Songfacts®:

• Ozzy Osbourne was Black Sabbath's lead singer when "Swinging The Chain" was released in 1978, but he refused to sing it, so that's drummer Bill Ward on vocals.
  
  Ozzy was spiraling downward around this time due to excessive drug use, which plagued the entire band but left Ozzy rather detached. Bass player Geezer Butler wrote most of their lyrics when Ozzy was in the band, and by this time there was a lot of friction between them. "He was just so out of it that he wouldn't even bother reading them," Butler said in a Songfacts interview.
  
  Ozzy ended up leaving the band a year later, replaced by Ronnie James Dio.
• The song uses World War II imagery as a metaphor for the state of the band, particularly Ozzy Osbourne, so you can understand why he refused to sing it. Black Sabbath is from the UK and grew up in the aftermath of the war when their country was rebuilding. Comparing Ozzy to Hitler isn't fair or rational, but the band was in an altered state at this time and not thinking so clearly - Geezer Butler later admitted to having delusions.
  
  Predictably, the song and the Never Say Die! album it's part of didn't go over well. Reviews of both the album and the subsequent tour were scathing, and it was apparent the band had lost their edge. Remarkably, both Sabbath and Ozzy found new energy just a few years later. Sabbath regrouped with lead singer Ronnie James Dio, who wrote his own lyrics, and Ozzy connected with a young guitarist named Randy Rhoads, who helped him launch a very successful solo career.