Iommi also admits that the band had to cancel a show at Madison Square Garden when the bombs blew out the tubes in all the amps during the first note of the first song "War Pigs". I also remember playing it in my friend’s garage and we couldn’t listen to all of it because we all felt jealous about being at the show. Ok, some gripes,the drums are very low in the mix plus the audience is mega distant, but the power of the guitar and bass wall of crunch is just beautiful.

I knew it would be better than the other two and put it on the stereo and was really pleased to hear (properly) Sabbath live. I had the honor of seeing Ronnie and Vinny in Heaven and Hell twice in 2007 and 2009 and Dio solo (with Simon Wright on drums) twice in 2002 and again in 2003. While waiting for their bandmates at the studio over a period of several days, Dio and Appice passed the time by listening to the recordings and frequently experimented with the mix by asking the engineer to adjust the levels of various parts. The Southern Cross is a constellation that can be seen only on the Southern Hemisphere and kinda tells you where the South is.I’ve owned a Japanese pressing of this for sometime now and I always believed that these recordings could never sound any better until I listened to this presentation. The extra space allowed for the inclusion of War Pigs from the vinyl version, which is not on the original Vertigo print.

In the same interview, asked to choose "a track that the engineer didn't cock up", he said: "I liked 'Heaven and Hell' flowing into 'Sign of the Southern Cross'. Iommi, a founding member of the band, reckoned he had a power struggle on his hands and he wasn't about to relinquish creative control of Black Sabbath.

In his 2011 memoir, Iommi was considerably less harsh in his summation of Dio's behaviour, stating "By then Ronnie did come over a little more. Iommi now is more on the right side, aggressive and detailed (not sounding like a bootleg distant,muffled and on the center) , keyboards now low on the mix on the left, snare drums now sounds very present and strong (not distant and low as the original), Geezer storming bass on center, and finally Dios' voice clearer than ever, much better than the original.

Ronnie had started to take over a little bit too much and was becoming a bit of a Hitler," Iommi explained to Steve Gett of Guitar for the Practicing Musician. I was worried before Hammersmith came out that it would just be another failed attempt to capture the Sabbath live animal in the wild, but it worked. Overall, a great set with a great sound (remix) - don’t forget it is a live album (never listened to the OG version, so cannot compare). Ronnie and I would ride in one car, Geezer and Tony in another car, and everybody was breaking away from each other a little bit.We had to give the old man two albums, well, a live album counted as two," she is quoted as saying in Mick Wall's 2013 biography on the band.

As usual this “super deluxe” box set is filled with all manners of Dio era Sabbath goodies, poster, book and I believe a tour booklet? The UK cassette release had, as its first side, sides 1 and 3 of the vinyl release, with side two of the cassette being vinyl sides 2 and 4. The kids on the ocean does symbolize “Children of the Sea”, but they’re using a coffin as their boat – hence, “Children of the Grave”, too. When Dio and Appice arrived at the studio to begin the Live Evil mixing process, Iommi and Butler never showed up.

I always clean new albums after opening them and usually replace their factory sleeve with a MOFI one as to not transfer any factory contaminants back onto a newly cleaned LP. This album was bought for me as a birthday gift by one of my best friends when I was in high school. During the mixing of Live Evil, Dio and drummer Vinny Appice abruptly left the group, leaving original members Iommi and Geezer Butler to carry on.