I still think it's kinda weird to hear an obvious second guitar, but see only one guitarist on stage.
In that case it is good that you haven't been to a Sabbath concert since the midseventies, Rob, because that is when they started using an off-stage keyboarder (which they still had when I saw them last year), around the time of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath/Sabotage. And except during the Glenn Hughes/Ray Gillen/Tony Martin line up, they have never let that keyboarder on stage though. For the most part their unseen keyboarder has been Geoff Nicholls (who also plays rhythm guitar and has played bass on the Heaven and Hell sessions when Geezer was awol - he also contributed to the songwriting, but had his rights bought off him).
The first guy was Gerald Woodruffe who joined them mid-seventies (always unseen on stage, but mentioned and pictured in tour programs)
followed by Geoff Nicholls (the Sabbath keyboard and guitar player with the most stage appearances, far right in the pic)
followed by Adam Wakeman (whose dad played on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath)
with Scott Warren (ex-Dio) doing some of the Heaven and Hell tours:
That is probably not all though and discounts studio keyboarders such as Don Airey who even co-wrote on Never Say Die.
When I saw the Ozzy line up last year the unseen keyboards were there in nearly every song - and louder than in many a band who openly features a keyboard player. Sabbath's argument that their doom-gloomy four man image is ruined by a fifth man playing keyboards on stage has never convinced me - what's unsatanic about some guy behind a seventies style keyboard mountain?
Yet Ozzy was that way too, except for Don Airey on some tours, keyboarders were either unseen or nearly unseen. I remember seeing Zakk Wylde on his first Ozzy tour and they had John Sinclair (ey Heavy Metal Kids and Uriah Heep) tucked underneath the stage in a small compartment/mock cave with bars before it. I thought it grotesque if you think of how prominent the keyboard intro of, say, Mr Crowley is. But then that was the tour that also had the rumor that Michael Kiske of Helloween was "helping out" Ozzy a little with the vocals - also unseen.
Hated the Whitesnake line ups with behind the curtain keyboard players (ex Magnum/Trapeze Richard Bailey). How can you come from a Deep Purple legacy and not have the keyboard player prominently on stage? It was probably most likely John Sykes' do who once had the nerve to say that Jon Lords's Hammond sound "dated Whitesnake by about 10 years". If you listen to eighties Whitesnake recordings today, those synth sounds have aged a lot worse than anything Jon Lord ever committed with his organ (pun intended in part).
