Graham Bonnet recalls he was asked to join Black Sabbath

Rock and Roll music has many coincidences or not and one of them is how the Black Sabbath  guitarist and co-founder Tony Iommi kept inviting musicians who worked with the guitarist Ritchie Blackmore (Deep Purple, Rainbow) before to join the Heavy Metal. The group simply had Ronnie James Dio (Former Rainbow vocalist), Ian Gillan (Deep Purple) and later on also Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple). However, as the vocalist Graham Bonnet recalled in an interview with The Metal Voice (Transcribed by Blabbermouth), he was also asked to join Sabbath. He was Rainbow’s vocalist from 1979 to 1980 and appeared on the album “Down To Earth” (1979).

Graham Bonnet recalls he was asked to join Black Sabbath

“Yeah, he called me one day and I thought, ‘I don’t know about that.’ I couldn’t imagine me somehow in a band called Black Sabbath with the way I look. (Laughs) I don’t look very Black Sabbath. I’d have to grow my hair really long and dye it dark black and grow a beard or something. I wasn’t sure.”

“I wasn’t sure about the music either. Because I thought I wanted to do something that wasn’t like Black Sabbath. I was so sort of anti-heavy in a way, because the way I write a song, the way my other friends who are guitar players, the way they wrote songs, it wasn’t the typical so-called heavy metal, heavy rock, whatever you wanna call it, way.”

In old interviews the musician had already said that he turned down Sabbath’s offer to focus on his own career. Born in Skegness, Lincolnshire, England in 1947, Bonnet started his career in 1967 being part of bands like The Blue Sect, The Marbles and Southern Comfort until he joined Rainbow. After that work with Blackmore’s group he also had successful albums with Michael Schenker Group and in the band Alcatrazz. His most recent album is “Day Out in Nowhere” released in 2022.