A North-East roadie has written a book about life touring with Black Sabbath in the 1970s.

Chris Webber talks to him

FOR all his easy chair, impeccably tidy home and comfortable middle-aged lifestyle, there is still something of the wild rocker about Graham Wright.

It could surely be no other way after years on the road with the self-styled Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne.

Ozzy, the former lead singer of Black Sabbath, makes more than one appearance in Graham's book about life as the band's roadie.

There are stories of Ozzy "mooning" at passers-by, drinking plenty of booze, getting involved in fights and complaining about ugly groupies.

But father-of-two Graham's book, called How Black Was Our Sabbath, paints a truer picture of Ozzy and the other three members of the band, Geezer Butler, Bill Ward and Tony Iommi, as only occasional wild men.

Graham, who lives at Ingleby Barwick, near his home town of Stockton, said:

"I was on tour with Marilyn Manson as his roadie not long ago, and he reminded me of Ozzy in some ways.

"They are both actually intelligent blokes who know exactly what their image is worth.

"The thing about Ozzy was how funny he was. We always told him he would have been a stand-up comedian if he had not been in a band.

"Ozzy told me and fellow roadie David Tangye, who I wrote the book with, to 'go for it' when we told him about the book. I like to see him on the television. He is just the same as he always was."

Not that Graham, who worked with the band from 1974 to 1980, and David have not got a few tales of their own to tell.

There are the tales about the big fights and the groupies, but the ones that capture the imagination are the everyday stories of practical jokes and wind-ups, like the time Black Sabbath were touring Britain with fellow rockers Van Halen.

Half way up the A1, Graham and another roadie kidded one of Van Halen's guitarists that he would need a work permit and visa for Scotland.

Panic-stricken, he agreed to be smuggled in the back of a truck, while the Black Sabbath crowd were in tears of laughter.

Eventually the guitarist, who was smuggled back into England, started boasting about his exploits, but Graham arranged for a Newcastle police officer to "arrest" him at a later gig, sending him into a panic.

"He never forgave us, " said Graham, a 53-year-old accomplished amateur artist who has also roadied for The Stones and Tina Turner.

How Black Was Our Sabbath is on sale in most bookshops, priced £16.99.

Published: 13/03/2004