This excerpt is posted to observe the ceremonies in Birmingham over the weekend...
If the Velvet Underground traded in an elitist, decadent brand of Plutonian energy, then England’s legendary Black Sabbath was its populist counterpart. Arising out of the grim industrial environs of Birmingham, Sabbath were heavy metal’s first superstars, and their early records remain classics of the genre.
Sabbath arose out of the ashes of a band appropriately named 'Mythology.' Looking to explore the heavy metal sound being popularized by bands like Blue Cheer, guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward enlisted Bill ”Geezer” Butler on bass and discovered singer John ‘Ozzy’ Osbourne, who was fresh off a harrowing six-week stint in prison.
Ozzy couldn’t catch a break; he left jail only to reunite with Iommi, his schoolyard tormentor. The band began life as ‘Earth’ but changed it to ‘Black Sabbath’ after the 1963 Italian film. Horror films were enjoying a resurgence in Europe, and the band decided to create a musical equivalent of the genre.
Sabbath’s sound centered on overdriven, distorted guitar and bass playing endlessly-repeating blues riffs in the deepest keys possible, over which Butler worked up lyrics based on the occult horror stories of authors such as Dennis Wheatley and H.P. Lovecraft. Tolkien’s Rings novels inspired ‘The Wizard’, though urban legend claimed the song was inspired by Aleister Crowley. It all jibed with the sour mood of Post-Aquarian Britain.
Needless to say, the critics hated Sabbath’s 1970 self-titled debut, but the kids ate it up in both the UK and US.
The Saba intended their second album to be called War Pigs, after a blistering cut that pictured generals as “witches at black masses.” But the LP's title was changed at the last minute to Paranoid, after the driving protopunk single. Aside from ‘War Pigs,’ Sabbath also worked up ‘Electric Funeral’, a dark vision of a post-nuclear holocaust world. The sturm und drang was relieved with the hypnotic sci-fi ballad, ‘Planet Caravan’, an ethereal meditation on space travel. As with the first LP, Paranoid sold well but the band was largely ignored by radio.
Sabbath went from strength-to-strength, but the usual touring pressures and expensive drug habits were beginning to take their toll. Their third LP, Master of Reality (1971) continued in the same vein as its predecessors, but boasted better production. The key tracks were featured on the first LP side, starting with ‘Sweet Leaf’ and ending with ‘Children of The Grave’, a Midwich Cuckoos gone-antiwar stomper.
Crammed in-between was ‘After Forever’, whose conservative Christian lyrics were incongruously laid over a peppy metal blitzkrieg. On the flip-side, ‘Lord of this World’ traded in similar themes. Sabbath achieved something theretofore unique in history: gospel songs that sounded like the soundtrack to an axe murder.
Such was Sabbath’s power that even the LP's two brief instrumentals sounded positively demonic. Rumors swirled that the band was terrified that its previous demonic flirtations has set hellhounds on their trail, driving them to brandish enormous crucifixes onstage.
But the drugs were catching up, as they always do, and intra-band squabbling marred the recording of Vol. 4 (1972), which had the Sabs looseneing up the metal attack, with mixed results. That process continued on the following year’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, but the booze ‘n’ drugs got worse by this time , leading to Butler’s hospitalization. Even so, a 1974 tour saw their visibility at a peak, seemingly lifting the band's spirits. However, a crippling legal battle with their managers brought them low once more.
Sabbath rallied for Sabotage (1975), a sprawling, nearly orchestral album which featured trademark bone-rattling metal leavened with jazz, pop and even operatic passages. Sabotage was praised as a surprisingly mature and inventive work upon its release, but the band’s luck began to sour on the resulting tour, and Ozzy was sidelined after a motorcycle accident.
Sabbath’s next LP, Technical Ecstasy, was a slick departure inspired by Iommi's close friendship with Queen guitarist Brian May, and left some fans scratching their heads in confusion. After a grueling six-month tour, Ozzy quit the band and was replaced by Dave Walker, a bluesy also-ran whose singing range was nearly an octave below Ozzy's. Meanwhile, Ozzy set to work putting together a solo group called Blizzard of Ozz.
