St. Madness

In early 1997 I was approached at one of our concerts at THE MASON JAR here in Phoenix
Arizona by a guy named JohnBaxter who at the time was the manager of Rob Halford from
Judas Priest. John told me that he had watched our show and he really saw a lot of similarities
between me and Ozzy vocally, and how we both perform and move back and forth a lot on stage.
John wanted to set me up with an audition for Black Sabbath. When he told me this I felt all the
blood rush out of my legs and I asked him to repeat what he had just said, lol! John told me that
few people knew, but Rob had joined Sabbath and they were planning on doing an album and
world tour with Rob, but that a little over 6 months prior to this Rob and Tony had a falling out.
John told me that Sabbath had been auditioning guys for 6 months and Tony didn't like any of
them. John asked me if I would be interested in the audition and did I think that I could sing
Sabbath music? I told him that BLACK SABBATH is one of my alltime favorite bands and
YES, I think I could do the job! John told me that he really thought that I was the guy for the job
as well, and he added if you audition and get the job which I really think you will then you will
also help to put me and Rob in good standings with Tony once again. This was on a Monday
night in early 1997 (I believe) and JohnBaxter gave me his card and told me to call him on
Friday and he would let me know about the audition. For 4 nights, I hardly slept and probably
needed to wear DEPENDS 'cause I was shitting myself! On that Friday, I called John Baxter
and he said, "You aren't going to believe what's happened - OZZY JUST REJOINED
SABBATH AND THEY ARE PLANNING A WORLD TOUR". I was elated and numb at the
same time - thrilled that Ozzy was back in Sabbath but also a little bummed that I had missed an
audition with Sabbath (as Maxwell Smart always says, 'by that much' 1010 Looking back, it
was a huge honor just to have the manager of Rob Halford approach me and think that I was
good enough to even be considered for an audition with the great BLACK SABBATH. gym/
SCARLET RIVERS: I've been in quite a few bands, painted quite a few things and played in
front of a lot of people in my life but I think the best is yet to come. I work at being a better
player every day, and I'm grateful to be around such amazing musicians and people as my
bandmates.
FINAL STATEMENT:
PROPHET: I want to thank you for asking us to do this interview and to share with your readers
a little bit about ourselves and ST. MADNESS.
LONG LIVE THE FANS OF TATTOOS AND METAL MUSIC!!!



Pictures by Kalyn With Blue Rapture Photography