chapman remained evasive.
“So, we pull up at this house, Albert knocks on the front door,” Martin says now, “and when it opens, fuck me, there stands Tony Iommi.”
Backtracking just a little, Chapman had put forward the name of his young charge a couple of years earlier, at a time when Sabbath were having issues with their latest frontman, former Trapeze and Deep Purple bassist/vocalist Glenn Hughes.
“I don’t know what those issues were,” Martin insists. “All I remember is that when Albert said: ‘I’ve put you up for that job. Are you interested?’ I replied: ‘Whaaat?!’ I couldn’t sing like Glenn Hughes – nobody can. But they [Sabbath] put me on standby. And it scared me to death. In the end the issues with Glenn were sorted out and they released the album Seventh Star.
“I thought nothing more about it, but later on Albert called back and asked: ‘Do you want to have a go with the guys?’ I thought: ‘Fucking hell, this is a bit mad’. But he was serious.”
On the day in question, despite the previous conversations, Martin had zero knowledge of who he was about to meet. “It had all been a bit cloak-anddagger,” he says, smiling. Chapman and Martin were invited in for a chat, and before too long the singer attended an audition in London.
“I was asked to sing The Shining, which became the opening song on The Eternal Idol,” he recalls, “and right away I was told: ‘You’ve got the job.’ But before it soaked in they added: ‘The album has got to be finished in seven days.’” My response was: ‘Okay, I’ll give it a go.’ And that was my introduction to being in Black Sabbath.”
Having signed on the dotted line, Tony Martin became enshrined as a member of one of the most important hard rock and heavy metal bands of them all. Unfortunately, however, in spite of all his efforts Martin was not destined to receive all that he signed up for. Over the next decade the singer would
