alternate reality Black Sabbath

instead of Ronnie James Dio, after Ozzy left the band, he was replaced by none other than...

...Joe Cocker

how does this change Heaven and Hell or Mob Rules

Makes 'em sound more like Born Again, probably.

(A crucial, underrecognized change on the Dio-era albums is that Dio wrote his own lyrics, where Ozzy sang whatever Geezer handed him. I interviewed Dio once and he said when he joined, he approached Geezer and said, "You know, I write lyrics..." and Geezer said, basically, thank god - the job's all yours!)

then he read them and said "ooof, got me again"

One day we should run a Most Nonsensically Awesome/Awesomely Nonsensical Dio Lyric poll.

How about an alternate reality in 1980 where Ozzy joins Black Flag and Henry Rollins joins Black Sabbath.

A simple one that I have wondered about for years is what might have happened if Martin Birch recorded 'Born Again' and it had a different cover. Both of those two Dio studio records sound immaculate that Birch did.

'Born Again' was like the first new Sabbath record I heard as it came out as a devoted Hit Parader reader teenager. I still love lots of the music, but even with the remix it still sounds really bad for such a huge band.

How about an alternate reality where Ward’s drum tone on H&H is the same as Charlie Watts’ from Miss You