After his new band fell apart, Ozzy talked his way back into Sabbath. The band had to dump the songs written in Walker’s key and start from scratch, attempting to write while they recording and often finding they were too stoned to do either. The resulting album Never Say Die was released in ‘78 and Sabbath toured with Ozzy hired back on a salaried basis. But the tired, aging metal masters were humiliated every night by their fiery young opening band, Van Halen and the writing was on the wall.
When they staggered home, the band was in a drink ‘n’ dope shambles and Ozzy was sacked in 1979. Under the direction of Sandy Pearlman - who was also managing Blue Oyster Cult - Ozzy was replaced by Ronnie James Dio, the elfin virtuoso who fronted Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow.
Refreshed, Sabbath burst back onto the scene with 1980's Heaven and Hell, which veered into sword-and-sorcery territory thanks to Dio’s fantasy-drenched lyrics. The new Sabbath then hit the road for a phenomenally-successful tour, marred only by the firing of Ward, whose drinking had gotten the best of him. He was quickly replaced with Vinnie Appice, brother of Carmine, drummer for metal pioneers Vanilla Fudge. Ward would end up homeless before finally kicking the sauce.
Ozzy hit rock bottom too, but was pulled out of a self-pitying stupor by Sharon Arden, the daughter of Sabbath's then-manager, Don. Looking to make a name for herself, Sharon got Ozzy cleaned and paired up with a new band, featuring some British vets and a hot-shot young American guitarist named Randy Rhoads. The pair eventually married and ultimately became the First Family of Metal.
As with Ozzy's aborted solo project, the new band was originally called ‘Blizzard of Ozz’ but traded under Ozzy’s name when the LP was released in late 1980. Ozzy’s comeback wasn’t without incident- he horrified his new record company by drunkenly biting off the head of a dove during a meeting. Two years later, Ozzy had to be treated for rabies when he did the same to a bat a fan threw on stage, which Ozzy had assumed was a rubber fake.
Ozzy and Sabbath both enjoyed similar success until Dio left the latter in 1983 to form his own band. But Ozzy had got it much worse a few months earlier when Rhoads was senselessly killed during a joyride he took in a small plane while the band’s bus was stopped near an airstrip.
Through the next two decades Iommi soldiered on with a number of ersatz ‘Black Sabbath’ lineups, to ever-diminishing returns. Simultaneously, Ozzy worked his way through a number of different guitar heroes, but enjoyed far greater success than his old schoolyard tormentor, thanks to his clownish charisma and top-flight producers.
Inspired by the success of Lollapalooza, Sharon created a metal package tour called ‘Ozzfest’ in 1996. The festival went nationwide in 1997 with a partial Black Sabbath reunion as headlining act. Ward rejoined that December for a successful tour and live album. Work on a reunion LP was begun, but later shelved due to Ozzy’s solo commitments.
Ultimately, Sabbath’s reunion only served to remind fans how potent the original metal godfathers were and how superfluous their countless imitators seemed in comparison.
Sharon then arranged another coup: a MTV reality series called The Osbournes. The show was successful, but many fans believed it made a fool of Ozzy. After the fake-Sabbaths ran out of gas, the Dio version of Sabbath oured and recorded under the banner ‘Heaven and Hell’ until Dio's death..
After the grunge bloodbath, the sound was reinvented as ‘nu metal’, a catchall term including sophomoric rap-metal acts like Limp Bizkit and mope-metal fusionists like Staind. But apart from the continuing success of legends like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, the classic metal sound and look has not prospered in recent years.
Alt-rock revivalists like Wolfmother and Mastodon have found success with faintly irony-tinged retro-reworkings of the old formula, but history may look back on Sabbath as both the alpha and omega of pure Heavy Metal, with their debut and their reunion acting as book-ends to the form’s glory years.
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